History 244 
Modern Britain

Week Ten


War and Aftermath of War

This week studies both the Great War and its domestic consequences.  Amongst these consequences must be included the sharp and dirty "Anglo-Irish War", and the similarly unsavory "Irish Civil War" following, which resulted in the foundation of the Irish Free State.
But one of the most enduring aspects of the Great War is the fascination, at least in the western world, with the horrific pressures individuals faced in extended years of combat, especially in the midst of the endless peril of the trenches of Flanders and France.   Thus, your
writing and your discussion this week will concentrate also on the ways in which this focus has played out in memoir, in war poetry, in fiction both contemporary and modern, and in the attention of  medicine to the physical and psychological effects of this wounding in both body and mind. 


Monday   - Homes Fit For Heroes   paper due

Wednesday   -  Discussion on Pat Barker's REGENERATION & related readings

Friday   -  "Ireland - War and Partition"

Assigned Readings:

Pat Barker, Regeneration (entire)
Dr. W.H.R. Rivers, The Repression of War Experience, a paper delivered before the Royal Society of Medicine, December 4, 1917, THE LANCET, London, 1918
THE HYDRA, the Soldier's Magazine of Craiglockhart Hospital; Owen's July, 1917 editorial
Seigfried Sassoon - War Poems 1915-1917 - read in
Wilfred Owen - War Poetry

The words playing in the background (hardware permitting) were written in a letter Owen sent in July 1918 to a friend in England. (Source: the "Lost Poets" website below)



 Look in:
 "Lost Poets" - casualty-poets, especially look at Isaac Rosenberg and Rupert Brooke.
Seigfried Sassoon, "Counter Attack and Other Poems." this takes a little "navigation" through the Bartleby index, but his poetry is there
Images:

1.    "Humanity - Stretcher-Bearer Post, 9th Field Ambulance"   Gilbert Rogers (Official War Artist)
2.    An early casualty of the first day of the Somme, 1 July 1916 (Official Photograph)
3.    Stretcher bearers on Pilchem Ridge, 1 August 1917 (Official Photograph)
4.  "British Red Cross Society and Order of St. John workers attending wounded on their arrival at Boulogne" Haydn Reynolds Mackey (Official War Artist)

Return to Schedule of Classes

Pat Barker

 Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania
Founded 1773