AUTHORS AND TEXTS COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION READ the text and answer the following questions. How did the view of war change during the conflict? What was life in the trenches like? Who were the War Poets? Inwhat sense was their poetry modern? Text Bank 48-49 Portrait of Rupert Brooke, 1913. 6.11 The War Poets ‘When the First World War broke out, thousands of young men volunteered for military service (61); most of them regarded the conflict as an adventure undertaken for noble ends. It was, not until the slaughter of thousands of British soldiers at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 that this sense of pride and exhilaration was replaced by doubt and disillusionment. For the soldiers life in the trenches was hell because of the rain and mud, the decaying bodies that rats fed on, the repeated bombings and the use of poison gas in warfare. Almost from the beginning, the common soldiers improvised verses which, precisely because they were the rough, genuine, obscene songs of the Rupert Brooke 1ss7.1915 Life and works Rupert Brooke was born in 1887 and was ‘educated at Rugby School, where his father was a master, and then went to King’s College, ‘Cambridge. He was a good student and athlete, and became popular especially for his handsome looks. He was also familiar with literary circles like the Bloomsbury Group (6.18) and came to know many important political literary and social figures before the war. He joined up at the beginning of the conflict but saw little combat since he contracted blood poisoning and died in April 1915,on the Aegean Sea. He was buried on the Greek island of Skyros. Brooke's reputation as a War Poet is linked to the five sonnets of 1914, in which he advanced the idea that war is clean and cleansing. He expressed an idealism about the conflict, in which the only thing that can suffer is the body, and even death is seen as a reward (> Téé). ‘Traditional not only in form, his poems show trenches, did not reach the ears of the literate people living comfortably at home. However, there was also a group of poets volunteered to fight in the Great War, act: experienced the fighting and in most cases: their lives in the conflict. They managed to represent modern warfare in a realistic and unconventional way, awakening the cons. of the readers back home to the horrors of the war. These poets became known as the “War Poets: Their poetry can be considered modern because its subject-matter could not be conveyed in the 19"-century poetic conventions, and forced them to find new modes of expression. a sentimental attitude which was compl lost in the brutal turn that war poetry took. in the works of the other War Poets, who lived to witness the horrors of trench wat ‘The publication of Brooke's war sonnets coincided with his death in 1915 and made him immensely popular, turning him into = new symbol of the young romantic hero’ inspired patriotism in the early months of Great War, when England needed a focal for its sacrifice, ideals and aspirations. COMPETENCE: READING AND. UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION EBA the txt and mate notes about the following. 1 Brooke's education 2 His experience of the war. See To Hi popsBh Authors and Texts riot Wired Owen, 1916, nt the Trenches, 1914-15. OMPETENCE: READING ND UNDERSTANDING (FORMATION EAD the text and say: n enlisted ether he survived the war s poems deal with; technical innovation duced in poetry; was concerned with writing poetry, it the poet's task was, ding to Owen, Wilfred Owen 1893-1918 Life and works Born in 1893, Wilfred Owen was working as a teacher of English in France when he visited ‘a hospital for the wounded and decided, in 1915, to return to England and enlist. The year 1917 was an important one: he was sent to France and saw his first action; in March he was injured and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh to recover from shell shock. It was there that he met Siegfried Sassoon (> Text Bank 48), who was also a patient and already had a reputation asa poet. He read Owen's Poems, encouraged him to continue to write and introduced him to other literary figures, (Owen returned to the front in August 1918, On 4" November 1918, just seven days before the armistice, he was killed in a German machine gun attack. His poems are painful in their accurate accounts of gas casualties, men who have gone mad and men who are clinically alive although their bodies have been destroyed (-5 147), He is also noteworthy for the technical innovation of pararhymes’- half-rhymes where the consonants in two different words are the same but the vowels vary ~ as well as his extensive use of assonance and alliteration, ‘These devices gave the lines of his poems a haunting quality, gravity and moral force which make them suitable for any situation in which people must suffer and die, In June 1918 Owen was preparing Disabled and Other Poems for publication. At that time, he was writing the ‘Preface’ to the book, words which have now become essential in discussing his work and much of the poetry of World War I: This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. / Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. / Above all Iam not concerned with Poetry. / My subject is War, and the pity of War. / The Poetry is in the pity. Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. ‘They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful? 6. The Modern Age| 7) Dulce et Decorum Est ‘The following poem is based on the poets experience ofthe horrors of war: ‘attempt to communicate the ‘pity of War’ to future generations. The Latin honourable’ it is a quotation from the Latin poet Horace (1 century BC), the Greek poet Tyrtacus (7* century BC). Bent double, like old beggars! under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags’, we cursed through shu Till on the haunting flares‘ we turned our backs = ‘And towards our distant rest began to trudge’ Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, All went lame’; all blinds deaf even to the he Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines’ that 2» ypped behind. Gas! gas! Quick, boys! ~ Ai/€6stasyi6f fumbling”, Fitting the clumsy helmets'" just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound'ring” like a man in fire or ime”... Dim, through the misty panes'' and thick green light, As under a green ea, I saw him drowning", 2s Wilfred ow in the trenches and it is an ie title means ‘it is sweet and who borrowed the line from es e— Inall my dreams, before my helpless sight, plunges" at me, guttering, choking”, dro If in some smothering’* dreams you too coul Behind the wagon that we flung” him in, And watch the white eyes writhing” in his fa His hanging face, like a devils sick of sin; Ifyou could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lun ‘Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores*on innocent tongues My friend, you would not tell with such high ‘To children ardent for some desperate glory, MIBOIMLIe: Dulce et decorum est » 1 beggars Mendicn. . Knock kneed bags. Con leginocchia chew txcano, limped, blod:-hd, ‘Avanavano sppicand, cal di sangue 10 Aneestary of fumbling. Un rancolare frenetic 1 iting the sy helmet tossendo come sreghe. 7 lame. Sop Metendos got eet 3 sludge Fungo. 8 hoot. Si 12 vas yelling out. lounding. 4 haunting ares Regie 9 outstripped Five Nine. Gridivaeacampava es pave, Grant content gs) iment Pro patria mori. 19 we ung, Gettam 20 waiting, Conto 21 jolt Sobbalo. 22 frth-corrpte Polmont ntact 28 bitera the cud. 1 ty panes. Vet (dle rmaschere antiga) panna 15 drowning. Afogae 16 He plunges. i precipita 17 guttering. choking. Bacollando (come ance sua candela che sper ‘pegs, soffocando. 18 smothering. Af iol (i rmin 24 sors, ihe. 25 et Entiro, tradge.Trscnarh losciate indceo. 13 Hime Cale | VISUAL ANALYSIS EI READ the poem and summarise the content of ech stanza your conan El piscuss the rotowing questions in pir. 1 Describe the physical and psychologieal suffering ofthe solders by quoting from What kindof words introduced atthe endo the second stanza? Exiaiits termed a menespae ie Foon einen na In October 1918 Owen wrote: came out inorder to help these boy = ect by them a wal as an aficer can; indecty by watching ther satleregs on ney them aswell 53 pleader can | hove done te rat Do you find relevent tothe Images of war are ver frequent on television orn ims. Cormare the rapct nth that of words. Which mea most effect? Can you ponds on engl? EB L00k at the visual analysis of the text. Write down what each hightight and colour represents. 2 3 4 > COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT "EH WRITE 10-12 lines to compare Owen's poem with Brooke's The Soldier (- Té6).. the soldier's mood, his attitude to war, the imagery employed and the poet's me