The Great War and Modern Memory
Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition
25th Edition
Published on 21. December 2000
Book
Hardback
384 pages
978-0-19-513331-8 (ISBN)
Description
The year 2000 marks the 25th anniversary of one of the most original and gripping volumes ever written about the First World War. Fussell illuminates a war that changed a generation and revolutionised the way we see the world. He explores the British experience on the western Front from 1914 to 1918, focusing on the various literary means by which it has been remembered, conventionalized and mythologized. It is also about the literary dimensions of the experience itself. Fussell supplies contexts, both actual and literary, for writers who have most effectively memorialized the Great War as an historical experience with conspicuous imaginative and artistic meaning. These writers include the classic memoirists Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves and Edmund Blunden, and poets David Jones, Isaac Rosenberg, and Wilfred Owen.
In his new introduction Fussell discusses the critical responses to his work, the authors and works that inspired his own writing, and the elements which influence our understanding and memory of war. Fussell also shares the stirring experience of his research at the Imperial War Museum's Department of Documents. Fussell includes a new Suggested Further Reading List.
In his new introduction Fussell discusses the critical responses to his work, the authors and works that inspired his own writing, and the elements which influence our understanding and memory of war. Fussell also shares the stirring experience of his research at the Imperial War Museum's Department of Documents. Fussell includes a new Suggested Further Reading List.
Reviews / Votes
"One of the best nonfiction works I've ever read. I'm a huge fan of virtually everything Fussell has ever done, but this unique book, which uses literature and social history to examine World War I, may be his best. Unflinching."--James Gray, he Week"Literary and historical materials, in themselves not unfamiliar, are brought together in a probing, sympathetic, and finally illuminating fashion. It is difficult to think of a scholarly work in recent years that has more deeply engaged the reader at both the intellectual and emotional level."--The New Republic (on the previous edition)
"Paul Fussell's Great War and Modern Memory introduced an entirely new and creative way of writing both about war and the literature it generates. It has been a profound influence on historians and literary critics alike. It is a model of intelligence and fine writing and will remain a key text in our culture for decades to come."--John Keegan
Praise for the previous edition
"Skillful, compassionate....An important contribution to our understanding of how we came to make World War I part of our minds."--Frank Kermode, The New York Times Book Review
"One doesn't know quite where to begin to praise this book in which literary and historical materials, in themselves not unfamiliar, are brought together in a probing, sympathetic, and finally illuminating fashion. It is difficult to think of a scholarly work in recent years that has more deeply engaged the reader at both the intellectual and emotional level."--The New Republic
"A learned and well-balanced book that is also bright and sensitive....A last irony leaps from these pages: the men of the First World War were heroes as great as the cast of the Iliad, yet their words destroyed the concept of themselves, of all warriors, and of war itself as heroic."--The New Yorker
More details
Edition
25th Anniversary edition
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
With dust jacket
Illustrations
14 Fotos bzw. Rasterbilder
14 halftones
Dimensions
Height: 215 mm
Width: 145 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
508 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-513331-8 (9780195133318)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Paul Fussell
Great War and Modern Memory
E-Book
07/1975
1st Edition
Oxford University Press
€30.09
Available for download
Person
Paul Fussell holds the Donald T Regan Chair of English Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. His other books include Wartime and Abroad.
Content
A Satire Of Circumstance ; The Troglodyte World ; Adversary Proceedings ; Myth, Ritual, and Romance ; Oh What a Literary War ; Theater of War ; Arcadian Recourses ; Soldier Boys ; Persistence and Memory