Literary Representations of Shell Shock as a Result of World War I in the Works of Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway’s World War I writing developed, first, as he honed his distinctive style and progressed toward completing his first novel. In the 1930s, Hemingway shifted approach, however, and his World War I-related writings came under the influence of his interest in social inequality (To Have and Have Not); his shift toward showing instead of implying interiority in Across the River and into the Trees; and the general imposition of his ego into his private and public writing. He remained committed, however, to the idea of the inherently complex nature of warfare.

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The Lost Generation

Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism ◽

10.4324/9781135000356-rem1128-1 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Adam R. McKee

Keyword(s):

World War I ◽

Ernest Hemingway ◽

Gertrude Stein ◽

Literary Tradition ◽

The Sun ◽

World War ◽

Lost Generation ◽

Sun Also Rises ◽

The Sun Also Rises

The Lost Generation is a group of expatriate American writers who came of age during World War I and who subsequently became prominent literary figures. The term can also be used to refer to the whole of the post-World War I generation. The term was coined by Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) in a comment to Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) in which she declared, ‘You are all a lost generation’. Hemingway subsequently used this phrase as an epigraph to his novel The Sun also Rises (1926), which is often seen as emblematic of the Lost Generation’s literary tradition.

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Shell shock, memory, and the novel in the wake of World War I

Choice Reviews Online ◽

10.5860/choice.195004 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 53 (08) ◽

pp. 53-3394-53-3394

Keyword(s):

World War I ◽

The Novel ◽

World War ◽

Shell Shock

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“The Absurd Disordering of Notes”

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199331444.013.9 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Beth Keyes

Keyword(s):

World War I ◽

Traumatic Stress ◽

Focal Point ◽

Post Traumatic Stress ◽

World War ◽

Psychic Trauma ◽

Shell Shock ◽

Medical Reform ◽

Medical Institutions ◽

Post Traumatic

Railway spine, nerve prostration, combat neurosis, post-traumatic stress disorder: throughout the twentieth century, a complex array of terms has been codified by cultural, national, and medical institutions to describe a body and mind made dysfunctional by the inability to process intensely disturbing memories. In the wake of World War I, trauma-induced mental illness—diagnosed and treated as “shell-shock” in countless veterans—became an imperative focal point for sociopolitical and medical reform throughout Europe. This essay explores the connections between this historically contextualized psychiatric disorder and the music of Ivor Gurney, a soldier in the British Army whose life and work was significantly affected by his diagnosis in 1918. Through particular disturbances of form, structure, and texture, Gurney’s musical landscapes reenact the conditions of psychic trauma by creating a world in which memories are disruptive, invasive, and ultimately disabling.

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Processes of Survival and Resistance: Indigenous Soldiers in the Great War in Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road and Gerald Vizenor’s Blue Ravens

Studia Anglica Posnaniensia ◽

10.2478/stap-2018-0018 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 53 (s1) ◽

pp. 375-394

Author(s):

Brygida Gasztold

Keyword(s):

North America ◽

World War I ◽

Racial Discrimination ◽

Indigenous Peoples ◽

Great War ◽

Literary Representations ◽

World War ◽

Research Focus ◽

Personal Experiences ◽

The Great War

Abstract Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road (2005) and Gerald Vizenor’s Blue Ravens (2014) offer literary representations of the Great War combined with life narratives focusing on the personal experiences of Indigenous soldiers. The protagonists’ lives on the reservations, which illustrate the experiences of racial discrimination and draw attention to power struggles against the White dominance, provide a representation of and a response to the experiences of Indigenous peoples in North America. The context of World War I and the Aboriginal contributions to American and Canadian wartime responses on European battlefields are used in the novels to take issue with the historically relevant changes. The research focus of this paper is to discuss two strategies of survival presented in Boyden’s and Vizenor’s novels, which enable the protagonists to process, understand, and overcome the trauma of war.

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