British Writing of the Second World War

by Mark Rawlinson

Overview

British Writing of the Second World War is the first study to provide a detailed critical and historical survey of British literary culture in wartime. Concerned as much with war as with writing, it explores the significance of cultural representations of violence to the administration of the war effort. A theoretical account of the symbolic practices which connect military violence to policy provides a framework for analysing imaginative and documentary literature in its relations both to propaganda and to Peoples War ideals of social reconstruction. The book evaluates wartime fictions and memoirs in the context of official and unofficial discourses about military aviation, the Blitz, campaigns in North Africa, war aims, the conscript Army and the Home Front, Prisoners of War, and the Holocaust. It uncovers the processes by which the meanings the war had for participants were produced, and provides an extensive bibliographical resource for future scholarship.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198184560
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/13/2000
Series:	Oxford English Monographs
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Mark Rawlinson is Lecturer in English, University of Leicester

Table of Contents

Introduction1. Reconnaissance: Violence, Representation, and Britain's Second World War2. The Figure of the Airman3. What targets for bombs: Spectacle, Reconstruction, and the London Blitz4. Side Show or Second Front?: The Legibility of Battle in North Africa5. War Aims and Outcomes6. Were All Prisoners of WarConclusionBibliographyIndex