Stand in the Trench, Achilles: Classical Receptions in British Poetry of the Great War (Classical Presences)

Elizabeth Vandiver examines the ways in which British poets of the First World War used classical literature, culture, and history as a source of images, ideas, and even phrases for their own poetry. Vandiver argues that classics was a crucial source for writers from a wide variety of backgrounds, from working-class poets to those educated in public schools, and for a wide variety of political positions and viewpoints. Poets used references to classics both to support and to oppose the war from its beginning all the way to the Armistice and after. By exploring the importance of classics in the poetry of the First World War, Vandiver offers a new perspective on that poetry and on the history of classics in British culture. MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict Contents 20 Introduction 22 PART I: EDUCATION, CLASS, AND CLASSICS 52 1.‘Sed miles, sed pro patria’: Classics and Public-School Culture 54 Games, Classics, and a Gentleman’s Training 57 The Curriculum and its After-Effects 76 The School of Sacrifice 89 Coda: Classics in the Grammar Schools 106 2.‘Like the Roman in brave days of old’: Middle- and Working-Class Classics 114 Horatius on the Aisne: Refiguring Macaulay 118 Classics in the Trenches 125 Three Poets and their Reading 131 PART II: REPRESENTING WAR 184 3.‘The riches of a Spartan soul’: Duty, Honour, Glory, and Sacrifice 186 Honour and Duty 187 Refiguring Homeric Glory: Julian Grenfell’s ‘Into Battle’ 205 Varieties of Sacrificial Experience 217 4.‘The heroes stir in their lone beds’: The Second Trojan War 249 Troy on the Western Front 253 Anticipating Troy: Poets on the Way to Gallipoli 262 Modern Heroes and Ancient Models 266 Calling the Dead to Witness 279 Calling Achilles: Patrick Shaw-Stewart 284 Eleven Years After: Troy Revisited 298 PART III: DEATH AND REMEMBRANCE 302 5.‘Yet many a better one has died before’: Deaths Imagined 304 ‘These laid the world away’: The Problem of Rhetoric 306 Discourses of Detachment 312 The Classical Katabasis: Visitors to the Dead 323 Thwarted Nostoi: The Problem of ‘Corpselessness’ 342 6. ‘Their doom was glorious’: Commemoration and Remembrance 353 Refiguring Simonides: War Epitaphs 356 Protective Spirits: The Heroic Dead 378 Oh God, they were men’: The Tenacity of Tradition 410 Conclusion 414 References 426 General Index 450 A 450 B 451 C 453 D 455 E 455 F 456 G 456 H 458 I 460 J 460 K 460 L 461 M 462 N 464 O 464 P 465 Q 467 R 467 S 468 T 471 U 472 V 472 W 472 X 473 Y 473 Z 473 Index Locorum 474 A 474 B 474 C 474 D 474 E 474 H 474 L 475 M 475 N 475 O 475 P 475 S 475 T 475 V 475 "Stand in the Trench, Achilles examines the range of classical receptions in British poetry of the First World War. Elizabeth Vandiver considers poets from a wide social spectrum and discusses the ways in which they refigured classical literature. Vandiver demonstrates that classics and its previous appropriations in English literature provided a rich source of images, tropes, and even verbal expressions for writers of different backgrounds, different political positions, and different viewpoints on the war."--Jacket A study of the ways in which British poets of the First World War used classical literature, culture, and history as a source of images, ideas, and even phrases for their own poetry. Elizabeth Vandiver offers a new perspective on that poetry and on the history of classics in British culture.