War and American Literature

War and American Literature examines representations of war throughout American literary history.

Jennifer Haytock (Edited by)

9781108496803, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 4 February 2021

394 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.5 cm, 0.75 kg

'Highly recommended.' G. Grieve-Carlson, Choice Connect

This book examines representations of war throughout American literary history, providing a firm grounding in established criticism and opening up new lines of inquiry. Readers will find accessible yet sophisticated essays that lay out key questions and scholarship in the field. War and American Literature provides a comprehensive synthesis of the literature and scholarship of US war writing, illuminates how themes, texts, and authors resonate across time and wars, and provides multiple contexts in which texts and a war's literature can be framed. By focusing on American war writing, from the wars with the Native Americans and the Revolutionary War to the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this volume illuminates the unique role representations of war have in the US imagination.

Introduction Jennifer Haytock
Part I. Aspects of War in American Literature: 1. War and morality Ty Hawkins
2. Propaganda for war from the revolution to the Vietnam war Nicholas J. Cull
3. Representing soldiers Jennifer Haytock
4. Bodies, injury, medicine Michael Zeitlin
5. Veterans, trauma, afterwar Philip Beidler
6. Mourning, elegy, memorialization from the Civil war to Vietnam Steven Trout
7. On antiwar literature Lawrence Rosenwald
Part II. Cultural Moments and the American Literary Imagination: 8. Liberty, freedom, independence, and war James J. Gigantino II
9. Indians, defeat, persistence, and resistance Tammy Wahpeconiah
10. Civil war literature and memory Sarah E. Gardner
11. African American literature, citizenship, and war, 1863-1932 David Davis
12. World war I and cultural change in America Pearl James
13. On the home fronts of two world wars Karsten Piep
14. Patriotism, nationalism, globalism Jonathan Vincent
15. The 'good war' script Diederik Oostdijk
16. The Vietnam war and its legacy Mark A. Heberle
17. The forever wars Stacey Peebles
Part III. New Lines of Inquiry: 18. War and queerness Eric Keenaghan
19. War and disability studies John M. Kinder
20. War and ecocriticism Laura Wright
21. War and whiteness Roger Luckhurst
22. War and posthumanism Tim Blackmore.

Subject Areas: Warfare & defence [JW], American Civil War [HBWJ], War & combat fiction [FJM], Literary reference works [DSR], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literary theory [DSA], True war & combat stories [BTM]