1914: the first world war signs the beginning of the Modern Age

I WW: - historical and cultural event at the same time

- global phenomenon that affected all the world

- it changed man's view of life

- it was a new experience for some reasons:

1. in four years there were fifty times more casualties than in the twenty-
year Napoleonic wars
2. the horror of the tranches: exhausting trench warfare, soldier lived in mud
among decaying
bodies
3. new weapons
4. masses of volunteers enlisted: sense of patriotism/idealism but also
inexperience

I part of the war

-From a psychological point of view: people saw in war a possibility of renovation, an

opportunity of change. The war was seen as a positive experience of struggle/change.

-Heavy recruitment from volunteers due to: - patriotism

- romantic idealism (positive view of war)

II part of the war

-Contrast (irony) between the way the war was conceived and the way it was lived (a
hell).

III part of the war

-The IWW finished because there were no more men to send to slaughter

-Climate of disillusionment and psychological breakdown

LITERATURE DURING THE IWW: difficult to find optimistic writers

1. Rupert Brooke (1887-1915): a romantic vision of war.

- Considered the voice of innocence
- He was the epitome of the brave soldier, a poet and an officer
- His sonnets show the heroic side of war

POEM: The Soldier.

- English traditional sonnet with melodious sound
- Tone: emphatic, solemn, declamatory
- It was considered a sort of manifesto of patriotism
- It was used by propaganda to convince people to go to war
- It's about England, seen as a paradise

Themes: - love for the mother country

- traditional values like pride in sacrificing themselves
 - idillic description of England, romantic landscape ("her flowers to love, her
ways to roam, a body
of England's, breathing English air, washed by the rivers, blest by suns of
home"; "her sights and
sound, dreams happy as her day")

2. Wilfred Owen (1893-1918): the truth of war.

- Considered the voice of awareness
- He wrote in hospital and in trenches
- He caught trench-fever on the Somme and was hospitalised in Edinburgh
- There he met the poet Sassoon who encouraged him to write and they talked about
poetry and war
- His poems are technically remarkable for their use of half-rhymes
- Vision of horror and apocalyptic desolation

POEM: Dulce et Decorum est.

- It conveys the horror of war through realistic details

- Published only after war, it was censured
- Tone: realistic, sad (at some points ironic)
- Title: Latin quotation from Horace that means "It is sweet and honourable"
- It's based on the poet’s experience of the horrors of war in the trenches

Themes: - the first and the second stanzas deal with past experiences
- stanza 1: description of soldiers that are marching in an open field, tired and
wounded
("bent double"; "knock-kneed"; "men marched asleep"; "all went lame";
"drunk with fatigue")
- stanza 2: gas attack, one soldier wasn't able to survive
- stanza 3: turning point - present: the poet remembers the horror of
- stanza 4: description of someone dying ("white eyes writhing in his face, his
hanging face, like a
devil's sick of sin"; "the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
obscene as cancer,
bitter as the cud of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues")
- at the end: the poet is talking to the reader who's at home ("my friend") and
says that if he could
really see the war he wouldn't think "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"

3. Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918): a different vision

- Considered the voice of modernity

- He came from the working class
- He enlisted in 1915 and was killed in action
- His poetry is the result of his war experience
- It is filled with human sympathy

POEM: Break of day in the trenches.

- It presents a view of life in the trenches
- Tone: ironic, disillusioned, detached
- It gives an indirect presentation of war

Themes: - moment of quiet, early in the morning ("the darkness crumbles away")
- poppy: symbol of the casualties in the IWW and important because after the
war poppies grow
well on battlefields
- the poet is talking to a rat: the rat touched his hand and probably he's going
to touch a
German handthis underlines that for the rat going through the trenches is
not a problem; so
the rat is luckier than human beings because he is free and has more
chances to survive (this fact
is understood when the rat grins in seeing the conditions of soldiers)
- the traditional hierarchy of beings has been reversed by the war: a rat is
superior to a man