Sacrifice and Modern War Writing
Atavisms, Martyrdoms, and Economies of Loss
Seiten
2024
Oxford University Press (Verlag)
978-0-19-891228-6 (ISBN)
Oxford University Press (Verlag)
978-0-19-891228-6 (ISBN)
Sacrifice and Modern War Writing presents the most extensive study to date of twentieth- and twenty-first-century war writing. Alex Houen argues that political, religious, and cultural frames of sacrifice continue to play a significant part in shaping how war's reality is shaped and experienced.
Sacrifice and Modern War Writing presents the most extensive study to date of twentieth- and twenty-first-century war writing. Examining works by over 110 authors, Alex Houen surveys how war writing explores sacrifice in relation to major modern and contemporary conflicts, from the First World War to the War on Terror. Various conceptions of sacrifice are examined, including Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and secular. The discussion ranges across literary portrayals of multiple sacrificial practices, including ancient rituals of child sacrifice, martyrdom, scapegoating, and suicide bombing. Houen builds an innovative interdisciplinary approach to how war, sacrifice, and their representations interrelate, and a wide range of Anglophone literature is discussed, including novels, memoirs, short stories, essays, manifestoes, elegies, ballads, and lyric poetry.
Whereas critics and theorists have tended to emphasize that war's reality exceeds any attempt to represent it, Houen contends that political, religious, and cultural frames of sacrifice have continued to play a significant part in shaping how war's reality is shaped and experienced. Those frames are inextricably tied to modes of representation, which include symbolism and mimesis. Sacrifice and Modern War Writing explores how sacrificial killing in war is itself riddled with symbolic transfigurations and mimetic exchanges, and it builds a fresh approach by arguing that the figurative and imaginative aspects of literary writing ironically become its very means of engaging closely with the reality of war's sacrifices. That approach also develops by using the literary analyses to critique and revise various prominent theories of sacrifice and war.
Sacrifice and Modern War Writing presents the most extensive study to date of twentieth- and twenty-first-century war writing. Examining works by over 110 authors, Alex Houen surveys how war writing explores sacrifice in relation to major modern and contemporary conflicts, from the First World War to the War on Terror. Various conceptions of sacrifice are examined, including Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and secular. The discussion ranges across literary portrayals of multiple sacrificial practices, including ancient rituals of child sacrifice, martyrdom, scapegoating, and suicide bombing. Houen builds an innovative interdisciplinary approach to how war, sacrifice, and their representations interrelate, and a wide range of Anglophone literature is discussed, including novels, memoirs, short stories, essays, manifestoes, elegies, ballads, and lyric poetry.
Whereas critics and theorists have tended to emphasize that war's reality exceeds any attempt to represent it, Houen contends that political, religious, and cultural frames of sacrifice have continued to play a significant part in shaping how war's reality is shaped and experienced. Those frames are inextricably tied to modes of representation, which include symbolism and mimesis. Sacrifice and Modern War Writing explores how sacrificial killing in war is itself riddled with symbolic transfigurations and mimetic exchanges, and it builds a fresh approach by arguing that the figurative and imaginative aspects of literary writing ironically become its very means of engaging closely with the reality of war's sacrifices. That approach also develops by using the literary analyses to critique and revise various prominent theories of sacrifice and war.
Alex Houen is Professor of Modern Literature and Critical Theory at Cambridge University, and Fellow of Pembroke College. He did a BA (Hons) and then a two-year research MPhil at the University of Sydney before obtaining a PhD at King's College, Cambridge. He taught Modern Literature and American Studies at the University of Sheffield until 2009.
Part I: Atavisms: Reprising Ancient Sacrifice in Modern War, from Abraham and Isaac to Moloch
Part II: Militant Martyrdoms
Part III: Sacrifice's Gifts and Prices
Conclusion
| Erscheinungsdatum | 26.08.2024 |
|---|---|
| Verlagsort | Oxford |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 162 x 241 mm |
| Gewicht | 660 g |
| Themenwelt | Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft | |
| ISBN-10 | 0-19-891228-5 / 0198912285 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0-19-891228-6 / 9780198912286 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
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