A war imagined The First World

Between the opulent Edwardian years and the 1920s the First World War opens like a gap in time. England after the war was a different place; the arts were different; history was different; sex, society, class were all different.Samuel Hynes examines the process of that transformation. He explores a vast cultural mosaic comprising novels and poetry, music and theatre, journalism, paintings, films, parliamentary debates, public monuments, sartorial fashions, personal diaries and letters.Told in rich detail, this penetrating account shatters much of the received wisdom about the First World War. It shows how English culture adapted itself to the needs of killing, how our stereotypes of the war gradually took shape and how the nations thought and imagination were profoundly and irretrievably changed.

Continuing the ground-breaking work of Paul Fussell in The Great War and Modern Memory, Hynes (Flights of Passage, 1988, etc.; Literature/Princeton) looks into the origin and impact of the myth that came into being to explain the significance of WW I. That myth depicted an idyllic England shattered irrevocably by the onslaught of a cruel and unnecessary way, by a generation of brave and idealistic young men lost in trench warfare prolonged by stupid generals and unimaginative politicians, and by the subsequent rejection by the embittered survivors of the values of their society. Hynes, like Fussell, uses major literary works of the period to illustrate the origin and growth of the myth, but also draws on newspapers and magazines, art, music, political debates, films, diaries, and letters. In certain respects, he casts doubt on the truth of the myth: The prewar period, for example, was characterized by labor unrest, Suffragette violence, the threat of civil war in Ireland, and a growing violence in the tone of political discourse. Hynes suggests, too, the difficulty of summarizing complex phenomena in so facile a way: There is, he notes, the picturesque popular image of way, which is clear and easy to respond to, and there is the truth, which is inconsistent, contradictory, and threatening. Thus, for example, the early poetry of Rupert Brooke, full of ideals and of the glory of sacrificing one's life for one's country, continued to be popular with some of the supposedly embittered young men late in the war. Ultimately, Hynes implies, these quibbles are almost irrelevant to shake a myth that has profoundly affected the way war is viewed in the 20th century. More suggestive than conclusive in its analysis of the validity of the myth, Hynes's account of the impact of a terrible war is still rich and satisfying. (Sixteen-page photo insert--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

According to Hynes ( The Auden Generation ), WW I engendered a sense of idealism betrayed, turned high-mindedness into cynicism and gave rise to resentment of politicians as the conviction emerged that the war was meaningless, fought for no good cause. Calling this cluster of attitudes the "Myth of the War," Hynes shows how these received views, filtered through the '30s generation of Auden, Orwell, Waugh and Greene, became "the truth about war." In this splendid study, the Princeton professor of literature draws on novels, poems, films, plays, paintings, music and diaries to show how WW I fostered radical discontinuity with the past, an upsurge in images of violence and cruelty, and the alienation of a "lost generation"; and intensified pacificist and women's rights activism. Photos.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This is an interesting, moving excursion in sociopolitical history. In some senses, Hynes (literature, Princeton), who has published widely on literary subjects (e.g., The Auden Generation: Literature and Politics in England in the 1930s , LJ 2/15/77), does for the Great War what Robert Graves and Alan Hodge do for the interwar period in The Long Week-End (1941). He does a better job of capturing the mood and changing nature of English culture, however, and that is saying a great deal. As this book makes manifest, World War I was a social watershed which saw England move from one way of life and values to another. Hynes makes especially good use of sources, drawing not only on standard texts and memoirs but delving into the revealing insights offered by films, music, art, etc. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the evolution of 20th-century British society.
- James A. Casada, Winthrop Coll., Rock Hill,
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.