WAR IN LITERATURE:

AN INTRODUCTION

PROFESSOR TIMOTHY H WILSON UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA

OUTLINE

→ Defining our Terms

• War
• Literature

→ War in Literature (Themes)

• Glory
• Courage
• Community
• Leadership
• Gods and Mortals
• Words and Action

→ Literary Periods
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INTRODUCTION

→ The history of war presents us with the specter of unspeakable carnage and
death and the SUFFERING it causes
• The suffering of parents losing their children, of children losing their parents

→ War forces us to confront our human finitude and MORTALITY in a way that the
life of peace does not

→ Literature is an important means by which we shape our understanding of the

MEANING OF WAR and of our finite human existence

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INTRODUCTION

→ We will study ANCIENT works of literature wherein war arises as an arena in

which one’s life can be defined by glory, honour and duty:
• Homer, The Iliad (ca. 750 BCE)
• Virgil, The Aeneid (29-19 BCE)

→ We will then study MODERN works of literature where war is represented as

ultimately meaningless and bereft of any higher significance
• Shakespeare, Henry V (1599)
• Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

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DEFINING OUR TERMS
• WAR
 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
WAR AND CONFLICT IN LITERATURE (THEMES)

→ CONFLICT is a very broad term denoting a struggle between opposed forces or people – the
struggle can be violent, or merely one of ideas, motives etc.

→ All NARRATIVE LITERATURE includes agents in some sort of conflict:

• Gods against gods (Theomachy)
• Humans against gods / fate
• Humans against nature
• Humans against humans (society / technology)
• Humans against themselves (Psychomachia)

→ So, we will need to be more specific in terms of the types of literature and literary subject
matter we will study

→ By “WAR” we will denote a specific type of conflict – however, what will we classify as “war”?
 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
DEFINING WAR (THEMES)

→ We can begin with a highly influential

treatment of the subject by Carl von
CLAUSEWITZ (1780 – 1831).

→ Clausewitz was a Prussian General and

military theorist

→ Treatise On War (Vom Kriege) was written in

the wake of the Napoleonic wars (between
1816 and 1830) and published posthumously
in 1832

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
DEFINING WAR (THEMES)

→ War as Violence on an Extensive Scale

• “War is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale”*

• “War therefore is an act of violence to compel our
opponent to fulfil our will”
• “There is only one means in war: combat”
• Violence, the spilling of blood, separates war from other
human activity

* Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Col J.J. Graham. Skyhorse Publishing, 2013; p 1.

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
DEFINING WAR (THEMES)

→ The Function of War: Continuation of

State Policy

• “War is a mere continuation of policy

by other means” (15)

• It is “only a branch of political activity

[and] in no sense autonomous”

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
DEFINING WAR (THEMES)

→ Not all fighting or violence is war

• Wrestling may be “fighting of a kind”, but it is not war
• Similarly, murders, “gang wars” etc. do not fit his
definition

→ War, Clausewitz insists, must be “a serious means for a

serious object” (14)
• State Policy Objectives (Serious Object)
• Using organized military forces (Serious Means)

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
DEFINING WAR (THEMES)

TYPE OF CONFLICT VIOLENCE GRAND SCALE SERIOUS OBJECT SERIOUS MEANS

(STATE POLICY) (ORGANIZED
MILITARY)

Trojan War / YES YES YES YES

World War I

Murder YES NO NO NO

Gang War YES YES NO NO

War on Drugs NO YES one side only NO

(as awareness campaign)

Asymmetric Warfare YES YES one side only one side only
(War on Terror, Wars of
Resistance)
 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
BROADER NATURE OF WAR (THEMES)

→ However, this definition makes war a tool for achieving certain rationally defined ends
• Misses the fact that war has a deeper hold on the human psyche and can defy rational calculation

→ John Keegan, for instance, critiques the Clausewitzian definition:

• “[W]ar is not a continuation of policy by other means”
• “[It] reaches into the most secret places of the human heart, places where self dissolves rational purpose”*

→ So, while Clausewitz can help us define the sorts of phenomena we will classify as war, we will need
to keep in mind the broader senses of war that exceed his definition:
• The broader connotations and meanings of war that exceed his definition as armed conflict by organized
militaries
• The examples of pre-historic human conflict that would also not fall into his definition as they precede the
advent of the State

* A History of Warfare, Hutchinson, London, 1993, p. 3

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
ETYMOLOGY OF WAR (THEMES)

→ Some of the broader connotations of “WAR” can be seen in its

linguistic roots

• Confusion
• Strife
• Man
• Truth

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
ETYMOLOGY OF WAR (THEMES)

War and STRIFE KRIEG KRIEG

→ Can also be tied to Old English gewin Old High German Modern German
(“struggle, strife”; related to “win”)
GREH KRIGAZ (defiance, stubbornness) (war)
→ Old Saxon: krig (war)
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Germanic
(meaning uncertain) (strife, struggle, fight) KRIG
War and CONFUSION (Old Saxon)
→ Germanic roots tied to confusion, (war)
disorder
WERRAN VERWIRREN
War and MAN
→ Although not etymologically related, Old High German Modern German
closeness in sound to Old English wer (to confuse, mix up) (to confuse, mix up)
(“adult human male”)
→ Werewolf (“man-wolf”)
WERS WERZ-A WERRAN
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Germanic Old Saxon
War and TRUTH
(to confuse, mix up) (confuse, mix up) (to confuse, mix up) WYRRE, WERE, WAR
→ Although not etymologically related,
closeness in sound to Old Saxon war Old / Middle / Modern
English
(true) – Modern German Wahrheit
(truth) WERRA (war)
Frankish
(confusion, disorder) WERRE / GUERRE
From Online Etymology Dictionary: Old / Modern French
www.etymonline.com/ (war)
 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
ANCIENTS ON WAR (THEMES)

→ The ancient Greek sense of war as a COSMIC FORCE also recognized this broader sense of the
meaning of war as tying together strife and truth

• Greek word for truth (alētheia)

• Literally translated, means “un-concealedness”
• Truth, as experienced by the Greeks, is an essential conflict or strife
• “‘Truth’ is never ‘in itself,’ available by itself, but instead must be gained by struggle. Unconcealedness is
wrested from concealment, in a conflict [polemos] with it” (Martin Heidegger, Parmenides, 1992, 17).

• Heraclitus (535 – 475 BCE)

• “We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice, and that all things come into being
through strife necessarily.” (DK 80)
• “War is the father of all and king of all; and some he shows as gods, others as men, some he makes
slaves, others free.” (DK 53)

• We will see this in the representation of war that Hephaestus forges for the “Shield of
Achilles” (Iliad, Book 18)
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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR AND THE “STATE OF NATURE” WAR IN LITERATURE

(THEMES)

→ Does war precede human civilization and

society, or does it arise with these human
constructions? – An enduring question since
the foundational claims of Hobbes and
Rousseau

→ Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679):

• Hereby it is manifest that during the time men

live without a common power to keep them all in
awe, they are in that condition which is called
war; and such a war is of every man against
every man …. In such condition there is no place
for industry …. no letters; no society; and which is
worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent
death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish, and short. (Leviathan, I.13)

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR AND THE “STATE OF NATURE” WAR IN LITERATURE

(THEMES)

→ Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778):

• In the state of nature “man is naturally peaceful
and timid; at the least danger, his first reaction is to
flee; he only fights through the force of habit and
experience” (“The State of War”)

• “The first man who, having enclosed a piece of

ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine,
and found people simple enough to believe him,
was the real founder of civil society. From how
many crimes, wars and murders, from how many
horrors and misfortunes might not any one have
saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling
up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, ‘Beware of
listening to this impostor; you are undone if you
once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us
all, and the earth itself to nobody.’” (Discourse on
the Origin of Inequality)
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INTRA-SPECIES CONFLICT (THEMES)

→ The evidence seems to support

Hobbes

→ For instance, intra-species conflict is

found in:
• Many species of mammals
• Chimpanzees
• Prehistoric humans

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WAR IN LITERATURE
INTRA-SPECIES CONFLICT (THEMES)

→ Effect for the species is:

• To increase its evolutionary “fitness” and
• Limitation to population growth (which can become exponential given infinite resources)

→ Motives for individuals / groups to conflict:

• Limited resources
• Securing mates

• Wilson, M., Boesch, C., Fruth, B. et al. Lethal aggression in Pan is better explained by adaptive strategies than human impacts. Nature 513, 414–417 (2014).
https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13727
• Pagel, M. Lethal violence deep in human lineage. Nature 538, 180-81 (2016).

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
INTRA-SPECIES CONFLICT (THEMES)

→ Gombe Chimpanzee War (1974-78)

• In Gombe National Park in Tanzania,

witnessed by primatologist Jane
Goodall

• Before this, chimpanzees were

assumed to be like humans, but
more peaceful (Rousseauistic)

• See YouTube video summary (viewer

discretion)

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
HUMAN WAR BEFORE CIVILIZATION (THEMES)

→ Humans have conducted

various forms of war since
prehistoric times

• Evidence from prehistoric

archaeological sites and from
current hunter-gatherer, hunter-
horticulturalist and other tribes

• Note: these would not meet the

Clausewitz definition as they
precede the “State”

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
LIMITING WAR (THEMES)

→ However, there is also some truth to the

Rousseau position

→ Humans have evolved and created complex social

institutions because of natural drives to “GET
ALONG” with others

• Evolutionary selection for reciprocal altruism

• Human desire for social recognition, not just

material gain*

* Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2011): 43. See
also, Richard Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue
and Violence in Human Evolution, Pantheon (2019).

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
LIMITING WAR (THEMES)

→ So, there has been progress in the ability of

society to limit the effects of war over time –
through a growing sense of its costs, creation
of effective agreements to avoid war etc.

“States are far less violent than traditional bands and

tribes. Modern Western countries, even in their most
war-torn centuries, suffered no more than around a
quarter of the average death rate of nonstate societies,
and less than a tenth of that for the most violent one.”
(Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of our Nature, Penguin
(2012))

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
LIMITING WAR (THEMES)

→ In addition to internal drives (our “better

angels”: empathy, reason, moral compass), there
are some external drivers of this progress:

• Leviathan Theory – A powerful central

government that can make and enforce laws using
violence means that citizens are less likely to take
punishment into their own hands

• However, this does not address inter-state

violence

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WAR IN LITERATURE
LIMITING WAR (THEMES)

→ Democratic Peace*

• Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804), in

his “Perpetual Peace”, claimed
that republican constitutions, a
commercial spirit of international
trade and a federation of
interdependent republics would
assure perpetual peace

• Democracies tend not to fight

one another

• General trend has been an

increase in the number of
democracies world-wide

* O’Neal, J.R. and Russet, B. “The Kantian Peace: The

Pacific Benefits of Democracy, Interdependence,
and International Organizations, 1885-1992”,
World Politics, 52.1: 1999
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WAR IN LITERATURE
LIMITING WAR (THEMES)

→ Gentle Commerce

• Within smoothly running

political systems, it is
cheaper to buy something
than to steal something

• Our neighbours (internal

and external) are worth
more to us alive than dead
because exchanges are
positive-sum*

* Will Koersen, Has Global Violence Declined? A

Look at the Data (2019)
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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
LIMITING WAR (THEMES)

→ As a result of these forces, the relative threat of violent conflict has decreased
significantly throughout human history
→ In terms of absolute numbers, the 20th century was the bloodiest ever; however, in
terms of numbers of deaths relative to total population, there has been a significant
decline
• In 2012, around .009% of the population were killed through human violence
• During WWII, around 3% of the population were killed1
• Paleolithic archaeological samples indicate as much as 15% - 30% of the human population
would fall victim to human violence2

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

2) Pagel, M. Lethal violence deep in human lineage. Nature 538, 180-81 (2016)
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WAR IN LITERATURE
LIMITING WAR (THEMES)

“In 2012 about 56 million people died throughout the

world; 620,000 of them died due to human violence
(war killed 120,000 people, and crime killed another
500,000). In contrast, 800,000 committed suicide,
and 1.5 million died of diabetes. Sugar is now more
dangerous than gunpowder.”

Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
LIMITING WAR (THEMES)

→ So, rather than being the cause of human violence and war, the rise of
increasingly complex civilizations and states have had the effect of
consolidating authority under institutions, imposing norms and controls on
violent impulses and behaviours

→ Literature has played a role within this history of human civilization’s imposing
of norms on violence and war

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
LIMITING WAR (THEMES)

→ ANCIENT literature originally arose as a way

of glorifying and preserving the exploits of
heroic warriors
• However, even in Homer the excessive rage
and violence of an Achilles is critiqued and
portrayed as out of the norm

→ More recently, MODERN literature has played

a significant role in bringing to light the
horrors of war

→ How does literature function such that it

allows us to see a phenomenon such as war
in a new way?

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DEFINING OUR TERMS
• LITERATURE
 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
DEFINING LITERATURE (THEMES)

→ Most broadly …
• Literature is a term used to describe WRITTEN and sometimes spoken material

• Derived from the Latin word literature meaning "writing formed with letters"

→ However, what distinguishes “literature” studied in University courses from a

car manual?
• Literature most commonly refers to works of the “creative” imagination

• This “creative” aspect of literature was identified as far back as the ancient Greeks,
who referred to literary production as ποίησις (POIESIS), meaning “making” or
“creating”
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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
DEFINING LITERATURE (THEMES)

Literature =
• A linguistic usage by which meaningful possibilities of a world are articulated for the
first time

Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky (1893 – 1984) coined the term

“DEFAMILIARIZATION” to describe this function of literature: the process or
result of rendering unfamiliar

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
DEFINING LITERATURE (THEMES)

We can oppose this to “ordinary language”

ORDINARY LANGUAGE =
→ Communication, the exchange of meanings or values

→ The meanings thus exchanged have already been defined or delineated by a

more formative naming

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
DEFINING LITERATURE (THEMES)

In our EVERYDAY DISCOURSE one might say:

→ “I have been hurt by intimate relationships in the past”

Here, the terms and ideas of the discourse are taken as given and pre-defined

The speaker assumes that the audience knows:

→ what “hurt” means

→ what “relationships” means

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
DEFINING LITERATURE (THEMES)

In LITERARY DISCOURSE one might say:

“Love is a red, red rose

its blossoms die early, but its thorns linger.”

Here, through metaphor, an aspect of love is revealed for the first time.

The author intends to bring forth an aspect of love as painful, like the thorn of a
rose

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 WAR LITERATURE

DEFINING “ENGLISH” LITERATURE WAR IN LITERATURE

(THEMES)

→ “ENGLISH” Literature
• Refers to the study of literary texts from around the world written in the English
language

→ Nuance Between BRITISH and English Literature:

• “British” literature refers to the study of literature (written in various languages)
from Great Britain
• National vs Linguistic focus

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WAR IN LITERATURE
THE STUDY OF ENGLISH (THEMES)

→ ENGLISH Studies
• Relatively recent phenomenon as separate discipline of study – mid-19th C
• Largely philological approach (until WWI) – tied to European nationalist thinking

→ English literary study seen as a HIGHER CALLING:

• Literature was seen as a replacement for religion and as supporting the continuation
of a culture
• The English Major was seen as providing students with a moral, ethical, and
philosophical education equivalent to the education of the ancient Greek and Latin
classics
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 WAR LITERATURE
THE STUDY OF ENGLISH:
WAR IN LITERATURE
DEGREE COMPLETIONS (US) (THEMES)

Post-WWII, the English major was seen as

a replacement for traditional “Classics”
education that was out of reach for many
• Reaching a peak in the 60’s and early
70’s
• Declining substantially after that

Part of broader “crisis of the humanities”

in higher education

Source: Humanities Indicators

 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
WHY WRITE LITERATURE? (THEMES)

Literary traditions begin in ORAL traditions of telling stories

• Securing FAME or honour of the hero of the story (and of teller perhaps)
• Preserving in memory ancestral values

Primordial importance of NARRATIVE

• Narrative Identity (stories as way we construct a consistent “Self”)
• Adaptive functions of Narrative

LITERARY traditions as ways of utilizing various technological means to secure and

make more stable over time these stories:
• Manuscript (Scroll / Codex)
• Print
• Digital
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WAR IN LITERATURE
WHY STUDY LITERATURE? (THEMES)

Why enter into the field of English Literature as field of academic study?
• Pleasure of reading
• But academic study is not identical with reading for pleasure

What does one attain in this path of academic study?

• CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING
• An understanding of various modes of cultural expression (in the past and present) – if
we all are the stories we tell about ourselves, to some extent, then understanding these
modes of telling stories will equip one well in various walks of life
• CRITICAL THINKING AND WRITING SKILLS
• Skills that employers have asserted are in high demand in various sectors

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 WAR LITERATURE
THE FUTURE OF ACADEMIC
WAR IN LITERATURE
LITERARY STUDY (THEMES)

Increasingly INTER-DISCIPLINARY
• Literary study is blending increasingly with other fields of study in the humanities
and social sciences – e.g., Cultural Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, Critical
Race Studies
• To some extent there is cross-over with STEM and Health as well – e.g.,
Evolutionary Literary Theory, Neuro-humanities, “Eco-criticism”, “Health
Humanities”

Advanced by new COMPUTATIONAL methods and DIGITAL technologies

• Digital Humanities as an exciting new field
• Quantitative approaches to literary texts
• “Distant Reading” as opposed to “Close Reading”
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WAR IN LITERATURE
• THEMES
 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
WAR IN LITERATURE (THEMES)

→ Some of the LITERARY THEMES and ways of understanding the meaning, or

lack of meaning, in war that we will find in these works:

• Glory
• Courage
• Community
• Leadership
• Gods and Mortals
• Words and Action

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
GLORY (THEMES)

→ The ANCIENT response:

• Glory
• Homer’s Iliad presents the struggle for GLORY
• Courage
(kleos) and honour (timē) as the driving motive of
the characters’ actions • Community
• Leadership
• Gods and Mortals
• Virgil’s Aeneid presents the driving motive of
Aeneas as fulfilling his DUTY (pietas) in ensuring the • Words and Action
future glory of Roman HISTORY

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
GLORY (THEMES)

→ The MODERN response:

• Glory and honour are, perhaps, mere terms of rhetoric for swaying the masses into
pursuing war

• A sense of duty to one’s family, to others or to the gods is also notably absent in
these works
– For instance, when Henry V states his policy of treating the French citizens mercifully, the rationale
is not one of a sense of duty to respect their lives; rather, the rationale is a Machiavellian one: to
more effectively win them over and control them
– “For when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the sooner winner”
(3.7.96-97)

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
GLORY (THEMES)

→ This modern response is well summarized in a speech Shakespeare gives to

FALSTAFF in Henry IV, Part 1 preceding the Battle of Shrewsbury

Well, 'tis no matter; honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when
I come on? how then? Can honour set to a leg? no: or an arm? no: or take away the
grief of a wound? no. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is honour? a
word. What is in that word honour? What is that honour? air. A trim reckoning!
Who hath it? he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no. Doth he hear it? no.
'Tis insensible, then. Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? no. Why?
detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon:
and so ends my catechism. (1 Henry IV, 5.1.129-139)

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
COURAGE (THEMES)

→ The primary warrior virtue is COURAGE

→ Greek term of courage (ANDREIA) is tied to the Greek • Glory

term for man (andros) • Courage
• This connection of virtue and “manliness” in the ancient • Community
world can also be seen in Latin • Leadership
• Virtus (Latin: “virtue”) has as its root Vir (Latin: “man”)
• Gods and Mortals
• Words and Action
→ ARISTEIA: Homeric and Virgilian heroes have sequences
where their courage is demonstrated, where they fight
at their peak as warriors and heroes
• We might call it today “morale”

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ARISTOTLE ON COURAGE (THEMES)

→ For Aristotle (384 – 322 BCE), courage is a very

specific virtue, directly tied to our theme of WAR

→ Courage is directed toward fearful things or evils

(Nicomachean Ethics 1115a7)
• But not all fearful things fall under courage; that is,
one’s disposition to the fear of disgrace is covered
by another quasi-virtue (shame)

→ The object of courage is DEATH

• But not just any death, such as death during a sea
voyage, is the object of courage
• Only death in battle (1115a28-b6)

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WAR IN LITERATURE
ARISTOTLE ON COURAGE (THEMES)

→ Courage is the MEAN between two

extremes: cowardice and rashness

• “The coward, the rash man, and the brave

man, then, are concerned with the same
objects but are differently disposed toward
them; for the first two exceed and fall short,
while the third holds the middle, which is the
right, position” (1116a4-7).

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
COURAGE (THEMES)

→ Ancient technology and tactics are

related to what is conceived of as a
courageous mode of fighting worthy
of glory

• Ancient literary representations of

warfare prioritize the close combat
tactics of heroic individual battles, or
the phalanx tactics of a well-
disciplined group

• Missile weapons (bows, slings) are

seen as decidedly inferior and often as
cowardly weapons
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WAR IN LITERATURE
COURAGE (THEMES)

→ After Paris wounds his foot with an arrow, Diomedes, “never flinching”, calls back to
him:

“So brave with your bow and arrows – big bravado –

Glistening lovelocks, roving eye for girls!
Come, try me in combat, weapons hand-to-hand –
Bow and spattering shafts will never help you then.
You scratch my foot and you’re vaunting all the same –
But who cares? A woman or idiot boy could wound me so.
The shaft of a good-for-nothing coward’s got no point
But mine’s got heft and edge.” (Fagles trans. 13.453-460)

→ Diomedes’ response emphasizes that courage and close combat tactics, as opposed
to ranged or missile weapons, are tied to what is properly “masculine” behaviour
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WAR IN LITERATURE
COURAGE (THEMES)

→ In modern texts, the notion of courage as a

noble, warrior virtue is gradually eroded
• In Shakespeare’s plays, it is often portrayed as a
“mere scutcheon”, as is honour for Falstaff

→ This modern response is tied to the technology

and tactics of modern warfare
• The age of GUNPOWDER introduced a marked
predominance of missile weapons in modern
warfare
• By the time of World War I, the full implications
of this revolution for any sense of glory or
courage in war were apparent
• In 20th C literature, after WWI, it is difficult to
conceive of dying in a trench as courageous
• WWI also brought home the realities of “shell-
shock” (neurasthenia) as a medical condition,
rather than a case of “cowardice”

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COMMUNITY (THEMES)

→ Horace (65 – 27 BCE)

→ Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori – • Glory

(Odes III.2.13) • Courage
• Community
• Leadership
→ “It is sweet and good (or right) to die for • Gods and Mortals
your fatherland” • Words and Action

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WAR IN LITERATURE
COMMUNITY (THEMES)

→ Social Cohesion and Patriotism:

• War often brings together the community in a common cause, to fight a very real
external threat

• In the Iliad, the threat to the Greeks is caused by an internal conflict that is not
proper in the context of the war with Troy

• The Aeneid can be seen as a patriotic poem praising the historical destiny and
greatness of Rome as united under Caesar Augustus after a century of civil wars

• In Henry V, Shakespeare shows soldiers of different backgrounds (Scottish, Irish,

Welsh, English) united in fighting for the King
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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
COMMUNITY (THEMES)

→ In the 20th Century, writers could no longer find

any redeeming feature in war

→ The sense that one was dying for one’s

“fatherland” – the collective security of the
community – began to be looked upon with ironic
distance; it began to be seen as an “old lie”

→ The poem by Wilfred Owen (1893 – 1918), “Dulce

et decorum est”, summarizes this sentiment well

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
COMMUNITY (THEMES)

Dulce et Decorum est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through
sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

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 WAR LITERATURE

WAR IN LITERATURE
COMMUNITY (THEMES)

→ Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green
light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

→ In all my dreams before my helpless sight

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

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WAR IN LITERATURE
COMMUNITY (THEMES)

→ If in some smothering dreams, you too could

pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer,
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high
zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori

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WAR IN LITERATURE
LEADERSHIP (THEMES)

→ Homer shows us the ANCIENT model of leadership

by way of a counter-image of sorts: the failings of
Agamemnon, who fails to know his troops • Glory
• Virgil’s Aeneas then presents the true picture of • Courage
ancient leadership in that he knows his troops and
what to say to them • Community
• Leadership
→ Shakespeare shows us the MODERN model of • Gods and Mortals
leadership by way of Henry V, who combines • Words and Action
Machiavellian policy with an appearance of
traditional virtue

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WAR IN LITERATURE
GODS AND MORTALS (THEMES)

→ War brings us face to face with death and our

own FINITUDE
• Glory
• Courage
→ In the ANCIENT portrayal, this confrontation with • Community
our finitude is what brings meaning to our lives – • Leadership
all human lives have meaning in being undertaken • Gods and Mortals
in the shadow of death • Words and Action

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WAR IN LITERATURE
GODS AND MORTALS (THEMES)

→ This is the significance of Homeric similes that so often compare warrior feats
to the banal labours of everyday people
• All MORTALS are heroic, or at least tragic in their ultimate fate, in the sense that
their actions have meaning in relation to their radical finitude

→ By contrast, when the GODS participate in the Trojan War it is comical

• Their actions are of no consequence as they can never risk the ultimate fate of no
longer living

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WAR IN LITERATURE
GODS AND MORTALS (THEMES)

→ In the MODERN portrayal, there is some question “They wrote in the old days that
as to whether or not one can find meaning in one’s it is sweet and fitting to die for
ones country. But in modern war
death there is nothing sweet nor fitting
in your dying. You will die like a
dog for no good reason.”
→ Being MORTAL brings no sense of meaning; it is not
Ernest Hemingway, “Notes on
contrasted with the presence of those who are the Next War” (1935)
immortal, the GODS

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WAR IN LITERATURE
WORDS AND ACTION (THEMES)

→ The world of peace is a world of WORDS, or

discussion, agreements, civilized debates
• Glory
• Courage
→ The world of war is a world of ACTION • Community
• Leadership
→ This contrast is highlighted repeatedly in Homer’s • Gods and Mortals
Iliad • Words and Action

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WAR IN LITERATURE
WORDS AND ACTION (THEMES)

→ In “War Literature”, we need words to represent the action

→ However, war is BEYOND REPRESENTATION in some ways

• We cannot represent the scale nor the limits of human existence in the form of the
deaths it presents

• So, we must turn to literary tropes: metaphor, simile

• Note: the proliferation of similes in Homer and of the metaphors of darkness used to
represent death

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WAR IN LITERATURE
WORDS AND ACTION (THEMES)

→ Literature represents the “unrepresentable” in two primary limit experiences:

• LOVE – which leads to new life and beginnings

• WAR – which leads to death and endings

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LITERARY PERIODS
• Literary Periods and the History of Ideas
• Timeline of Texts Studied in this Course
LITERARY PERIODS AND THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

BRITISH LITERATURE: BEGINNINGS TO 1700 BRITISH LITERATURE: 1700 to PRESENT

(ENG 2105) (ENG 2106)

Ancient Medieval Renaissance Restoration and Romanticism Victorian Twentieth Century and
(pre-English roots) Eighteenth Beyond
Century

Literary 2000 BCE – 450 CE 450 – 1485 1485 – 1660 1660 – 1785 1785 – 1830 1830 – 1900 1900 - Present
Period Modernism Post-
(1900 – 50) modernism
(1950 - Present)

Authors Homer Dream of the Rood poet More Dryden Blake Tennyson Yeats Rushdie
Aeschylus Beowulf poet Sidney Swift Wordsworth Brontë T.S. Eliot Barnes
(Examples) Aristophanes Chaucer Spenser Pope Coleridge Carlyle Woolf Ackroyd
Virgil Gower Shakespeare Johnson Keats G. Eliot Auden
Milton Shelley Arnold

History of Ideas The Classical Tradition The First Wave of Modernity The Second Wave of Modernity The Third Wave of Modernity

Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, St. Augustine, Aquinas Machiavelli, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke Rousseau, Kant, Hegel Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida
 TIMELINE OF TEXTS STUDIED
TEXTS STUDIED
The Aeneid
The Iliad Henry V Mrs. Dalloway
(29-19 BCE)
(ca 750 BCE) (1599) (1925)

Third Punic War

Trojan War Spanish WW I
(Destruction of Carthage)
(ca 1184 BCE) Armada (1914-18)
(146 BCE)
(1588)

ENG 1120
Roman Civil War Hundred Years' War
(Battle of Actium) (Battle of Agincourt)
(31 BCE) (1415)

CONTEXT