232039 The First World War in British Literary and Cultural Memory (S) (SoSe 2011)

The First World War looms large in British literary and Cultural Memory. It has been seen as the quintessential catastrophe of the 20th century, in which the results of excessive modernization clashed with archetypal modes of conflict. The experience of war, both at the front and at home, has shaped a considerable corpus of poems, novels, autobiographies and theatre plays, with a focus on trench warfare on the battelfields in France and Flanders. In this seminar, we will survey the literary production on WWI in Britain and the sometimes ambivalent evaluations of war, and we will trace the mechanisms by which elements from that experience were transferred to the collective memory and the national identity of Britain.

Please note: This course and the course "The Great War" (Schwarzkopf) complement each other. Students are advised to register for both courses, though both can, of course, be studied individually.

Requirements for participation, required level

Students ought to have completed BM 3.

Bibliography

A reader containing the seminar texts will be made available at the beginning of the semester.