War Poetry: ‘All Dirt and Sucked Sugar Stick’? - Course Introduction

In this course students will examine the extraordinary flowering of British poetry created by the First World War and seek to understand why this poetry was so different from any that had gone before and so different from that produced by any other nation. The course will examine the history of war poetry from classical to Edwardian times, including authors such as Homer, Chaucer, Tennyson, Newbolt, Kipling and Hardy, and explore the cult of ‘Georgian poetry’ that dominated English poetry pre-1914. As well as examining the famous war poets – Brooke, Owen, Sassoon, Rosenberg – the course will examine war poets by well-known poets not usually associated with the war, hitherto unknown poets who nevertheless wrote brilliant work, and the popular poets of the day such as Woodbine Willy and John Oxenham who sold millions in their time but have subsequently been forgotten, and female poets of the war. The course then goes on to examine the poetry of the Second World War and the war in Vietnam.

Course Introduction