War Literature

Een galery, vol oorloghstafereelen" Vondels Lucifer (1654): oorlogsstuk in debatten over vrede * Helmer Helmers Een van de opwindendste en meest zintuigelijke zeventiende-eeuwse beschrijvingen van een veldslag te vinden is in een toneelstuk dat zich afspeelt in de hemel. Vrijwel het complete vijfde bedrijf van Vondels Lucifer (1654) is gewijd aan een beschrijving van de confrontatie tussen de legers van de aartsengelen Lucifer en Michael. 1 Hoewel die beschrijving, uit de mond van de engel Uriël, de climax van het stuk is, is er in de Vondelkritiek relatief weinig aandacht aan besteed. Lucifer wordt daarom gezien als de tragedie van de staatszucht, een politieke tragedie. 2 Toch is Lucifer vooral ook een oorlogsstuk, waarin Vondel de oorzaken en gevolgen van de eerste oorlog in het universum onderzoekt. Vondel weet als geen ander uitdrukking te geven aan het sublieme karakter van de veldslag in de hemel, die niet alleen verschrikkelijk is, maar tegelijkertijd een schitterend * Dit artikel is mede mogelijk gemaakt door de Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO). 1 Alle verwijzingen naar Vondel zijn gebaseerd op: Vondel, Joost van den. De werken van Vondel, VII vols. Amsterdam 1927-1934 (hieronder WB). Voor Lucifer, zie: WB V, 601-696 (hieronder: Lucifer). De beschrijving van de (voorbereiding op) de veldslag in de hemel beslaat meer dan tweehonderd versregels. Zie: Lucifer, vss. 1727-1936. 2 Zie voor het staatszuchtmotief met name: Kare Langvik Johannessen, Zwischen Himmel un Erde. Eine Studie ueber Joost van den Vondels biblische Tragoedie in gatunggeschichlicher Perspective. Oslo 1963; Wisse Smit, Van Pascha tot Noah. Een verkenning van Vondels drama's naar continuïteit en ontwikkeling in hun grondmotief en structuur, II. Zwolle 1970, 54-180. DIT IS EEN EERDERE VERSIE VAN HET GEREDIGEERDE EN GEÏLLUSTREERDE ARTIKEL DAT IS VERSCHENEN IN L. JENSEN AND N. GEERDINK (EDS.) OORLOGSLITERATUUR: VERBEELDING, HERINNERING EN IDENTITEIT, CA. 1600-1850 (HILVERSUM: VERLOREN, 2013), 23-38. 2 schouwspel biedt. 3 Het gebruik dat vechtscènes op het toneel door een bode gerapporteerd worden weet hij ten volle uit te buiten door de onmetelijke, driedimensionale ruimte waarin de kosmische strijd plaatsvindt in het bodebericht levendig voor ogen te stellen. Uriël beschrijft het 'schoon verschiet' van de twee zwevende legers als volgt: Zy hangen even als men zich een wolck verbeelt, Een wolck, waer in de zon met heure stralen speelt; En schildert en schakeert doorluchte regenbogen. 4 Dan laat hij Michaels legers 'steigeren, en stygen / Naer boven' onmiddellijk gevolgd door ''s vyands heir', dat eveneens stijgt, 'maer met een' trager vaert'. De symbolische, ideale vormen van de legers -een goddelijk, driehoekig prisma voor de loyale engelen staat tegenover de halve maan van de Luciferisten -dragen bij aan het sublieme karakter van de hemelse strijd. Het sterkst komt dat echter tot uitdrukking in Vondels natuurvergelijkingen en de licht-en geluidseffecten die zijn taal bewerkstelligt: het is 'Al weêrlicht wat men ziet, al wat men hoort is donder'; engelenharen en -vleugels 'schitteren, in 't vier der blixemen gezengt', en als Michael, de 'Hemelsche adelaer', het teken voor de aanval geeft, komt zijn leger afgestort, en stroomen uit den hoogen, Gelyck een binnenzee, of noortschen waterval, Die van de rotsen bruischt, en ruischt, met een geschal Dat dier en ondier schrickt, in diepgezoncke dalen. 5 3 Vergelijk voor Vondels verbeelding van de hemel, ook tijdens de slag in het vijfde bedrijf: Johan Koppenol, De schepping anno 1654. Oudere letterkunde en de verbeelding. Passages als deze maken de onweerstaanbare kracht van de goddelijke legers aanschouwelijk en benadrukken de grootsheid van het hemelse geweld. Tegelijkertijd doet Vondels beschrijving van de hemelse slag regelmatig menselijk en aards aan. Zo worden de manoeuvres van de twee legers beschreven in nautische termen die aan beschrijvingen van zeventiende-eeuwse zeeslagen doen denken. 6 En wanneer Vondel het daadwerkelijke gevecht beschrijft, raakt het hemelse karakter van de strijd eventjes geheel uit beeld: Wat blyft'er in zyn' stant? het bovenste raeckt onder De heiren, na'et gedreun van 't eerste schutgevaert, Geraken hantgemeen met knods, en hellebaert, En sabel, speer, en dolck. Het gaet'er op een kerven, En steken. Al wat kan, wat toeleit op bederven, Op schenden, rept zich nu, bederft, en treft, en schent. De broederschap heeft uit, en niemant ziet noch kent Zyn' medeburger meer. 7 Het dreunen van het geschut, het handgemeen met knots en hellebaard: voor Vondels zeventiende-eeuwse publiek waren de geluiden en de wapens van de slag die hij beschrijft verontrustend herkenbaar. Niet voor niets weerklinken in deze passage specifieke 6 Zo probeert Michael, als een Michiel de Ruyter, 'de loef van 's vyants heir te krygen', om zo het voordeel van de wind te hebben. Lucifer, vs. 1835. 7 Lucifer, vss. 1812-1818.

The German invasion of the Netherlands on the 10th of May 1940 was not only a tragedy for the Dutch people; it was also a tragedy for Dutch literature. In a few weeks time, the intellectual leaders of an entire generation would disappear. In the chaos of the battle of Rotterdam, Doeke Zijlstra, editor in chief of the publishing house Nijgh & Van Ditmar, was killed by a stray bullet. Publisher Robert Leopold, who feared German revenge for his publication of Hermann Rauschning’s critical work Hitler Speaks, shot himself. The promising Jewish writer Jacob Hiegentlich took poison and died. The young poet Tom de Bruin was accidentally shot by a nervous Dutch sentry. Hendrik Marsman, the most celebrated Dutch poet of his time, was among the few who found a place on a ship that would bring him to England. Within sight of the coast, however, they were hit by a German torpedo and he drowned. By then, two of the most prominent essayists, Edgar Du Perron and Menno ter Braak, had already died; Du Perron collapsed with a heart attack during the bombardment of an airport near his home in Bergen and ter Braak committed suicide upon the news of the Dutch surrender to the Germans. None of them ever knew about the death of the others.
What might seem as the last chapter of a Greek tragedy was only the beginning. During the occupation, at least 700 men and women of the underground press would lose their lives. The punishment for participation in the clandestine press was equivalent to that for acts of sabotage. Propaganda had been an essential element in the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany and, as such, a strict control over the press in the occupied Netherlands was considered of paramount importance. Literature was given a totally new purpose in the occupied Netherlands; it became propaganda in support of the Nazification of Dutch society and the tightening of links between the “Germanic” Dutch and their German “brothers.”
Hence, Dutch authors were suddenly confronted with a tough challenge. For decades, most of them had preferred the loftiness of the ivory tower over the squabbling of daily politics. In 1937, the celebrated novelist Simon Vestdijk still wrote: “The creative artist faces war like a toddler: utterly helpless.”  Only a couple of years later, his publishing house was bombed and he himself was taken hostage. The same author, who didn’t want to have anything to do with war, had ended up in its clutches.
In fact, after the German invasion, participation in political debates was no longer an option. It had become a necessity. Even keeping quiet was now considered a political statement. In this context, a simple poem could have a huge impact.

John Steinbeck was prolific during the Depression and War years: 1930-1945. Not only did he write twenty-seven books, but he put his journalist training into action. As an embedded reporter he performed primary research for his novels, “on the front lines, observing and reporting on the major events of his century: the Depression, World War II, the Cold War, Vietnam” (Parini 2004).  In this essay, I claim Steinbeck more profoundly reflected and affected American politics than any other author from 1930 to 1945. As evidence, I provide succinct precis of Steinbeck’s three Depression and three World War II novels.

When the potential benefits and pitfalls of children’s historical fiction are discussed, the conversation tends to turn to two specific problems: how to represent the Shoah, and the implied reader’s knowledge of historical events and their ability to differentiate fantasy from reality. Integrating speculative aspects, such as timeslips, into historical fiction potentially signposts the entire setting as fantastical and therefore “not real”, especially for young readers who are not yet fully cognitively developed. What is not disputed, however, is that this type of fiction is also a valuable source of aesthetic and cognitive engagement. I argue that speculative Shoah fiction which employs timeslips has the potential to educate the reader on the historical and emotional aspects of life during the Shoah and promote empathy with its victims across time gaps, whilst taking into account the potentially harmful side effects of the genre. I demonstrate this with an analysis The Devil’s Arithmetic (Yolen 1990). In my analysis I focus on the character’s backgroundsbefore the timeslip occurs, diegetic and extradiegetic empathy narrative strategies, and the ways through which the narratives signpost historical reality from fiction.

Elizabeth Bowen's fiction from World War II is among the most celebrated of the era. As most readers know, her remarkable collection of wartime short fiction, The Demon Lover and Other Stories, joins war writing with the gothic. This odd conjuncture has produced two dominant modes of reading Bowen's stories: either the immediate historical context of World War II guides interpretation or Bowen's deployment of gothic tropes and imagery invokes a longer tradition of Anglo-Irish gothic fiction, thereby restoring a specifically Irish historical context to these stories. Rather than privilege one form of reading over the other, I suggest that the defining features of Bowen's war gothic -disorderly temporalities, alternating narratives, hauntings -formally mediate between these two historical moments. On my reading, Bowen's stories transfer the anxieties of Anglo-Irish gothic fiction -the erosion of property rights, wealth distribution, and inheritance -to the scene of the People's War. Bowen's gothic fictions, then, treat the war populism of the 1940s and the calls for a more equitable postwar democracy as augurs of the same economic and social disaster that befell the Anglo-Irish landowners. In Bowen's hands, a genre initially suited for a dying settler colonial class is uniquely, if counter-intuitively, appropriate for a bombed imperial metropolis. These gothic stories of unsettled pasts and ghostly returns function as anxious ruminations on the near future, distress signals from the world to come.

Reversing absence. The Exploration of Memory in The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers. The Yellow Birds has been acclaimed as one of the best contemporary novels on war. It builds on the recollections of John Bartle, a soldier who strives to cope with the death of Murph, his comrade-in-arms, by revisiting episodes that took place during deployment and by probing his own level of culpability, of moral and psychological weariness, after the return home. Remembrance is central to the narrative, and therefore the main concern of this paper is to look into the multifaceted exploration of memory as a means of creating a space for reconciliation with the past and of coming to terms with traumatic events.

Through an analysis of Ahmadou Kourouma's novel Allah n'est pas obligé (2000), this article contends that literature must hold a place alongside political theory in peacebuilding. Kourouma's novel creates a tension between two modes of narration (historical and environmental) to explore the ethics of writing war trauma. Instead of advocating adoption of one of the classical frameworks for ethics, the narrative tensions in this novel push the reader to approach ethics from within a relational framework. By placing Kourouma's novel in the context of a wider literary discourse on peace and conflict in sub-Saharan Africa that has emerged from 1974 to 2005, this article demonstrates that a meta-ethics may be drawn from these novels. This meta-ethics, based on the concepts of the reaching gesture and fluid attachment, can aid in framing peace and conflict studies.

Tüccarzâde İbrahim Hilmi Çığıraçan, Osmanlı Devleti’nin son, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nin ilk
aydınlarından biridir. O, içinde bulunduğu topluma belirli bir eğitim ve kültür seviyesi kazandırmak için
çok çeşitli alanda eserler kaleme almış; sahip olduğu yayın evinde de bu yeni kurulan ülkeye faydalı
olacak kitapları -zarar etmesine karşın- yayınlamaktan geri durmamıştır. Bu çalışmada İbrahim Hilmi
Bey’in dil ve edebiyat hakkındaki görüşleri üzerinde durulmuştur. İlk olarak dilimiz, sadeleştirme
hareketleri ya da çabaları daha sonra da edebiyat hakkındaki görüşleri değerlendirilmiştir. Bu
değerlendirmeler yapılırken yer yer Hilmi Bey’in eserlerinde dile getirdiği görüşler aynen alınmıştır.

Tuccarzade Ibrahim Hilmi Cigiracan is the one of Otoman Empire’s last, Turkish Republic’s first
intellectuals. He wrote many boks in several areas in order to contribute to the society’s intellect level;
he also didn’t stay back from publishing beneficial books to the newly-founded country, even though he
lost money. This study focuses on İbrahim Hilmi Bey’s opinions about language and literature. First of
all, his opinions about our language, simplification actions or efforts and then his opinions about
literature are evaluated. While these evaluations are made, sometimes the opinions of Hilmi Bey about
language are taken directly.

Der Geodeterminismus um 1900 wird im Gebirgskrieg und im Speziellen an der Isonzo-Front in vielerlei Hinsicht überlagert: Dem Karst, der 1914 in Montenegro durch Rifat Gozdović Pascha noch kolonial metaphorisch überhöht wird, kommen bei Ernst Décsey und Kornel Abel paradoxe Funktionen zwischen Schutz und tödlicher Gefahr zu. Die Literatur insbesondere eines Giuseppe Ungaretti ist davon fasziniert und schreibt den Karst in eine palimpsestartige Struktur von Kriegs und Friedenslandschaft ein, welche nach der sechsten Isonzo-Schlacht mit neuen Taktiken im Stellungskrieg einhergeht. Doch eine gemeinsam aufgearbeitete europäische Kriegsgeschichte verliert sich in der Kontingenz der Erinnerung selbst.

English:
Geodeterminism around the year 1900 was in many ways eclipsed by mountain battles fought in the Great War, especially those on the Isonzo front. However, unlike Rifat Gozdović Pascha, who idealized karst by elevating it to the level of a colonial metaphor, Ernst Décsey and Kornel Abel ascribe it paradoxical functions ranging from protection to death peril. Literature, especially that written by Giuseppe Ungaretti, was fascinated by karst and inscribed it into a palimpsest-like structure of war and peace landscape, which was accompanied by new tactics in positional warfare after the Sixth battle of Isonzo. However, a collectively construed European history of war is lost in the contingency of memory itself.

Nous nous proposons d’approfondir ici le portrait psychologique et idéologique, dessiné notamment dans Kaputt, du comte Agustín de Foxá, intellectuel espagnol phalangiste, ami de Malaparte et, comme celui-ci, romancier, journaliste, dramaturge et diplomate. Cette étude est, à nos yeux, importante pour comprendre quelques aspects Fondamentaux de l’oeuvre et de la personnalité de l’écrivain de Prato. Par exemple :
1. La valeur et le sens de notions clés de son oeuvre telles que la dichotomie cruauté-pitié.
2. La fonction importante exercée par le catholicisme dogmatique et “rhétorique” de l’écrivain espagnol dans l’itinéraire de Malaparte qui débouche sur son attitude particulière face à la souffrance réelle de l’homme.
3. La caractérisation du christianisme “anarchiste” de Malaparte par rapport au catholicisme “théologique” du comte de Foxá.

The representation of conflict in fiction raises an important ethical problem – what terms are appropriate to representing warfare through fiction? Representing conflict is arguably one of the most continuous challenges to understanding the nature of literature, or artistic expression in general. It is often seen as the very limit of literary expression.

An important part of this question is whether fictions ought to be treated as a form of immediate, visceral engagement, or as a meditative, intellectualised and more considered form of engagement. Key here is the question of whether it is valid for literature to address recent, real events—9/11, Israel/Palestine, Afghanistan-Iraq—through de-familiarised, non-realist terms, or even through fiction at all. Or should such ground be ceded solely to journalism as its natural (realist) province?

Attendant upon it is the issue of emotional and/or ideological proximity of fictional representations to recent, actual conflicts. Non-realist representation is implicitly a fantasy, a visceral, subjective investment, which might be construed as wish fulfilment or whimsy, or exploitation. Such a stance is always context dependent, always fraught and always needs to be reconsidered in light of specific instances; I argue that any attempt at representing a conflict realistically is as implicitly ideological and no less visceral or subjective – and no more or less proximate to wish fulfilment or whimsy than more (explicitly) fantastical approaches.

Full article online; please follow the link to read more.

Space in the Novel Like Gold in Fire by Aleksandar Petrov

The novel is structured as a text within a text, which enables the author to embed the story of one war into the story of another one evolving in a different time period.
The semantic nucleus of the novel is the chronotope defined as turnover, which seems characteristic of prose works on war (including genocide and the Holocaust). 
Another specific feature of this novel is the focus on the movement of characters in space, but not in the manner found in travelogues and adventure novels. The mobility of the characters in this novel suggests turnover and change, emphasizing at the same time the significance and function of certain types of space.
We have highlighted several types of space, and among them especially spaces of roots and displacement, both defined according to the parameter of the subjective and social relationship between character and environment (social, cultural, ideological). One such example is Pittsburgh, one of the historical centers of Serbian immigrants in the USA. This space is associated with narration characteristic for Diasporic literature which tends to articulate a dual perspective – memory of life in the previous space and perception of current life in the new, adopted space. Some spaces, such as the Belgrade quarter Dorćol, appear as places of historical and cultural memory. On the other hand, the death camp Jasenovac is a sort of zero space, one in which (existential) space is anulled, but can generate a new symbolic space of memory.
Like Gold in Fire offers an insight into how space changes its function. Some spaces have a purely adverbial function: they are a scene of action protagonized by the characters. These same spaces can, however, assume a different function that turns them into the subject of action. These spaces become active, while the characters appear as secondary participants or passive victims of the transformation of space.
Space can also influence the format of narration. Such is the case of communication between characters who are spatially separated. They communicate by letters addressed to the other person in the dialogue. The epistolary format of communication in turn demands the use of writing which again produces a “dialogue” different from one conducted in the oral medium.
The distinction between representations of space and representational spaces (H. Lefebre) is used as an instrument in the analysis of the symbolic level of narration. An example of this is the manner in which Petrov uses a a work of art (painting) of a character in the description of this individual’s death in the Jasenovac extermination camp. On the symbolic level, the painting “The Arc de Triomphe in Paris” anticipates the tragic fate of its author, while at the same time it represents his death as the obliteration of painting as a spatial art, giving way to music as a temporal art, once existential space is extinguished.
Space and time are integrated, but their relationship varies. In this novel the movement through time is “anchored” in points of space.

ÖZET Tarih denilince akla ilk gelen olaylardan biri savaşlardır. İnsanlığın tarihi bir noktada savaşların tarihidir. Var olma mücadelesi veren toplumlar savaşmak zorunda kalırlar. Bu açıdan savaşlar toplumların kaderini belirler. Tarihte yaşayan ve güçlü medeniyet kuran uluslar, kaybettikleri savaşların sonunda yok olurlar. Bu nedenle insanoğlu var olduğu sürece, savaşlar da var olacaktır. Savaşlar yalnızca meydanlarda, kalelerde, cephelerde veya siperlerde yapılan askeri çatışmalar değildir. Cephe gerisi diye adlandırılan yerler de savaşın bir parçası olur ve bu süreçten etkilenirler. Savaşan insanların başarısı veya başarısızlıkları uluslarının kaderini belirler. Savaş edebiyatı; savaş sırasında veya sonrasında, savaşı anlatacak şekilde yazılmış edebî eserlerin tümünü kapsar. Savaşların tarihine ve edebiyatına ait ürünler bütün dünyada, özellikle de Avrupa'da, kendine özgü müze ve kütüphane oluşturacak boyuttadır. Tarih boyunca sayısız savaş yaşayan ve " ordu millet " olarak tanınan Türklerde savaş edebiyatı oluşum destan devrinden başlayıp günümüze kadar sürer. Kazanılan zaferlerin veya kaybedilen savaşların edebiyat ve sanata yansımasıyla, bir Türk savaş edebiyatının oluşur. Bu makalede Türk savaş edebiyatın üzerine ileri sürülen görüşler değerlendirilmektedir. ABSTRACT Battles are some of the most important events in the history of humankind. To some extent, human history is the history of wars. Communities have to fight for survival. Therefore, wars determine their existence. Even the most powerful civilizations disappeared after they lost battles. Wars will prevail as long as human beings exist. Wars are not only military clashes fought at battlefields, battlefronts, or fortresses. Places behind the front lines are also affected by wars. The success or failure of warriors determines the destiny of nations at war. War literature includes literary works that convey the story of battles, accounting for events both before and after the war, as well as the actual process of it. The history and literary works about wars are extensive all over the world and especially in Europe, where there are museums and libraries dedicated to this purpose. The production of war literature by Turks, who fought countless battles and are known as an army nation, started with the age of epic stories that continues to this age. Turkish war literature has emerged with reflections of the victories and losses in wars in arts and literature. In this paper, ideas about Turkish war literature are reviewed.

The following paper deals with the voices of women which go unheard. It talks about different women writers who try to incorporate the plight of women through their writings. The paper wants to let the audience know that the discourse is not just limited to the first world and third world conflict which almost every writer contemplates and shows his/her resistance in one aspect or the other but they are leaving us with a greater question to ponder upon. Starting from a general question of what is resistance literature and need of it, the paper dwells into deeper and talks about the bigger issue of first and third world problems and later diving into micro issues yet very important issues of heterosexuality, social issues, economic problems and how women are expected to behave in a manner and how they are confined by the pressures of family, society which results in decay of their psyche and some women who are strong enough speak against the injustices done to them. In a patriarchal society a man's world is different altogether than women, a world of opportunities whereas a woman confined in the four walls of her home, a door of prospects, power, ideas, thoughts, a men's world to be precise is shut for her. The paper however focuses on three major playwrights of different origins, Manjula Padmanabhan, Lynn Nottage and Marsha Norman for their remarkable piece of work while incorporating them and supporting their ideas and thoughts through different other writers of fiction and non-fiction respectively. Unheard Voices1

Ein Jahrzehnt lang bildete der Dreißigjährige Krieg das thematische Zentrum des schriftstellerischen Werks von Friedrich Schiller: 1790 bis 1792 erschien seine Geschichte des Dreyßigjährigen Kriegs als das zweite und letzte seiner großen historiographischen Werke und im Jahre 1800 konnte er nach langen Vorarbeiten die dramatische Trilogie Wallenstein veröffentlichen. Beide Werke haben in der Forschung viel Beachtung erfahren, allerdings fehlte bisher eine Untersuchung des zeitgenössischen Interesses einer breiten Leserschaft am historischen Konflikt, die eine Lektüre der einschlägigen Werke Schillers in ihrer Besonderheit, aber auch in ihren zeittypischen Zügen bieten konnte.
Ausgehend von der Beobachtung, dass der Dreißigjährige Krieg als Thema der Historiographie und der Literatur in Deutschland seit etwa 1770 eine breite Konjunktur erfuhr, in die sich Schillers Texte als vergleichsweise späte Zeugnisse einreihen, werden in der vorliegenden Studie die Gründe und die Konturen dieser unvermuteten Popularität des historischen Ereignisses im ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert illustriert. Durch eine systematische Analyse der zahlreichen Bearbeitungen, die der Krieg bei literaturgeschichtlich wenig prominenten Autoren fand, wird der epistemische Rahmen rekonstruiert, innerhalb dessen diese Schriften entstanden. Die herangezogenen Werke sogenannter auctores minores eröffnen interessante Einblicke in die Mentalitätsgeschichte des späten 18. Jahrhunderts und ermöglichen darüber hinaus einen Vergleich mit den thematisch benachbarten Werken Schillers, aus welchem der Komplexitätsgewinn sichtbar wird, den der Klassiker gegenüber seinen Zeitgenossen erreichte.
Schiller, der in mehreren Schriften eine kritische Haltung gegenüber der Trivialliteratur äußerte, hatte in der dichterischen Praxis ein dialektisches Verhältnis zu den Bestsellern der Zeit. Sein ausgeprägter Sinn für die historisch-politische Kolportage und seine Neugierde für massenwirksame literarische Strategien spiegeln sich in einer gewissen Porosität seiner Werke gegenüber Themen, Figuren und Motiven nicht-kanonischer Texte, die bisher kaum erforscht wurden.

Being a Ukrainian abroad and being a Ukrainian at home today represent two different kinds of pain. In her new war cycle, too, Shuvalova gives us poetry about the desire to define oneself as part of a fundamentally interconnected world. But here, the distance between beauty and war, safety and home, is painful in its magnitude.

Empires are by their very nature a centrifugal affair; to become imperial is to somehow discredit borders, intuitively move forward, and so extend into a pre-eminence that transcends the here-and-now pragmatics of the nation state. The identities that empires fashion for themselves are not only circumscribed by the often immutable traditions in their centres, but also by the flux of the frontiers upon which their uncertain future is staked. The self-conscious empires of the modern age have always entertained the knowledge that after the rise must come the fall, and this uneasy prescience of inevitability has significantly shaped their * Richard Lappin is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Peace Research and Strategic Studies at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. Richard has worked in several conflict zones around the world and can be contacted at: [email protected].

if Fidel Castro’s "Palabras a los intelectuales" established the fundaments of the cultural policy of the Revolution,  Che Guevara’s "Socialismo y el hombre en Cuba" is the text that defines the aesthetics of the Cuban Revolution.
Che Guevara is not only the image of the Cuban Revolution, but also, he is the central name of its literature. The present text explores the significance of war literature, in particular Soviet war novels for the first generation of literary authors of the Cuban Revolution. It focuses on Konstantin Simonov and Che Guevara.

Throughout the 20th century, Italy’s participation in the Fascist war of aggression of World War II was narrated through self-absolving narratives that revolved around the stereotypes of Italiani brava gente and German evil and that overlooked the war crimes that the Italians had committed during the military occupations of foreign territories (Focardi 2013). Literary texts were instrumental in the dissemination of this perspective since they reproduced ideas that dominated public memory by representing the Axis War through self-exculpatory tropes and redemptive narrative structures that downplayed the notions of guilt and responsibility for the past (Bartolini 2021). This paper will argue that this self-absolving framework was not specific to the memory of World War II, but also affected the narrativisation of other segments of Italian 20th century history, and it constitutes, therefore, an unavoidable issue for those who want to reflect on the shortcomings of Italy’s memory culture. To develop this argument, the paper will examine the representation of the Holocaust within the literature of the Axis War. It will show that texts that dismiss the Italian responsibility for the military occupations fail to engage with the deportation of the Jews in ethically productive ways; by contrast, the few texts that address the Italian war crimes also manage to generate textual spaces to reflect on the Holocaust in its complexities.

Was versteht Tim O'Brien unter Imagination, und wo und auf welche Weise tritt sie in seinem Werk auf? Wodurch entsteht bei O'Brien diese Imagination, und welche sind ihre Wirkungen? Dies sind die Hauptfragen, mit denen sich diese Arbeit beschäftigt. Es soll dabei der Versuch unternommen werden, die Problematik werkübergreifend zu behandeln; eine Beschäftigung mit dem Gesamtwerk würde allerdings weit über den Rahmen dieser Arbeit hinausgehen. Deshalb wurden aus dem Oeuvre O'Briens folgende drei Texte ausgewählt, anhand derer sich dem von O'Brien als Imagination bezeichneten Themenkomplex genähert werden soll: „Going After Cacciato", „The Things They Carried" und „In the Lake of the Woods". Dazu wird gleichermaßen sowohl werkimmanent als auch biographisch vorgegangen. Bei der vorliegenden Arbeit handelt es sich um eine geringfügig abgeänderte Version der von Falco Pfalzgraf im Jahr 2000 am Fachbereich Anglistik / Amerikanistik der Universität Kassel eingereichten Staatsexamensarbeit.

In this book chapter I argue that the rhetorical stance Robert Graves adopts in some of his war poems relates to symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress (PTS) that he developed throughout a childhood that was strict, un-nurturing, un-playful and lacking strong parental or other humanly vital attachments. These symptoms were intensified by the shocks of war.

This explains in part the characteristics of his war writing. Graves takes up the same subjects that other writers about war, particularly Greek authors of the archaic and classical periods, poets and non-poets, deal with directly, seriously and with palpable, often intense feeling. By contrast, Graves uses rhetorical strategies that put him, and us as readers, at a distance from the strong emotions war evokes. His narrative voice in his war poems strikes us readers as detached and unemotional, but it helps us take in traumatic scenes and events without being too troubled or disturbed. This may be partly because we are not among the group of individuals whom trench warfare caused to be, as Graves later puts it, ‘bound to one another by a suicidal sacrament.’

Graves also writes his war poems in a clean and spare style that the experiences of war impose on other classic war-writers, like Hemingway, O’Brien and Orwell. Their efforts thereby to capture what is concrete and real can make non-initiates feel left out.

Tutta una serie di considerazioni relative all'importanza dell'arma aerea nella Seconda guerra mondiale, e dei bombardieri strategici in particolare, porta inevitabilmente a considerare con una certa attenzione, all’interno del corpus di testi letterari americani scaturiti dalla Seconda guerra mondiale, quelli legati all’esperienza degli aviatori, specie se facenti parte di equipaggi di bombardieri.
La questione si riveste retrospettivamente di un particolare interesse nella misura in cui il bombardamento strategico, cioè la capacità di attaccare i propri nemici dall’aria a grandi distanze dal territorio nazionale, sono stati strumenti chiave nella politica globale degli Stati Uniti dopo la seconda guerra mondiale, sia durante la guerra fredda che, e forse in misura ancor maggiore, dopo la sua conclusione (come attestano due guerre del Golfo e gli interventi in Bosnia, Serbia e Libia). Tornare alle origini della potenza aeronautica statunitense attraverso tre romanzi scritti da reduci della seconda guerra mondiale ( Face of a Hero, di Louis Falstein; Catch-22, di Jospeh Heller; Slaughterhouse-5, di Kurt Vonnegut) può essere quindi un’occasione per ripensare non solo questioni strettamente connesse all’ambito della letteratura di guerra, ma anche per una riflessione sull’impero americano e i suoi bombardieri.

"In the first comprehensive study of the American male poets of World War II, Diederik Oostdijk gives voice to the literary men still considered to be a part of the Silent Generation. Focusing not only on soldier poets, but also on conscientious objectors and those deemed unfit for military service, Among the Nightmare Fighters sheds light on the struggles faced by writers—including Randall Jarrell, Anthony Hecht, Robert Lowell, Howard Nemerov, William Stafford and others—from the onset of the U.S. involvement in the war in Europe to the painful physical and psychological aftereffects soldiers carried with them following their service years. Enriched with extensive historical and personal background information drawn from the poets' archives, Oostdijk's study explores the internal confusion expressed by the World War II poets who felt overshadowed by the past generation of Great War poets in their own conflicts with notions of identity, manhood, and the haunting aftermath of war. Collectively their poems form an important and sobering antidote to the sometimes overly positive celebrations of the Good War and the Greatest Generation, recapturing some of the anxiety, frustration, and bitter sadness that the war years also occasioned. Oostdijk demonstrates the importance of appreciating these men not only as a collective literary group, but also as solitary writers experiencing the hardships and adversities of war on an individual level. He emphasizes each author's distinctive perceptions of the disasters they witnessed and the conflicts they witnessed—such as Karl Shapiro's struggle with his Jewish identification, James Dickey's fascination with the meaning and projection of manhood, Nemerov's perception of war's effect on American society, and Ciardi's preoccupation with traumatizing combat memories. A factor that connected these men in their responses to war was their overreaching efforts to identify as individuals and not merely as blurred faces among the myriad combatants, a goal that Oostdijk acknowledges in recognizing the unique experiences of his subjects as key to interpreting their poetry. Among the Nightmare Fighters has both literary and historical merits as a means to comprehend in a more detailed manner the events that took place on the battlefields and the home front and the psychological effects World War II had on the returning American soldiers. Oostdijk's study echoes with the whispers of these American poets and recognizes the significance their work had on literary history in their time and since."

This paper appeared in the Arabic Journal of Palestine Studies, issue 124, that was published as a tribute to Beirut. It investigates the portrayal of the city in contemporary Lebanese novels. The article treats the civil war as an ongoing event perpetuated by the postwar state through different forms of social control. The article investigates this through the exploration of how selected works by writers such as Elias Khoury, Etel Adnan, Tawfiq Youssef Awwad,, Rabih Jaber, and Hanan al Shaykh, portrayed the city during and after the civil war.

Wat is de invloed van oorlog op narratieve empathie? Gezien oorlog altijd “wij tegen hen” is, is empathie per definitie een specifiek probleem voor dit genre. Dit heeft dan weer invloed op de narratieve ethiek van het verhaal: wie zijn de “wij” en “hen”, wat betekent dit qua keuzes en consequenties? Oftewel, wat voor normen en waarden zijn aan de narratieve empathie verbonden? Gezien ik vooral in de narratieve structuur geïnteresseerd ben, is de manier waarop deze empathie, normen en waarden worden gevormd en gecommuniceerd in dit genre voor mij een focus punt. Maar wat er nou verder bijzonder is aan oorlogsverhalen is het thema van rechtvaardigheid; in ieder verhaal is het belangrijk, maar zelden staat het zo op de voorgrond als in oorlogssituaties. Rechtvaardigheid maakt deel uit van ethiek, maar terwijl ethiek meer gaat over abstractere normen en waarden slaat rechtvaardigheid meestal op concrete situaties en het verdelen van goederen, rechten, of straf. In oorlogsverhalen is dit anders dan in andere genres, omdat er specifieke regels zijn, zowel geschreven als ongeschreven, over wat wel en niet mag tijdens oorlog. Maar is het is niet te verwachten dat een kind hier iets van weet, laat staan dat het er iets aan kan doen. Dus hoe wordt rechtvaardigheid behandelt, vooral gezien de machtspositie van het kind?

"In the first comprehensive study of the American male poets of World War II, Diederik Oostdijk gives voice to the literary men still considered to be a part of the Silent Generation. Focusing not only on soldier poets, but also on conscientious objectors and those deemed unfit for military service, Among the Nightmare Fighters sheds light on the struggles faced by writers—including Randall Jarrell, Anthony Hecht, Robert Lowell, Howard Nemerov, William Stafford and others—from the onset of the U.S. involvement in the war in Europe to the painful physical and psychological aftereffects soldiers carried with them following their service years. Enriched with extensive historical and personal background information drawn from the poets' archives, Oostdijk's study explores the internal confusion expressed by the World War II poets who felt overshadowed by the past generation of Great War poets in their own conflicts with notions of identity, manhood, and the haunting aftermath of war. Collectively their poems form an important and sobering antidote to the sometimes overly positive celebrations of the Good War and the Greatest Generation, recapturing some of the anxiety, frustration, and bitter sadness that the war years also occasioned. Oostdijk demonstrates the importance of appreciating these men not only as a collective literary group, but also as solitary writers experiencing the hardships and adversities of war on an individual level. He emphasizes each author's distinctive perceptions of the disasters they witnessed and the conflicts they witnessed—such as Karl Shapiro's struggle with his Jewish identification, James Dickey's fascination with the meaning and projection of manhood, Nemerov's perception of war's effect on American society, and Ciardi's preoccupation with traumatizing combat memories. A factor that connected these men in their responses to war was their overreaching efforts to identify as individuals and not merely as blurred faces among the myriad combatants, a goal that Oostdijk acknowledges in recognizing the unique experiences of his subjects as key to interpreting their poetry. Among the Nightmare Fighters has both literary and historical merits as a means to comprehend in a more detailed manner the events that took place on the battlefields and the home front and the psychological effects World War II had on the returning American soldiers. Oostdijk's study echoes with the whispers of these American poets and recognizes the significance their work had on literary history in their time and since."

Empires are by their very nature a centrifugal affair; to become imperial is to somehow discredit borders, intuitively move forward, and so extend into a pre-eminence that transcends the here-and-now pragmatics of the nation state. The identities that empires fashion for themselves are not only circumscribed by the often immutable traditions in their centres, but also by the flux of the frontiers upon which their uncertain future is staked. The self-conscious empires of the modern age have always entertained the knowledge that after the rise must come the fall, and this uneasy prescience of inevitability has significantly shaped their * Richard Lappin is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Peace Research and Strategic Studies at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. Richard has worked in several conflict zones around the world and can be contacted at: [email protected].

This contribution surveys recent works on the Border War /Angolan War (1960–1990). It contrasts writings by political theorists, media analysts and literary scholars with works written by soldiers who fought in the war and recollections by embedded journalists. The article’s main focus is on Gary Baines and Peter Vale’s collection of essays entitled Beyond the Border War: New Perspectives on Southern Africa’s Late Cold War Conflicts (Unisa Press, 2008). 

...though the book is a welcome addition to the existing corpus of literature on the Great War and India, its public destiny seems fated to mirror the Delhi War Cemetery: A richly evocative monument, but unknown and uncared by the general eye.

جوادی یگانه، محمدرضا و غلامرضا جمشیدیها و سیدمحمدعلی صحفی (1392) «نحوه خوانش رمان های جنگ تحمیلی در میان دانشجویان و طلاب» مطالعات جامعه شناختی (نامه علوم اجتماعی).  دوره 20. شماره 1. بهار و تابستان 1392. صص 67-94.

Abstract
Inrecent decades literary theory doesn’t limit itself to the text or the author, and pays attention to the readers and the quality of their understanding of a literary text.  Now, the reader as an active audience in understanding of a literary text has taken a role in the creation of a work by an author.  This point is observable in the reading of literary works written about the Iraqi war against Iran.  Since these works intend to transfer the post-war values to the next generation, so the reader understanding of those works can be considered very important.
Using the views of thinkers such as Wolfgang Iser, Stanley Fish and Julia Kristeva, this paper intends to reach the understanding of the readers of imposed war novels.  For this purpose, using a qualitative analysis of the content of the mentioned novels and doing deep interviews, we have conducted a research among two groups of university and religious schools students.  The results show that there is a difference between two groups of students in some respects such as the spiritual view of the students of religious schools and the worldly views of the students of universities towards these types of novels.

The subject of the sketch is a 17th century song which relates an episode from Polish-Muscovy war waged from the year 1609. The research to date described the song as anonymous, related to verse pieces on contemporary matters, and connected to popular culture. The manuscript was the basis of the song’s reprints. The article establishes Marcin Paszkowski as the author of the text, offers a more accurate version of it and situates it within the limits of occasional literature devoted to the victory of Smoleńsk in June 1611.

This article describes some military subjects and plots which wouldn't had been described in War literature, had writers followed restriction familiar to historians who had been conducting their research in Central Archive of Defense Ministry of Russian Federation (CAMO) in 1990s - 1st half of 2000s.
English translation © 2006 ME Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text © 2005 “Voprosy literatury.” “Voennaia literatura bez prava na dokumentalizm,” Voprosy literatury, 2005, no. 3, pp. 107–24. Translated by Liv Bliss. Page 2. 8 RUSSIAN STUDIES IN LITERATURE ...