Conflicting discourses, competing memories: Commemorating The First World War

The 2014 centenary of the outbreak of World War One has resulted in a noticeable increase in the number of publications devoted to this conflict. A question thus arises what makes Conflicting discourses, competing memories: Commemorating The First World War stand out among similar volumes. Indeed, it is the cinematic scope that distinguishes it, as the collected articles comprise a wide spectrum of research, including prose, poetry and film as well as painting dedicated to the Great War. Simultaneously, the book propose an interesting trans-historical purview, combining discussions of the cultural representation of the Great War both from the interwar period and from the contemporary post-memory perspective. The volume as a whole emphasises the significance of the Great War within the context of international cultural memory, as it includes Polish, Romanian, Italian, British, Canadian and American perspectives.

From the review by Marzena Sokołowska-Paryż, PhD, DLitt

Introduction / 7

Wojciech Szymański
Images from the Eastern Flank. Great Returns or Death among Old Decorations? Remarks on the Representation of the Great War in Polish Art / 15

Brygida Gasztold
Post-World War IPoland Through the Eyes of a Jewish Soldier: Israel Rabon’s The Street / 39

Anna Branach-Kallas
Abjection, Trauma and Anti-war Protest in Great War Fiction / 55

Joanna Stolarek
Post-war Trauma and the Crisis of Masculinity in T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and The Hollow Men / 69

Edyta Lorek-Jezińska
The Legacy of Oh, What a Lovely War!: Remembering and Re-Imagining the First World War / 81

Beata Piątek
From “the Age of Mud” to the Age of Smoke—the Great War in the Novels of Graham Swift / 95

Anna Olkiewicz-Mantilla
“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” The Fate of the Dunne Family in the context of the Irish Culture of Remembrance in Sebastian Barry’s A Long Long Way (2005) and On Canaan’s Side (2011) / 109

Tomasz Soroka
Canada’s Great War: The Rise of Canadian Policy of Autonomism / 123

Zachary Abram
From Crusaders to Cannon Fodder: Cultures of Militarization in Canadian War Novels, 1900–1930 / 143

Paweł Ufnal
The Unvarnished Image of the Great War in Two Forgotten Novels: Generals Die in Bed by Charles Yale Harrison and Company K by William March / 161

Eusebio Ciccotti
The Great War: From Literature to Film. Four Cases: E. Johannsen-W. Pabst ; E. M. Remarque-L. Milestone; L. Rebreanu-Ciulei;E. Lussu-F. Rosi / 185

Monika Sarul
The Myth and Reality of War in Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo / 203

Contributors / 217

Anna Branach-Kallas

Natalia Sabiniarz

Nelly Strehlau