War novel
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A war novel or military fiction is a novel about war. It is a novel in which the primary action takes place on a battlefield, or in a civilian setting (or
Origins
The war novel's origins are in the
As the realistic form of the novel rose to prominence in the seventeenth century, the war novel began to develop its modern form, although most novels featuring war were
19th century war novels
The war novel came of age during the nineteenth century, with works like Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma (1839), which features the Battle of Waterloo, Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (1869), about the Napoleonic Wars in Russia, and Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage (1895), which deals with the American Civil War. All of these works feature realistic depictions of major battles, scenes of wartime horror and atrocities, and significant insights into the nature of heroism and cowardice, as well as the exploration of moral questions.
World War I and World War II
World War I produced an unprecedented number of war novels, by writers from countries on all sides of the conflict. One of the first and most influential of these was the 1916 novel Le Feu (or Under Fire) by the French novelist and soldier Henri Barbusse. Barbusse's novel, with its open criticism of nationalist dogma and military incompetence, initiated the anti-war movement in literature that flourished after the war.
Of equal significance is the autobiographical work of Ernst Jünger, In Stahlgewittern (1920) (Storm of Steel). Distinctly different from novels like Barbusse's and later Erich Maria Remarque's Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front), Jünger instead writes of the war as a valiant hero who embraced combat and brotherhood in spite of the horror. The work not only provides for an under-represented perspective of the War, but it also gives insight into the German sentiment that they were never actually defeated in the First World War.
The post-1918 period produced a vast range of war novels, including such "home front" novels as
The 1920s saw the so-called "war book boom," during which many men who had fought during the war were finally ready to write openly and critically about their war experiences. In 1929,
Novels about World War I appeared less in the 1930s, though during this decade historical novels about earlier wars became popular. Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind (1936), which recalls the American Civil War, is an example of works of this trend. William Faulkner's The Unvanquished (1938) is his only novel that focuses on the Civil War years, but he deals with the subject of the long, aftermath of it in works like The Sound and the Fury (1929) and Absalom, Absalom! (1936).
The 1990s and early 21st century saw another resurgence of novels about the First World War, with Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy: Regeneration (1991), The Eye in the Door (1993), and The Ghost Road (1995), and Birdsong (1993) by English writer Sebastian Faulks, and more recently Three to a Loaf (2008) by Canadian Michael Goodspeed.
World War II
World War II gave rise to a new boom in contemporary war novels. Unlike World War I novels, a European-dominated genre, World War II novels were produced in the greatest numbers by American writers, who made war in the air, on the sea, and in key theatres such as the Pacific Ocean and Asia integral to the war novel. Among the most successful American war novels were Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny, James Jones's From Here to Eternity, and Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, the latter a novel set in the Spanish Civil War.
The bombing of London in 1940-1 is the subject of three British novels published in 1943; Graham Greene's The Ministry of Fear, James Hanley's No Direction, and Henry Green's Caught.[6] Greene's later The End of the Affair (1951) is set mainly during the flying bomb raids on London of 1944.[7] According to Bernard Bergonzi "[d]uring the war the preferred form of new fiction for new fiction writers [in Britain] was the short story".[8] Although John Cowper Powys's historical novel Owen Glendower is set in the fifteenth century historical parallels exist between the beginning of the fifteenth century and the late 1930s and early 1940s: "A sense of contemporataneousness is ever present in Owen Glendower. We are in a world of change like our own".[9] The novel was conceived at a time when the "Spanish Civil War[note 1] was a major topic of public debate" and completed on 24 December 1939, a few months after World War II had begun.[10] In the "Argument" that prefaced the (American) first edition of 1941, Powys comments "the beginning of the fifteenth century [...] saw the beginning of one of the most momentous and startling epochs of transition that the world has known".[11] This was written in May 1940, and "[t]here can be no doubt" that readers of the novel would have "registered the connection between the actions of the book and the events of their own world".[12]
British novelist
Elizabeth Bowen's The Heat of the Day (1948) is another war novel. However, even though events occur mainly during World War II, the violence of war is usually absent from the narration: "two years after the Blitz, Londoners, no longer traumatised by nightly raids, were growing acclimatised to ruin."[13] Rather than a period of material destruction, war functions instead as a circumstance that alters normality in people's lives. Stella confesses to Robert: "'we are friends of circumstance⎯war, this isolation, this atmosphere in which everything goes on and nothing's said."[14] There are, however, some isolated passages that deal with the bombings of London:[15]
More experimental and unconventional American works in the post-war period included
The decades following World War II period also saw the rise of other types of war novel. One is the
Korean war
Almost immediately following World War II was the Korean War (1950–1953). The American novelist's Richard Hooker's MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors is a black comedy set in Korea during the war; it was made into a movie and a successful television series. In his "A World Turned Colder: A Very Brief Assessment of Korean War Literature", Pinaki Roy attempted in 2013 to provide a critical overview of the different publications, principally novels, published on the war.[17]
Vietnam and later wars
After World War II, the war that has attracted the greatest number of novelists is the
Some contemporary novels emphasize action and intrigue above thematic depth.
Iran–Iraq War was also an interesting case for novelists. Events and memoirs of Iran–Iraq War has led to unique war novels. Noureddin, Son of Iran and One Woman's War: Da (Mother) are among the many novels which reminds the horrible situation of war. Many of these novels are based on the interviews performed with participants and their memoirs.
The post
See also
- Epic poetry
- War poet
- Nautical fiction
- Historical fiction
- The Holocaust in popular culture
- Category:War novels
Notes
- Guernica by Pablo Picasso.
- ISSN 0972-3269).
References
- ^ Moses Hadas, Ten Plays by Euripides, Bantam Classic (2006), page 195
- ^ Random House blurb
- ^ Sturrock, John (11 July 2005). "John Sturrock, "Obituary" The Guardian, 11 July, 2005". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 10 April 2016. Retrieved 18 December 2016.
- ^ John Sturrock, "Obituary"
- ^ John Sturrock, "Obituary"
- ^ Bergonzi, Bernard, War and Aftermath: English Literature and its Background 1939-60. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 29.
- ^ Bergonzi, Bernard, War and Aftermath, p. 89.
- ^ Bergonzi, Bernard, War and Aftermath, p. 40.
- ^ Herbert Williams, John Cowper Powys (Brigend: Seren, 1997), p.126.
- ^ Charles Lock, "Owen Glendower and the Dashing of Expectations". The Powys Journal, vol. XV, 2005, p.71.
- ^ p.x.
- ^ W. J. Keith, Aspects of John Cowper Powys's 'Owen Glendower' , p.69.
- ^ Ellmann, 152.
- ^ Heat of the Day, 210
- ^ Heat of the Day, 98
- ISBN 9781537546179.
- ^ The Atlantic Literary Review Quarterly 14 (3), July–September 2013, pp. 39-53)
- ^ Sansom, Ian (21 August 2005). "Dear Osama". The New York Times. New York, New York. Archived from the original on 22 November 2011. Retrieved 6 July 2011.
Further reading
- Beidler, Philip D., American Literature and the Experience of Vietnam (U Georgia Press, 1982) ISBN 0820306126
- Bergonzi, Bernard, Heroes' Twilight: A Study of the Literature of the Great War (Coward-McCann, 1965). OCLC 349598
- Buitenhuis, Peter, The Great War of Words: British, American and Canadian Propaganda and Fiction, 1914–1933 (UBC Press).
- Casadei, Alberto, Romanzi di Finisterre: Narrazione della guerra e problemi del realismo, Roma, Carocci, 2000.
- Cobley, Evelyn, Representing War: Form and Ideology in First World War Narratives (U of Toronto Press, 1993). ISBN 0802005373
- Cooperman, Stanley, World War I and the American Novel (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press,1967). OCLC 269388
- Dawes, James, The Language of War (Harvard UP).
- ISBN 0195019180
- Craig, David and Michael Egan. Extreme Situations: Literature and Crisis from the Great War to the Atom Bomb (Macmillan). ISBN 0333245792
- Friedman, Saul S. (Ed.) Holocaust Literature: A Collection of Critical, Historical, and Literary Writings (Greenwood Press)
- Harvey, A.D., A Muse of Fire: Literature, Art and War, London, Hambledon Press, 1998. ISBN 1852851686
- Horowitz, Sara R, Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction (SUNY UP). ISBN 0-7914-3130-4
- Isnenghi, Mario, Il mito della grande guerra (Bologna, Il Mulino).
- Madison and Schaefer (Eds.), Encyclopedia of American War Literature (Greenwood Press). ISBN 0-313-30648-6
- Novak, Dagmar, Dubious Glory: The Canadian Novel and the Two World Wars (Peter Lang). ISBN 0820445495
- Rossi, Umberto, Il secolo di fuoco: Introduzione alla letteratura di guerra del Novecento, Roma, Bulzoni, 2008. ISBN 978-88-7870-320-9
- Roy, Pinaki, The Scarlet Critique, New Delhi, Sarup Book Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 2010, ISBN 978-81-7625-991-0
- OCLC 269476