SS Course 2009: Soldier Poets of the First World War

Course 222
Date: 26–30 January
Time: 11.15 am
Full: R270,00 Staff: R135,00 Reduced: R70,00

Soldier Poets of the First World War

Presented by Dr Jean Moorcroft Wilson, biographer and lecturer, Faculty of Lifelong Learning, Birkbeck College, University of London

The First World War was a milestone in English history and also in literature. Unlike the wars that preceded it, this was a total war, in which not only soldiers but also civilians were affected. (Over three- quarters of a million died in the fighting and countless more were injured). It is notable, however, that the most powerful literature to emerge from the war was written by combatants. Their heightened experience in war appears to have stimulated new intensities of imagination. This is particularly true of the poetry of the period, with its insights into changing attitudes towards the war, attitudes which in turn affected the development of the war itself.

This course will approach the subject chronologically, the great dividing line being the Somme battles from 1916 to 1917 which separate what one might call the first generation of war poets – Rupert Brooke, Julian Grenfell and Charles Hamilton Sorley among them – from the second, which includes such great poets as Siegfried Sassoon, Edward Thomas, Wilfred Owen and Cape Town’s own Great War poet Isaac Rosenberg. Rosenberg was staying with his sister in District Six when war was declared in August 1914, a circumstance which radically influenced his poetry and attitude towards the conflict.

LECTURE TITLES

1. From jingoistic sacrifice to patriotic realism: Rupert Brooke, Julian Grenfell, Charles Hamilton Sorley.
2. Siegfried Sassoon: ‘My killed friends are with me where I go’.
3. Edward Thomas: ‘Now all roads lead to France’.
4. Wilfred Owen: ‘The Pity of War’.
5. Isaac Rosenberg: ‘On First Receiving News of the War: Cape Town’.
   

Recommended reading

• Bergonzi, B. Heroes’ Twilight: a Study of the Literature of the 1st World War. Carcanet, 1997.
• Fussell, P. The Great War and Modern Memory. Oxford University Press, 1975.
• Wilson, J.M. Isaac Rosenberg: the Making of a Great War Poet. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008.
• Wilson, J.M. Siegfried Sassoon: the Making of a War Poet. Duckworth, 2004.
• Wilson, J.M. Charles Hamilton Sorley: a Biography. Cecil Woolf Pubs, 1985.