The Great War

(1914-1918)

Sigla sau numele aici

The Triple Alliance: Germany, Austria, Hungary and
Italy
The Entente Cordiale (Triple Entente): France,
Russia and Great Britain
• July 28, 1914: Austria-Hungary declares war on
Serbia. Russia mobilized in support of Serbia
• August 2, 1914: Ottoman Empire (Turkey) and
Germany sign a secret treaty of alliance.
• August 3, 1914: Germany declares war on France.
• August 4, 1914: Germany invades neutral Belgium
and Luxembourg (before moving towards France),
leading Britain to declare war on Germany.
• August 10, 1914: Austria-Hungary invades Russia.
Sigla sau numele aici
3
Sigla sau numele aici
The Trench Warfare

5
British troops blinded by poison gas
British trenches after gas attack
 THE BRITISH WAR POETS
The poetry of World War I closely reflects the changing attitudes that many
soldiers had toward the war:
1.The first poems (the first year or two of the war) brim with the confidence of
soldiers who believe that they are embarking on a glorious adventure. Many
poems spoke of honour, glory, and patriotism. In these poems the poets speak of
leaving the petty pleasures of civilian life for the exalted life of a soldier; they are
romantic and optimistic.
2.As the war wore on, poets began to write bitter, cutting verses about the horror
of war and the failure of patriotic visions. These are poems of harsh
disillusionment and indictment of war. The authors seem to realize that there is
no higher or chivalric calling to war but merely a bitter struggle to survive. The
change reflected in these poems is believed to mark the emergence of modern
literature, which focuses more on the perceptions of common people than earlier
literature does.
 Pro-war poetry

RUPERT BROOKE (1887 - 1915)

His work reveals the English political propaganda during

the pre-war years which celebrated the war and
emphasized the nobleness of fighting and dying for one’s
nation, luring young men to join the military.

The most eloquent proof of the effectiveness of Brooke's poetry as

public statement is the extent to which it was exploited by
politicians for patriotic purposes. They used Brooke's poems as a
form of war propaganda, immortalizing him as the young warrior
keen to lay down his life for his country.
 Trench poetry

WILFRED OWEN (1893 - 1918)

"The true poets must be truthful"

His poems are rooted in the

terribly distressing experience of
a young officer in the trenches,
who bears witness to the ordeal
of his men. These poems are first and
foremost about agony, grief, distress,
mourning and hopelessness.
The atrocities of war, the sheer waste of human lives, the after-
effects of war - both physical and psychological - were some of his
favourite themes.
SIEGFRIED SASSOON (1886 - 1967)
“no truth unfitting”

His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches and

satirized the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon’s
view, were responsible for prolonging without valid purpose a
jingoism-fueled war.

His deepening depression at the horror and

misery that soldiers were forced to endure
produced, in Sassoon’s case, a paradoxically manic
courage, earning him the nickname “Mad Jack” for
his virtually suicidal exploits.
armed with grenades, he single-
handedly captured a German trench
driving off sixty German soldiers; then
he sat down in the trench and began
reading a book of poems which he
had brought with him
ISAAC ROSENBERG (1890 - 1918)
‘‘I never joined the army from patriotic reasons.
Nothing can justify war.’’

Most of his poems were written out of his experience in the

trenches; he shared with thousands of other recruits the
miseries of life in the trenches. But in his case these were
magnified by his small stature, the bullying he suffered as a
Jew, his ill health, and his absentmindedness, leading to
punishment for forgetting orders.

‘‘Rosenberg's poems from the front show him to

have absorbed the great tradition of English
pastoral poetry, but his tone is different: more
impersonal, informal, ironic, and lacking the
indignation characteristic of the work of Wilfred
Owen and Siegfried Sassoon.’’ (Jon Stallworth)
EDWARD THOMAS (1878 - 1917)
“I hate not Germans, nor grow hot / With love of
Englishmen, to please newspapers.”

He is commonly considered a war poet, although

few of his poems deal directly with his war
experiences. He wrote no poems about fighting or
about life in the trenches
Thomas’s attitude to the war is devoid of Brooke’s heartfelt
patriotism, Owen’s bitterness, or Sassoon’s sarcasm. His
attitude to the war is a far cry from the enthusiasm
prevalent particularly at the beginning of the Great
War and in its initial stages. Thomas does not feed
on the general mood, and the war issue for him
remains beyond the domain of the national
debate: he adopts a stance of his own, which
confirms acceptance of the state of affairs without
excessive emotional or patriotic commitment.
Conclusions
• The First World War destroyed empires and monarchies, created numerous
new nation-states, encouraged independence movements in Europe’s
colonies, forced the United States to become a world power and led
directly to Soviet communism and the rise of Hitler.
• More than 20 million people, both military and civilian, died
• Many new developments in medicine, warfare, politics and social attitudes:
modern surgery was born in the First World War; The WWI also led doctors
to start to study the emotional as opposed to the physical stress of war:
shell shock and traumatic shock were identified as common symptoms
• The disillusionment that grew out of the war contributed to the emergence
of modernism, a genre which broke with traditional ways of writing,
discarded romantic views of nature and focused on the interior world of
characters. In the visual arts, the avant-garde movements (Cubism,
Expressionism, Constructivism, Surrealism) challenged the traditional ways
of expression and proposed exploring new artistic methods, or
experimenting with new techniques