World War One poetry : a problematic issue photo

World War One poetry: why war poetry became a literary problem

par · Lecture: 15 minutes
  1. World War One poetry: why war poetry became a literary problem
  2. Rupert Brooke: idealism, patriotism and the myth of the war poet
  3. Edward Thomas: nature, England and the quiet poetry of war
  4. War Poet: Wilfred Owen, Poetry and the Pity of War
  5. Introduction to Regeneration by Pat Barker: war trauma, history and fiction
  6. The plot in Regeneration by Pat Barker: transformation, trauma and return
  7. The setting in Regeneration by Pat Barker: Craiglockhart as a second battlefield
  8. First dialogue between Rivers and Sassoon in Regeneration
  9. Historical figures and fictional characters in Regeneration
  10. Landscape and mindscape in Regeneration: Burns, trauma and nature
  11. A transformed vision of time in Regeneration

World War One poetry is not a single school of poetry. It is not a neat literary movement with a shared manifesto, a clear doctrine and a friendly group photo. It is more interesting than that. It is a literary crisis.

The First World War forced poets to confront experiences for which inherited poetic language often seemed inadequate. Earlier poetry had represented war through honour, glory, sacrifice, heroism and national destiny. However, the Great War brought industrial killing, trench warfare, artillery, gas, shell shock, mass casualties and a deep crisis of meaning.

This is why World War One poetry is a problematic issue. The poets did not simply write about war. They had to discover whether poetry could still speak truthfully after the battlefield had become mechanised, anonymous and absurd.

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Richard III : the ambiguity of Richard's evil photo

Richard III : Order and Disorder, the Elizabethan problem

par · Lecture: 4 minutes
  1. Richard III : Order and Disorder, the Elizabethan problem
  2. Richard III: the ambiguity of Richard’s evil

It is very often an issue in Shakespeare’s plays. It deals with order and degree: each thing in the Universe has a place in a scale of things.

It is more than a political doctrine: it implies a metaphysical organization of the Universe, which is also linked with theology. We cannot find an exponent of this doctrine, it is everywhere at the back of people’s minds. It is a world picture in the collective unconscious consciousness.

Disorder is the equivalent of the original chaos (as opposed to the cosmos). God sustains the world as ordered, holding everything into place: he did not create it once and for all.

Order is how you can judge disorder. The notion of sin also intervenes, at several levels (in the Bible…) :

  1. Revolt of the Bad Angels with Satan
  2. Fall of Man from the Garden of Eden
  3. The murder of Abel by Cain

It constitutes frames of reference for the Elizabethan. Sin is the reason for chaos and disorder. The ordering of the world is very complex and means a very specific organization. Everything has a place, even the slightest one.

They conceived the world as a scale, an infinite ladder with infinite degrees: each thing is both superior and inferior to something else. It is a hierarchical order of things, known as « The Great Chain of Beings ».

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Richard III : the ambiguity of Richard's evil photo

Richard III: the ambiguity of Richard’s evil

par · Lecture: 6 minutes
  1. Richard III : Order and Disorder, the Elizabethan problem
  2. Richard III: the ambiguity of Richard’s evil

I. The Vice

The Vice was the favourite character in medieval morality plays. He is both an intriguer and a deceiver. He creates laughter and engages the audience’s sympathy in a conspirational relationship.

Richard generates a special relation between word and deed. He tells the audience what he is going to do, then does it, and finally recalls what he did: his soliloquies and asides create a feeling of conspiracy.

The Vice is also a figure of carnival, who fights the established authority and embodies the audience’s anti-authoritarian impulses. He is an outlet for the people’s frustration.

II. A Monster

Shakespeare has added a physical deformity to the character of Richard because Richard was not a hunchback.

In fact, at that time, deformed people were said to be willing to take revenge against Nature: because they could not change their lot, they wanted to bring people down.

Another reason is that showing fairground attractions on stage was a trick often used by Shakespeare to incite people to see his plays. A character both deformed and mobile was a very scary monster.

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