Veteran Poetics
British Literature in the Age of Mass Warfare, 1790–2015

Illustrates how war veterans have been used in British literature since the 1790s to explore being, knowing and storytelling.

Kate McLoughlin (Author)

9781107195936, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 May 2018

330 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.3 cm, 0.6 kg

'McLoughlin's framework in this ambitiously [wide-ranging] book combines literary theory and moral philosophy, weaving together the works of Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler, Immanuel Kant, [Gayatri] Chakravorty Spivak and others to consider what she terms our collective 'triplethink' which labels the veteran victim, hero and delinquent.' Helena Goodwyn, The Times Literary Supplement

In this first full-length study of the war veteran in literature, Kate McLoughlin draws new critical attention to a figure central to national life. Offering fresh readings of canonical and non-canonical works, she shows how authors from William Wordsworth to J. K. Rowling have deployed veterans to explore questions that are simultaneously personal, political, and philosophical:  What does a community owe to those who serve it? What can be recovered from the past? Do people stay the same over time? Are there right times of life at which to do certain things? Is there value in experience? How can wisdom be shared? Veteran Poetics features veterans who travel in time, cause havoc with their reappearances, solve murders, refuse to stop talking about the wars they have been in, and refuse to say a word about them. Through this last trait, they also prompt consideration of possible critical responses to silence.

1. Life times
2. Strangers
3. Problem-solving
4. Telling tales
5. The end of the story.

Subject Areas: Military history [HBW], Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF]