Romanticism and the Biopolitics of Modern War Writing

This book illuminates the genesis and development of modern war writing in relation to Romanticism, biopolitics and disciplinary theory.

Neil Ramsey (Author)

9781009100441, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 February 2023

250 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 2.1 cm, 0.6 kg

Military literature was one of the most prevalent forms of writing to appear during the Romantic era, yet its genesis in this period is often overlooked. Ranging from histories to military policy, manuals, and a new kind of imaginative war literature in military memoirs and novels, modern war writing became a highly influential body of professional writing. Drawing on recent research into the entanglements of Romanticism with its wartime trauma and revisiting Michel Foucault's ground-breaking work on military discipline and the biopolitics of modern war, this book argues that military literature was deeply reliant upon Romantic cultural and literary thought and the era's preoccupations with the body, life, and writing. Simultaneously, it shows how military literature runs parallel to other strands of Romantic writing, forming a sombre shadow against which Romanticism took shape and offering its own exhortations for how to manage the life and vitality of the nation.

Introduction: Romanticism and the Bio-aesthetics of the Military Literary World
1. Writing and the Disciplinarisation of Military Knowledge
2. Strategy in the Age of History: Henry Lloyd's Sublime Philosophy of War
3. Robert Jackson's Medicalisation of Military Discipline
4. More a Poet than a Statesman: The Epic Vigour of Charles Pasley's Military Policy
5. Thomas Hamilton's Wordsworthian Novel of War: Sexuality, Wounding and the Bare Life of the Soldier
Afterword: Trauma, Security and Romantic Counter-Strategies
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Literary theory [DSA]