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The First World War comes to harrowing life through the intertwined lives of the soldier poets in Michael Korda’s epic Muse of Fire. Michael Korda, the best-selling author of Hero and Alone, tells the story of the First World War not in any conventional way but through the intertwined lives of the soldier poets who came to describe it best, and indeed to symbolize the war’s tragic arc and lethal fury. His epic narrative begins with Rupert Brooke, “the handsomest young man in England” and perhaps its most famous young poet in the halcyon days of the Edwardian Age, and ends five years later with Wilfred Owen, killed in action at twenty-five, only one week before the armistice. With bitter irony, Owen’s mother received the telegram informing her of his death on November 11, just as church bells tolled to celebrate the war’s end. Korda’s dramatic account, which includes anecdotes from his own family history, not only brings to life the soldier poets but paints an unforgettable picture of life and death in the trenches, and the sacrifice of an entire generation. His cast of characters includes the young American poet Alan Seeger, who was killed in action as a private in the French Foreign Legion; Isaac Rosenberg, whose parents had fled czarist anti-Semitic persecution and who was killed in action at the age of twenty-eight before his fame as a poet and a painter was recognized; Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon, whose friendship and friendly rivalry endured through long, complicated private lives; and, finally, Owen, whose fame came only posthumously and whose poetry remains some of the most savage and heartbreaking to emerge from the cataclysmic war. As Korda demonstrates, the poets of the First World War were soldiers, heroes, martyrs, victims, their lives and loves endlessly fascinating—that of Rupert Brooke alone reads like a novel, with his journey to Polynesia in pursuit of a life like Gauguin’s and some of his finest poetry written only a year before his tragic death. Muse of Fire is at once a portrait of their lives and a narrative of a civilization destroying itself, among the rubble, shadows, and the unresolved problems of which we still live, from the revival of brutal trench warfare in Ukraine and in the Middle East.
This is the first book to relate to the literature and art of the First World War to the literature and art produced by the Second World War and by earlier wars. A Muse of Fire is also the first serious attempt to examine the whole range of war poetry and war fiction in English in its relation to the work of German, French, Italian and - to a lesser extent - Russian, Danish, and Hungarian authors. Before 1914 few authors wrote about or experienced war. War, especially its reality, was not the proper subject of literature; while writers seldom served in the armed forces and were almost never in battle. More than half this book deals with the First World War. In successive chapters A.D. Harvey discusses what sort of people, in what sort of physical and psychological conditions, wrote about the war; or painted it; how they handled the challenge of describing their experiences with complete honesty; what literary and artistic techniques they employed; how other forms of creative talent were fostered by the war; and how far memoirs of the war prepared the way for the next one. The account given of the Second World War in the final section, like the chapters on pre-1914 war literature, provides far more than simply an introduction and conclusion to the central part of the book. It is an important contribution to an understanding of how literature and art relate to the psychological and social structures of the communities within which they are produced. This is the first book to relate to the literature and art of the First World War to the literature and art produced by the Second World War and by earlier wars. A Muse of Fire is also the first serious attempt to examine the whole range of war poetry and war fiction in English in its relation to the work of German, French, Italian and - to a lesser extent - Russian, Danish, and Hungarian authors. Before 1914 few authors wrote about or experienced war. War, especially its reality, was not the proper subject of literature; while writers seldom served in the armed forces and were almost never in battle. More than half this book deals with the First World War. In successive chapters A.D. Harvey discusses what sort of people, in what sort of physical and psychological conditions, wrote about the war; or painted it; how they handled the challenge of describing their experiences with complete honesty; what literary and artistic techniques they employed; how other forms of creative talent were fostered by the war; and how far memoirs of the war prepared the way for the next one. The account given of the Second World War in the final section, like the chapters on pre-1914 war literature, provides far more than simply an introduction and conclusion to the central part of the book. It is an important contribution to an understanding of how literature and art relate to the psychological and social structures of the communities within which they are produced.
How does irony affect the evaluation and perception of the First World War both then and now? Irony and the Poetry of the First World War traces one of the major features of war poetry from the author's application as a means of disguise, criticism or psychological therapy to its perception and interpretation by the reader.
2014 marks the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of what many believed would be the war to end all wars. And while the First World War devastated Europe, it inspired profound poetry - words in which the atmosphere and landscape of battle are evoked perhaps more vividly than anywhere else. The poets - many of whom were killed - show not only the war's tragedy but the hopes and disappointments of a generation of men. In Some Desperate Glory, historian and biographer Max Egremont gives us a transfiguring look at the life and work of this assemblage of poets. Wilfred Owen with his flaring genius; the intense, compassionate Siegfried Sassoon; the composer Ivor Gurney; Robert Graves who would later spurn his war poems; the nature- loving Edward Thomas; the glamorous Fabian Socialist Rupert Brooke; and the shell-shocked Robert Nichols all fought in the war, and their poetry is a bold act of creativity in the face of unprecedented destruction. Some Desperate Glory includes a chronological anthology of their poems, with linking commentary, telling the story of the war through their art. This unique volume unites the poetry and the history of the war, so often treated separately, granting readers the pride, strife, and sorrow of the individual soldier's experience coupled with a panoramic view of the war's toll on an entire nation.
DIVRich selection of powerful, moving verse includes Brooke's "The Soldier," Owen's "Anthem for Doomed Youth," "In Flanders Fields," by Lieut. Col. McCrae, more by Hardy, Kipling, many others. /div
On 28 June 1914, two pistol shots shattered the peace of a sunny afternoon in Sarajevo. Those shots reverberated around Europe and shattered the peace of the whole world. This was the beginning of the Great Slaughter. Could it have been avoided? Alan Woods uses the method of Marxism to answer this question. He explains that, actually, whilst individuals play an important role in history, to explain events such as wars, one must look at deeper causes. As well as dealing with the origin of the war, Woods traces the conflict through its development, looking at the role of all the major actors, and their aims. He shows how in the midst of the despair of the trenches and the home front, a new consciousness was formed. He also makes the case that it was the German Revolution that brought the war to an end, and how a revolutionary wave swept across Europe. The book also looks at the Treaty of Versailles and how the victorious powers imposed the deal, not just on Germany, but the rest of Europe and the Middle East. Given the amount of nationalistic mystification from all sides about the First World War, a history of the subject from the standpoint of the world working class is essential and it is provided by this book.
Ranging far beyond the traditional canon, this ground-breaking anthology casts a vivid new light on poetic responses to the First World War. Bringing together poems by soldiers and non-combatants, patriots and dissenters, and from all sides of the conflict across the world, International Poetry of the First World War reveals the crucial public role that poetry played in shaping responses to and the legacies of the conflict. Across over 150 poems, this anthology explores such topics as the following: · Life at the Front · Psychological trauma · Noncombatants and the home front · Rationalising the war · Remembering the dead · Peace and the aftermath of the war With contextual notes throughout, the book includes poems written by authors from America, Australia, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Russia, and South Africa.
A soldier/scholar vividly describes the conditions for Elizabethan soldiers and how they wrote about their deployments.
The story of Alan Juniper who deserted twice from the British Army during the Second World War.
As a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ivory Coast (1973-75) and a Peace Corps trainer in Mali (1986), Peter Bourque kept a personal journal and wrote over 55 letters back to the States. In them, he described the satisfactions and frustrations of living, working and traveling in West Africa as well as his reactions to the people he encountered—Ivorian, French, Malian and American. Decades later, he reflects and elaborates on these writings with current-day observations and candid essays about idealism, world poverty, the Peace Corps, the French, and losing his religion.