The War Poets: Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen, Schemi e mappe concettuali di Inglese

Scarica The War Poets: Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen e più Schemi e mappe concettuali in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! The War Poets When the First World War broke out, thousands of young men volunteered for military service; regarded the conflict as an adventure for noble ends. Then with the slaughter of thousands of British soldiers at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 this sense was replaced by doubt and disillusionment. Life in trenches was hell because of rain, mud, bombing and poison gas. The common soldiers improvised verses which didn’t reach the ears of the literat people living at home. There was also a group of poets who volunteered to fight in the Great War. They managed to represent moden warfare in a realistic and unconventional way. These poets became known as the “War Poets”. Rupert Brooke Rupert Brooke was born in 1887 was a good student and athlete. He came to know many important political, literary and social figures before the war. He joined up at the beginning of the conflict but saw little combat since he contracted blood poisoning and died in April 1915. He was buried on the Greek island of Skyros. Brooke’s reputation as a War Poet is linked to the five sonnets of 1914, in which he advanced the idea that war is clean and cleansing. The only thing that can suffer is the body, and death is seen as a reward. His poems show his sentimental attitude. The poet became a new symbol of the “young romantic hero” who inspired patriotism. The soldier If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam; A body of England’s, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. The poet fought for a short time and what he proclaims is purely theoretical. He will die ironically, in Greece, a foreign land. The poetry starts with a speculation of an hypothesis, something abstract. You got the ideas of simple words, something far away from reality, because his death is just a possibility. If he could die during a battle, he could be happy, it's a privilege die for his country. He tries to convince his readers about this ideas, promoting join the army. Your dust maybe is something good for the foreign country, in this way you became a special creature. England is the mother country ➔ bore, giving birth, a country which care about its people. “Roam” ➔ wander. Idea of supremacy in all respects, for their homeland. This patriotism will lead to the birth of nationalism with the emergence of Nazism and Fascism. “Suns” ➔ reference to Shakespeare, children who are suns. Purifying warfare, capable of cleansing and limiting overpopulation. Life ransformed into dust becomes eternal. The only thing the poet regrets is that dying away from his homeland means losing thoughts, laughter, views, happy days, kindness. Wilfred Owen Wilfred Owen was in France when he visited a hospital for the wounded and decided, in 1915, to return to England and enlist. In March he was enjured. He met Siegfried Sassoon, who encouraged him to continue to write. Owen returned to the front in August 1918. On 4th November 1918, seven days before the armistice, he was killed in a German machine gun attack. His poems are painful in their accurate accounts of gas casualties, in fact, men became mad and men alive in bodies were destroyed. He is noteworthy for the innovation of “parahymes”- half-rhymes where the consonants in two different words are the same but the vowels vary. In June 1918 Owen was preparing Disabled and Other Poems for publication. At that time he was writing the Preface o the book. His subject is war, and the pity of war. These elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. For him the poets must be truthful. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.— Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud