English Literature

Unit VIII: The Twentieth Century

Week 33
Please read:

Historical background, pp. 759-763.

After you have finished reading the historical survey, please take the background quiz for the unit.

Rupert Brooke, "The Soldier", p. 765. Rupert Brooke's poetic voice is one of those that sounded clearly and optimistically at the beginning of the war; he was a poet of considerable powers, but very different in tone from the two that follow. It is worth reading some of his other poems to get a better sense of his work, and to put the others' into context. Here are his Collected Poems; you might particularly want to read the one entitled "Peace" from the sequence "1914" (which also contains "The Soldier").

Siegfried Sassoon

• "Base Details", p. 767.
• "Suicide in the Trenches", p. 767.
• "Does it Matter?", p. 767.
• Many more of Sassoon's poems are available through Project Gutenberg, and the Bartleby Project has three volumes.

Wilfred Owen

• "Dulce et Decorum Est", p. 770.
• "Arms and the Boy", p. 770.
• "Anthem for Doomed Youth", p. 771.
• "Disabled"p. 772-773.

This page at the Gutenberg Project has a complete collection of Wilfred Owen's poetry. Highly recommended if you can handle any more of it — but it is pretty intense.

Vera Brittain, from Testament of Youth, p. 776-789.

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