Touch and Intimacy in First World War Literature

Santanu Das uncovers the intimate history of how war was experienced by the body.

Santanu Das (Author)

9780521066877, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 June 2008

284 pages, 21 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.42 kg

'There are some beautiful and revealing passages of writing here …' The Ivor Gurney Society Journal

The First World War ravaged the male body on an unprecedented scale, yet fostered moments of physical intimacy and tenderness among the soldiers in the trenches. Touch, the most elusive and private of the senses, became central to war experience. War writing is haunted by experiences of physical contact: from the muddy realities of the front to the emotional intensity of trench life, to the traumatic obsession with the wounded body in nurses' memoirs. Through extensive archival and historical research, analysing previously unknown letters and diaries alongside literary writings by figures such as Owen and Brittain, Santanu Das recovers the sensuous world of the First World War trenches and hospitals. This original and evocative study alters our understanding of the period as well as of the body at war, and illuminates the perilous intimacy between sense experience, emotion and language as we try to make meaning in times of crisis.

Introduction: 'Touch is the spirit and rule of all'
Part I. Mud: 1. 'A real monster that sucked': the threat of mud in First World War literature
2. Muddy narratives
Part II. Intimacies: 3. 'Kiss me, Hardy': the dying kiss in the First World War trenches
4. Wilfred Owen and the sense of touch
Part III. Wounds: 5. 'Deep into his body': service, sympathy and suffering in the nurses' memoirs
6. The operating theatre
Conclusion
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary theory [DSA]