Metamorphoses of the Heroic in English Lyrics of the Beginning of the Twentieth Century
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31861/pytlit2013.88.223Keywords:
heroic artistic modus, the heroic, the tragic, World War I, ode, ballad, elegy, Romanticism, Imagism, W. Wordsworth (“The Character of the Happy Warrior”), Herbert Read (“The Happy Warrior”)Abstract
The paper deals with the heroic artistic modus transformations in English lyrics of World War I. The purpose is to see war poetry not as a separate artistic phenomenon but as the striking evidence of the arterial development of literature in its turn to modernism.
The focus of attention is in the metamorphosis of the heroic showed in W. Wordsworth’s “The Character of the Happy Warrior” as compared to Herbert Read’s “The Happy Warrior”. In Wordsworth’s poem the hero is made by the harmony of a soldier’s duty and moral standards, loyalty to the country and commitment to God. Imagist Read makes a hero out of a “function reflex” which turns a man into a weak-minded, circumscribed but effective cripple ready to kill, much the same as extermination machines around.
Nation’s memory is selective, and the instrument of this selection is mythologizing of a case, a man, or a phenomenon. In the case of the Great War this process is both mighty and paradoxical: in contrast to ancient heroes, under new mythology the archaic and universal concept of heroic turns into national and modern, with war poets as emblem of new “English heroism”.
Comprehension of the heroic as an exhausted and ambivalent modus in the global conflict of World War I and the denial of rhetoric as the background for “heroic” genres lay the foundation for creating both the new national myth (hero-victim) and the new poetics in the poetry of the soldier poets.
References
Averintsev S. S. Poetika rannevizantiiskoi literatury [Poetics of Early Byzantine Literature]. Moscow, 1977, 352 p. (in Russian).
Gegel G. Estetika [Aesthetics]. Moscow, 1968, vol. 1. 330 p. (in Russian).
Literaturnaia entsyklopedia terminov i poniatiy [Literary Encyclopedia of Terms and Notions]. Moscow, 2001,1600 stlb (in Russian).
Sverdlov M. O zhanrovom mife: chto vospevaet pindaricheskaia oda? [On Genre Myth: What Does Pindaric Ode Glorify?]. Voprosy literatury, 2002, no. 6, pp. 103–126. Available at: http://www.magazines.russ.ru/voplit/2002/6/sver.html (accessed 15 May 2013). (in Russian).
Sverdlov M. Uzhasy voiny glasami zhanra [The Horrors of War in Genre’s Eyes]. Voprosy literatury, 2009, no. 6, pp. 349–381. (in Russian).
Teoriia literatury [Theory of Literature]. Moscow, 2010, vol. 1, 512 p. (in Russian).
Tolstoy L. Sobraniie sochinenii [Collected Works]. Moscow, 1958, vol. 4, 376 p. (in Russian).
Khalizev V. Teoriia literatury [Theory of Literature]. Moscow, 2002, 437 p. (in Russian).
Bergonzi B. The Problem of War Poetry: Byron Foundation Lecture for 1990. Nottingham, 2010, 26 p.
Bridgwater P. The German Poets of the First World War. London, 1985, 209 p.
The Collected Poems of William Wordsworth. With an Introduction of Antonia Till. Ware, Hertfordshire, 2006, 1120 p.
Fussell P. The Great War and Modern Memory. London, 1979, 363 p.
The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York, London, 1993, vol. 2, 2543 p.
The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry. London, 1989, 304 p.
Perkins D. A History of Modern Poetry: From the 1890s to the High Modernist Mode. Cambridge, London, 1976, 624 p.
Scannell V. Collected Poems 1950–1993. London, 1998, 452 p.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2013 Yevheniya Chernokova
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.