The Short Story and the First World War

Covering a range of topics, settings and styles, the book offers the first comprehensive study of short fiction from the First World War.

Ann-Marie Einhaus (Author)

9781107038431, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 31 July 2013

228 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.51 kg

'Einhaus's meticulous study undercuts the myth and rounds out history … Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.' M. W. Cox, Choice

The poetry of the First World War has come to dominate our understanding of its literature, while genres such as the short story, which are just as vital to the literary heritage of the era, have largely been neglected. In this study, Ann-Marie Einhaus challenges deeply embedded cultural conceptions about the literature of the First World War using a corpus of several hundred short stories that, until now, have not undergone any systematic critical analysis. From early wartime stories to late twentieth-century narratives - and spanning a wide spectrum of literary styles and movements - Einhaus's work reveals a range of responses to the war through fiction, from pacifism to militarism. Going beyond the household names of Owen, Sassoon and Graves, Einhaus offers scholars and students unprecedented access to new frontiers in twentieth-century literary studies.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Canon, genre, experience, and their implied reader
2. The war in the magazines
3. Post-war publication and anthologisation
4. Negotiating disaster in popular forms
5. Narrative rehearsals of moral and ideological alternatives
6. Commemorative narratives and post-war stories
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: First World War [HBWN], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH]