
Sacrifice and Modern War Writing
Atavisms, Martyrdoms, and Economies of Loss
Alex Houen(Author)
Oxford University Press
Published on 27. August 2024
Book
Hardback
336 pages
978-0-19-891228-6 (ISBN)
Description
Sacrifice and Modern War Writing presents the most extensive study to date of twentieth- and twenty-first-century war writing. Examining works by over 110 authors, Alex Houen surveys how war writing explores sacrifice in relation to major modern and contemporary conflicts, from the First World War to the War on Terror. Various conceptions of sacrifice are examined, including Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and secular. The discussion ranges across literary portrayals of multiple sacrificial practices, including ancient rituals of child sacrifice, martyrdom, scapegoating, and suicide bombing. Houen builds an innovative interdisciplinary approach to how war, sacrifice, and their representations interrelate, and a wide range of Anglophone literature is discussed, including novels, memoirs, short stories, essays, manifestoes, elegies, ballads, and lyric poetry.
Whereas critics and theorists have tended to emphasize that war's reality exceeds any attempt to represent it, Houen contends that political, religious, and cultural frames of sacrifice have continued to play a significant part in shaping how war's reality is shaped and experienced. Those frames are inextricably tied to modes of representation, which include symbolism and mimesis. Sacrifice and Modern War Writing explores how sacrificial killing in war is itself riddled with symbolic transfigurations and mimetic exchanges, and it builds a fresh approach by arguing that the figurative and imaginative aspects of literary writing ironically become its very means of engaging closely with the reality of war's sacrifices. That approach also develops by using the literary analyses to critique and revise various prominent theories of sacrifice and war.
Whereas critics and theorists have tended to emphasize that war's reality exceeds any attempt to represent it, Houen contends that political, religious, and cultural frames of sacrifice have continued to play a significant part in shaping how war's reality is shaped and experienced. Those frames are inextricably tied to modes of representation, which include symbolism and mimesis. Sacrifice and Modern War Writing explores how sacrificial killing in war is itself riddled with symbolic transfigurations and mimetic exchanges, and it builds a fresh approach by arguing that the figurative and imaginative aspects of literary writing ironically become its very means of engaging closely with the reality of war's sacrifices. That approach also develops by using the literary analyses to critique and revise various prominent theories of sacrifice and war.
Reviews / Votes
Sacrifice and Modern War Writing examines an impressive range of writers (over forty in each of its three Parts), and develops its readings with superb use of a wide range of theory from Derrida, Agamben, Butler, Girard, Paul Kahn, Levinas, Nietzsche, and others. This is an outstanding, wide-ranging, utterly original meditation on war as it impacted citizens and culture, dwelling on the victims and martyrs of the sacrifice complex and discovering the lineaments of resistance in what it finds at the heart of the war writers' ethical drive: 'an egalitarian imaginary counter to war's violent sacrifices'. * Adam Piette, author of Imagination at War and The Literary Cold War *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 237 mm
Width: 164 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
680 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-891228-6 (9780198912286)
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

E-Book
09/2024
OUP eBook
€81.99
Available for download

E-Book
09/2024
OUP eBook
€81.99
Available for download
Person
Alex Houen is Professor of Modern Literature and Critical Theory at Cambridge University, and Fellow of Pembroke College. He did a BA (Hons) and then a two-year research MPhil at the University of Sydney before obtaining a PhD at King's College, Cambridge. He taught Modern Literature and American Studies at the University of Sheffield until 2009.
Author
Professor of Modern Literature and Critical TheoryProfessor of Modern Literature and Critical Theory, University of Cambridge
Content
Part I: Atavisms: Reprising Ancient Sacrifice in Modern War, from Abraham and Isaac to Moloch
Part II: Militant Martyrdoms
Part III: Sacrifice's Gifts and Prices
Conclusion
Part II: Militant Martyrdoms
Part III: Sacrifice's Gifts and Prices
Conclusion