Commemorative Modernisms: Women Writers, Death and the First World War

The book explores the relationship between the Great War and modernism through women's literary representations of death, offering the first sustained study of death and commemoration in women's literature during the wartime and postwar period. It considers the literary impact of the vast mortality of the First World War and the culture of war commemoration on British and American women's writing, challenging previous assumptions about the role of women in the war and its aftermath.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 17 May 2022
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

The relationship between the Great War and modernism has been re-examined through women's literary representations of death. This book offers the first comprehensive examination of death and commemoration in women's literature during the wartime and postwar periods. It challenges the conventional understanding of the First World War's impact on literary modernism and explores the literary significance of the vast mortality of the war and the culture of war commemoration on British and American women's writing. Through a series of case studies, including nurse narratives, Edith Wharton, Katherine Mansfield, H.D., and Virginia Woolf, as well as visual and material culture, the book provides a fresh perspective on women's literary representations of death and the culture of war commemoration that underlie British and American literary modernism. It also considers previously neglected writing by women in the war zones and at home, as well as the marginalised writings of well-known modernist authors, and draws on international archival research to demonstrate the intertwining of modernist, war, and memorial culture. By broadening the canon of war writing, this book contributes to our understanding of the complex relationship between the Great War and modernism.

Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781474459914