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Modernism & War – Week 5
WW1 & Fake News
As WW1 unfolds the British media and political establishment portray the conflict in
increasingly ridiculous and unreliable ways
...
Fake news creates a problem of
interpretation
...
)
There work shows that war did have a massive impact on literature
What matters is the interpretation of the war, rather than the reality in terms of this
argument
...

Wilfred Owen, ‘Dulce et decorum est’ (1917-18)
Rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD – mostly iambic pentameter – artificial/rhetorical aspect to it –
“if you could hear…my friend…” – grandness to the diction – high literary style despite the
violence – traditional and writing about the war but in the tradition common before the war

Ezra Pound, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920

Not traditional in poetic style – no iambic pentameter – half rhymes ‘adventure’ ‘censure’ –
confusing syntax – ellipsis used is significant/creates haunting atmosphere – powerful
description of the war like Owen but describing it in a different way – Pound was not
involved in the war so this is an interpretation and looks at the implications of the war on
western civilisation – ‘a botched civilisation’ – expressing the view that progress, art, culture
is worthless in the face of ww1 – a tragedy effecting the whole of the west and the world – a
crisis/apocalypse – a vacuum where modernist art can enter
These fought, in any case,
and some believing,
pro domo, in any case
...

some in fear, learning love of slaughter;
Died some pro patria,
non ‘dulce’ non et ‘decor’
...


There died a myriad,
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization,
Charm, smiling at the good mouth,

Quick eyes gone under earth’s lid,
For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books
...
There is a revolution with
every new generation, and periodically, every century or so, we get a wider or deeper change
of sensibility which is recognised as a period – the Trecento [1300s], the Quattro Cento
[1400s], the Baroque, the Rococo, the Romantic, the Impressionist and so on
...
Its character is catastrophic
...
58-9
Catastrophe in literature a result of catastrophe of first world war



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