War at a Distance

Reviews / Votes

Delivering its impressive literary insights in a tone of humane regret, War at a Distance is a reminder of shared responsibility and shared concern. In Favret's compelling image, we are suspended before and between armed conflicts on the shakiest of rope-bridges, and the place of safety we are heading for is out of sight. -- "Times Literary Supplement Thoughtful, sophisticated, and subtle, this book analyzes the way war figures in Romantic writing, i.e., the way Romantic writing figuratively engages civilians' always-mediated experience of distant warfare... Engaging clearly and intelligently with critical work by such thinkers as Raymond Williams, Dominick LaCapra, Susan Sontag, and Amanda Anderson, this book demonstrates that the contemporary experience of wartime has its roots in the Romantic imagination. -- "Choice I found Favret's narrative compelling. To connect all the necessary dots, she needed to lace together a fine web of interrelated texts of all kinds--verbal, visual, and historical. The final product stands up to the weight of scrutiny as well as entertains with a bravura performance of looking back and ahead in equal measures. Mired ourselves at a distance in our endless War on Terror, we should look long and hard at Favret's War at a Distance not only for the sources of our coping mechanisms, but also for the origins of how we separate ourselves from the reality of waging war and, perhaps unconsciously, contribute to how wars begin. -- Bob Duggan, The Big Think War at a Distance deserves to be read and argued about in history, comparative literature and classics for years to come... [T]his is the kind of book that encourages you to try out its ideas on works you may already know, and then rethink them, just as it makes you want to learn about the poets it discusses and the critics who played a role in its writing. -- James Tatum, New Books on Literature Favret also manages the delicate task of reading the past in terms of our present without obliterating the former's distinctiveness. As erudite in the history and discourses of war as it is in the literature and culture of Romanticism, War at a Distance is an essential book in the field. -- Ian Duncan, Studies in English Literature War at a Distance moves with impressive sweep between wartimes past and present, from the Revolution and Napoleonic conflicts of two centuries ago to the first and second Gulf Wars. The book is a stirring and powerful meditation on what it means to live in a time of war... Mary Favret's book teaches us to attend to the tumult that passes just out of reach of conscious apprehension; it attunes the reader to the sights and sounds of war passing beyond our ken. War at a Distance is a stunning achievement. -- Noel Jackson, Wordsworth Circle