The collapse of the heroic tradition in 20th century war poetry

In the last two decades there has been a growing interest in the English poetry of the First World War. One of the products of this interest has been a great deal of literary criticism culminating in three major studies: by John H. Johnston in 1964; Bernard Bergonzi in 1965; and John Silkin in 1972. All of these critics have felt the need to look back to the past to establish the literary forebears of the trench poets. Johnston believes that the roots of war poetry are in the Germanic and Greek epics; Bergonzi that they are in the anti-heroic poetry of the Elizabethans; and Silkin, in the liberal, humanitarian poetry of the Romantics. Their approaches are valuable in giving new insight into the poetry of the First World War and helping to place it in an historical perspective, but their surveys seem inadequate and even misleading. There is, for instance, no epic war poetry in English literature, and so Johnston's criticism of the trench poets for failing to maintain epic standards seems unjust; and while it is true that Owen, Sassoon and Rosenberg's work proceeded from the same impulse that stimulated the humanitarian poetry of Shakespeare and the Romantic poets, neither Bergonzi nor Silkin recognizes that the dominant tradition in English war poetry, from the Battle of Maldon to the outbreak of the First World War, was an heroic one, and that the poets of the Great War wrote largely in reaction to this tradition.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Department of English Language and Literature

Year dc:date.issued

1979

Author dc:creator

• McArthur, Kathleen Maureen

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Birkinshaw, Philip

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/12592

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/12592