Conflict, Nationhood and Corporeality in Modern Literature : Bodies-at-War

This collection examines ways in which modern literature responds to the body-at-war, examining the effects of violent conflict on the body in its literal and representative forms. Spanning literature from World War I to the present day, it includes essays on pacifist theatre, torture, fascist fantasies, and uniforms and masculinity. War is about killing people. Official war cultures go to great lengths to deny this fact and to normalize conflict yet the literary response to war often focuses on its physical conditions and their impact on literal and figurative bodies (the body politic, the national canon, national territory). This collection of essays is a critical response to the discrepancy of corporeal representations in our modern war culture. The contributors offer a reassessment of modern literature as an often uncomfortable and controversial articulation of dissent about aspects of wartime culture and politics, in which images and metaphors of the body are employed to construct arguments about nationhood. Spanning literature from World War I to the present day, this collection includes essays on pacifist theatre, war and landscape, forgotten bodies in Irish cultural memory of World War I, corpses in World War II crime fiction, torture and Holocaust memory, voice in contemporary war poetry, uniforms and masculinity, perpetrator fantasies, and dismemberment in Cold War literature Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 6 List of Illustrations......Page 8 Acknowledgements......Page 9 Notes on Contributors......Page 10 Introduction: Between Absence and Ubiquity – on the Meanings of the Body-at-War......Page 12 1 'Isn't This Worth Fighting For?' The First World War and the (Ab)Uses of the Pastoral Tradition......Page 37 2 Violence and the Pacifist Body in Vernon Lee's The Ballet of the Nations......Page 57 3 Incommensurate Histories: the Remaindered Irish Bodies of the Great War......Page 75 4 'Soft-skinned Vehicle': Reading the Second World War in Tom Paulin's The Invasion Handbook......Page 94 5 'A stiff is still a stiff in this country': the Problem of Murder in Wartime......Page 115 6 Masculinity, Masquerade and the Second World War: Betty Miller's On the Side of the Angels......Page 135 7 'One step closer to the dreamers of the nightmare': the Fascinating Fascist Corpus in Contemporary British Fiction......Page 154 8 'Resentments': the Politics and Pathologies of War Writing......Page 175 9 'The dangerous edge of things': Geopolitical Bodies and Cold War Fiction......Page 196 Index......Page 216 Introduction: between absence and ubiquity: on the meanings of the body-at-war / Petra Rau "Isn't this worth fighting for?" World War I and the (ab)uses of the pastoral tradition / Christine Berberich Violence and the pacifist body in Vernon Lee's The ballet of the nations / Patricia Pulham Incommensurate histories: the remaindered Irish bodies of the Great War / Eugene McNulty "Soft-skinned vehicle': reading the Second World War in Tom Paulin's The invasion handbook / Mark Rawlinson "A stiff is still a stiff in this country": the problem of murder in wartime / Gill Plain Masculinity, masquerade and the Second World War: Betty Miller's On the side of the angels / Victoria Stewart "One step closer to the dreamers of the nightmare": the fascinating fascist corpus in contemporary British fiction / Petra Rau Resentments: the politics and pathologies of war writing / Marina Mackay "The dangerous edge of things": geopolitical bodies and Cold War fiction / Richard Robinson.