Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2007. / Title from title screen (viewed 27 February 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Dept. of English, Faculty of Arts. Bibliography: leaves 250-256. Also issued in print.

From Preface: This is not a history of the Boer War; nor is it an exclusively literary study of the poetry of that war. If the work that follows has to be defined generically at all, it may be called an exercise in cultural history. It attempts to assess the impact of a particular war on the literary culture, especially the poetry, of both the participants and the observers, whether in South Africa, in Britain and the rest of the English-speaking world, or in Europe. An assumption made throughout this study is that war poetry is not only verse written by men who are or have been under fire. Just as 'War poetry is not to be confused with political, polemical, or patriotic verse, although it can contain elements of all of these, so it is also the work of observers at home as much as that of soldiers at the front. It follows that I have not allowed myself the academic luxury of selecting, on the basis of literary merit only, a handful of outstanding war poems for rigorous analysis and discussion. "Doggerel can express the heart" wrote one of these late-Victorian soldierly versifiers, and I have roamed widely in the attempt to assemble the material which, I believe, records the full range of the impact that the Boer War made not only on Briton and Boer, but on the worId at large. A major thesis of this study is that the Boer War marked the clear emergence of the kind of war poetry which we have come to associate almost exclusively with the First World War. Poems in the style and spirit of "The Charge of the Light Brigade" were written in profusion, but the work which serves as this study's masthead, Hardy's "Drummer Hodge," clearly has --like many of its contemporaries-- more in common with Owen's verse than with Tennyson's. The reasons for the appearance of such poetry are discussed in Chapter 1; the rest of the book provides the evidence of it.

A poesia de José Paulo Paes, produzida ao longo de mais de meio século, exibe uma considerável diversidade de formas e conteúdos, desde manifestações líricas a poemas em prosa, de experimentações visuais e fotográficas a brevíssimos textos cômicos. De forma geral, porém, a contraposição entre o desencanto e a utopia é um fundo temático que subsiste em boa parte desta obra, com oscilações entre ambos os polos. O presente trabalho sustenta que, apesar dos momentos em que há de fato um exaurimento da esperança diante do mundo e suas instituições opressoras, a tônica de sua poética é a presença de uma voz utópica, mais definida e clara até os anos 50, e que vai empalidecendo sistematicamente a partir da década seguinte, com a consagração da sociedade de consumo e do capitalismo tardio. Tal vetor de resistência atinge o quase desaparecimento, metaforizado pelos escombros, que, ainda fumegantes, conservam contudo a possibilidade da utopia. Esta, raramente enunciada de forma explícita, expressa-se primordialmente por dois modos distintos, a saber: a) a memória, primeiramente enquanto tentativa de intervenção política por meio da revisitação histórica, e posteriormente como rememoração individual, retorno à infância em uma estética tardia de natureza narrativa, de pouquíssimos efeitos poéticos, que se afasta do estilo consagrado do escritor em livros anteriores; b) o humor, que evolui de uma ironia mais direta e agressiva ao epigrama chistoso, elaborada forma poemática que consiste em obter comicidade a partir de trocadilhos, paronomásias, homonímias, enfim, com o trabalho linguístico. A partir, então, de ambas as estratégias, o poeta, de maneiras diferentes, se aproxima da oralidade, seja no ato de narrar histórias, seja na manipulação lúdica dos significantes, o que remonta às tradições de povos antigos e/ou sem uma cultura escrita. Tal retorno ao passado da humanidade (ou do sujeito, o in fans, aquele que não fala) é uma saída da História, uma negação do nefasto tempo presente e um modo de existir possível à utopia. Tal postura, em Paes, é satírica, bem como política. Por conta disso, a fim de se expandirem as possibilidades de iluminação crítica do período, faz-se ainda um painel acerca da poesia engajada e do chiste no pós-guerra brasileiro. / José Paulo Paes poetry, written throughout over fifty years, displays a considerable diversity of both form and content, ranging from lyric manifestation to prose poems, from visual and photographic experimental poetry to short comic texts. In general terms, however, the opposition discouragement/utopia is the thematic scenery that persists over most of his works, oscillating between both poles. The present dissertation defends that, in spite of several moments in which it is noticeable the fatigue of his hopes due to the world´s oppressing institutions, the major tone of his poetics is the existence of a utopian voice, more defined up to the fifties, that gradually weakens from the sixties on, after the consolidation of late capitalism and the mass consumption society. Such resistance arm practically vanishes away, which is portrayed by the metaphor \"debris\", which, nonetheless, are still \"steaming\", conserving the possibility of utopia. The latter, rarely expressed in an explicit way, is presented basically by two different modes: a) the memory, firstly as an attempt of a political intervention through the historical re-analysis, and, afterwards, by the personal remembrance, the return to childhood in a rather peculiar esthetical form: through narrative verses with no or very few poetic effects, far from the style the author used to have in previous books; b) the humor, which evolves from a more direct and sharp irony to the witty epigram, an elaborate poematic structure that obtains humor from puns, paronyms, homonyms, i.e., with the linguistic handling. Then, both strategies, in different ways, lead the poet to approach the orality in his works, be it in the act of narrating, be it in the joyful work of the signifier, which brings such poetry to the tradition of ancient societies and/or societies with no written culture. Such return to the past of humanity (or of the infant, from the Latin in fans, the one who does not speak) is an exit from History, a negation of the horrid present and a possible mode of existing for utopia. This posture, in Paes, is both satirical and political. Due to that, an after war Brazilian poetry overview has been done concerning both topics, so that they can be enlightened in such generation.

La tesi studia l’opera del war poet inglese Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918) con l’obiettivo principale di analizzare l’influenza della sua formazione pittorica sulla produzione poetica, un aspetto che, seppur generalmente riconosciuto, è stato poco approfondito dalla critica. I primi tre capitoli esaminano il contesto sociale, culturale e artistico in cui Rosenberg visse prima di arruolarsi nell’esercito; in particolare, viene presentata la comunità ebraica dell’East End di Londra, il suo coinvolgimento nella Prima Guerra Mondiale, la scena artistica di inizio ventesimo secolo. Lo studio considera anche la scuola d’arte da lui frequentata, la Slade, la sua limitata produzione pittorica e le sue riflessioni di estetica, contenute nelle lettere e nella prosa. Il quarto capitolo, fulcro della tesi, propone un’analisi dei testi poetici che mira a evidenziare come il poeta abbia sfruttato l’esperienza di pittore nella scrittura, specialmente nella war poetry. Tra le strategie identificate, vi sono l’utilizzo simbolico dei colori, l’imagery relativa a luce e buio, l’adozione di una particolare prospettiva, la commistione tra astratto e concreto. Tali tecniche vengono lette come tentativi di rispondere alla difficoltà di rappresentazione e comunicazione dell’esperienza bellica. / The thesis studies the works of English war poet Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918) with the main aim of analysing the influence of his pictorial training on his poetic production, an aspect which has been generally acknowledged, but scarcely investigated by critics. The first three chapters examine the social, cultural and artistic context in which Rosenberg lived before enlisting in the army; in particular, the focus is on the Jewish community of London’s East End, the involvement in the First World War, and the art scene of the early Twentieth century. The study also considers the art school he attended, the Slade, his limited pictorial production, and his thoughts on aesthetics, as included in the letters and prose. The fourth chapter, core of the thesis, proposes an analysis of the poems which aims to show how Rosenberg exploited his experience as a painter in his writing, especially in the war poetry. Among the identified strategies are the symbolic use of colours, the imagery related to light and shadow, the adoption of a particular perspective, the fusion of abstract and concrete. These techniques are seen as attempts to respond to the difficulty of representing and communicating war experience.

In the Soviet Union, literary writers were required to produce their work within the bounds of the cultural doctrine of Socialist realism or risk being subject to sanctions of the authorities. During the Khrushchev Thaw after the death of Joseph Stalin, there appeared the musical genre of avtorskaya pesnya (or author’s song), which was often described as part of the dissident movement in the Soviet Union. The genre nourished on as well as voiced criticism of Soviet life, and its performers, also called bards, became highly popular. The Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) was a common theme in Soviet literature, and also one of the main themes in avtorskaya pesnya. This study analyses the war theme in the songs of the three main bards of this genre – Bulat Okudzhava, Yuri Vizbor and Vladimir Vysotsky – in order to examine the genre’s relation to the norms of Socialist realism. These definitions compose the theoretical framework that is applied to the songs in interpretative readings to determine their relation to Socialist realism. The study analysed 21 songs with a war theme of Okudzhava, Vizbor and Vysotsky. Contrary to what might be expected, it is concluded that the war theme found in avtorskayapesnya generally conforms to the norms of the officially approved Soviet literature of war, but that the bards in some instances venture outside of the bounds of Socialist realism.

This research aims to illuminate how and why war challenges the limits of poetic representation, through an analysis of non-combatant poetry of the Second World War. It is motivated by the question: how can one portray, represent, or talk about war? Literature on war poetry tends to concentrate on the combatant poets of the First World War, or their influence, while literature on the Second World War tends to focus on prose as the only expression of literary war experience. With a historicist approach, this thesis advances our understanding of both the Second World War, and our inherited notions of 'war poetry,' by parsing its historiography, and investigating the role critical appraisals have played in marginalising this area of poetic response. This thesis examines four poets as case studies in this field of research-W.H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, Dylan Thomas, and Stevie Smith-and evaluates them on both their individual explorations of poetic tone, faith systems, linguistic innovations, subversive performativity, and their collective trajectory towards a commitment to represent the war in their poetry. The findings from this research illustrate how too many critical appraisals have minimised or misrepresented Second World War poetry, and how the poets responded with a self-reflexivity that bespoke a deeper concern with how war is remembered and represented. The significance of these findings is breaking down the notion of objective fact in poetic representations of war, which are ineluctably subjective texts. These findings also offer insight into the 'failure' of poetry to represent war as a necessary part of war representation and prompt a rethinking of who has the 'right' experience-or simply the right-to talk about war.

F.W. Harvey’s poetry was more popular during the First World War than many – if not most – of those whom we celebrate as ‘the war poets’ today. He is unique among the poets of that war for his insight into the life of the British POW in Germany, and for the influence of his work in the first of the British trench journals, the 5th Gloucester Gazette. Yet, he has received little national attention since his death in 1957, and scholarly work on his life is lacking, largely owing to a deficit of publicly-available primary sources and original material regarding his life and works. This has resulted in a failure to place him properly within the literary canon of the First World War. The recent discovery of Harvey’s papers allows us to examine his life and his contemporary cultural impact, and more fully to evaluate the value of his work and what it tells us about the First World War experience. Using Harvey’s papers, this biographical study will reconstruct the historical details of his life as they relate to the First World War. Concurrently, it will develop our understanding of his war-related work. This will demonstrate Harvey’s influence during the war, first as a trench poet, then as the poetic voice of the British POW. It will also examine how Harvey’s work continued to be affected by the war in the years after the armistice. The result will be a greater appreciation of the life and importance of a First World War poet whose voice was in danger of being lost to time.

Expanding on the concept of Richard Wagner's Gesamptkunstwerk, The War Poems was written to combine various elements for an intermedia composition, including music, five slide projectors, lighting, and costume. Text used in the piece was taken from the writings of the English World War I poet Siegfried Sassoon.

Within a southern African literary-historiographical milieu, the corpse of the First World War (1914-1918) either wanders in the ‘darkling’ woods or wades in the ice-mirrored sea of a sinister psychological landscape. The veld, with its moon, flowers, bowers, animals and sea, is a potent South African metaphysical conceit in which both the white and black corpse – the horrific waste product of war – is seemingly safely hidden within euphemistic shadows. However, these shades are metonymic and metaphorical offshoots of an Adamastorian nightmare, which has its inception in a nascent South African literary tradition. This thesis explores these literary-historiographical leftovers within the war poetry of both civilians and soldiers. Both ‘white’ and ‘black’ poetry is discussed in a similar context of dressing the corpse in meaning: a meaning that resides deep within the wound of loss. In tracing this blood spoor in the poetry a highly eclectic approach has been followed. As the title illustrates, both literary and historical approaches were used in analysing the effect of the Great War on the poetry, and by implication, on the society from which it sprung. It is, therefore, a cultural history as well as an intellectual subtext of wartorn South Africa that has been scrutinised, and is revealed in its poetic literature. Archival research and the scouring of individual volumes were the sources of the poems for this study. This is true especially with regards to the ‘white’ poetry, where very few examples of poetry have been published in secondary histories. Various anthologies and studies on ‘black’ poetry considerably lightened the search for war izibongo. A variety of literary theoretical approaches have been most useful in extracting the subtext of early 20th century South African history. The psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung’s collective unconscious have been most insightful. The poststructuralist theory of Julia Kristeva has cast more light on the recalcitrant corpse, the main waste product of war. David Lewis-Williams’s recent archaeological-anthropological approach has also been crucial in understanding the indigenous izibongo by putting forward Neuroscience as an explanation of the universally held neuropsychological hallucinatory poetic experience. Finally, war poetry in this thesis is seen as verse written by both soldiers and civilians as a response to the reality – or rather surreal unreality – of conflict, in an effort to come to terms with the abjection of both body and mind. Thea Harrington‘s manqué reading of Kristeva’s poststructuralist corpse is used as a referent for the abject, or loss thereof, that is to be found in the war poetry. Throughout the thesis, the term manqué is used to refer to the corpse as a fluid linguistic-psychological signifier saturated with loss. It is the manqué that has essentially remained hidden behind the various political histories of the war. / English Studies

Within a southern African literary-historiographical milieu, the corpse of the First World War (1914-1918) either wanders in the ‘darkling’ woods or wades in the ice-mirrored sea of a sinister psychological landscape. The veld, with its moon, flowers, bowers, animals and sea, is a potent South African metaphysical conceit in which both the white and black corpse – the horrific waste product of war – is seemingly safely hidden within euphemistic shadows. However, these shades are metonymic and metaphorical offshoots of an Adamastorian nightmare, which has its inception in a nascent South African literary tradition. This thesis explores these literary-historiographical leftovers within the war poetry of both civilians and soldiers. Both ‘white’ and ‘black’ poetry is discussed in a similar context of dressing the corpse in meaning: a meaning that resides deep within the wound of loss. In tracing this blood spoor in the poetry a highly eclectic approach has been followed. As the title illustrates, both literary and historical approaches were used in analysing the effect of the Great War on the poetry, and by implication, on the society from which it sprung. It is, therefore, a cultural history as well as an intellectual subtext of wartorn South Africa that has been scrutinised, and is revealed in its poetic literature. Archival research and the scouring of individual volumes were the sources of the poems for this study. This is true especially with regards to the ‘white’ poetry, where very few examples of poetry have been published in secondary histories. Various anthologies and studies on ‘black’ poetry considerably lightened the search for war izibongo. A variety of literary theoretical approaches have been most useful in extracting the subtext of early 20th century South African history. The psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung’s collective unconscious have been most insightful. The poststructuralist theory of Julia Kristeva has cast more light on the recalcitrant corpse, the main waste product of war. David Lewis-Williams’s recent archaeological-anthropological approach has also been crucial in understanding the indigenous izibongo by putting forward Neuroscience as an explanation of the universally held neuropsychological hallucinatory poetic experience. Finally, war poetry in this thesis is seen as verse written by both soldiers and civilians as a response to the reality – or rather surreal unreality – of conflict, in an effort to come to terms with the abjection of both body and mind. Thea Harrington‘s manqué reading of Kristeva’s poststructuralist corpse is used as a referent for the abject, or loss thereof, that is to be found in the war poetry. Throughout the thesis, the term manqué is used to refer to the corpse as a fluid linguistic-psychological signifier saturated with loss. It is the manqué that has essentially remained hidden behind the various political histories of the war. / English Studies