Effects of the first world war on Literature

World War I had a tremendous effect on English literature. The war was
reflected in the poetry of those poets who had participated in this war such as
Wilfred Owen and others. Their poems were more innovative in subject matter
than in structure. For example, they started to deal with devastated
landscapes and poison gas attacks, and the titles of their poems were
expressive of the shameful and atrocious events of this war. After World War
I, emerging writers started to use the dominant highbrow literature. In this
way, structural innovation already existed. The modernist techniques in
literature had already been developing before the war began, but they found
their greatest expressions just a few years after the war had ended.

In relation to literature, this war deeply affected life, though and social
conditions and forms. World War I was called the literary war. During the war,
many writers and poets joined the army, and they started to read poetry as a
source of home memories. Then they began to write poetry themselves. Such
works are known as "war poetry" and their authors are called "the war poets".
The most famous one of those poets was Rubert Brooke. We have to refer to
the idea that chauvinism was stronger, deeper or more widespread in 1914 than it
had been a hundred years earlier, but when the First World War began, the literary
and intellectual climate was more favorable to war literature than in any earlier
period.

Now, let’s discuss the most important literary ideas that dominated or were reflected
after the First World War. During and after World War I, literature began evolving
and changing into the type of novels and poetry. Many authors of the time became
disillusioned by the war and its aftermath that destroyed their view and belief in
traditional values. As a way of expressing this disillusionment, they broke new
literary ground.

Writers took advantage of the grief and despair within the war, and used them as a
guide to this new world of literature. More than any other war, WWI is closely related
to poetry. At that time, many poets began to evolve and become inspired by the
horror and the brutality of the war. For example, Poets expressed all negative
consequences of the war in their poems, but with different styles and ways. Among
those poets are Rudyard Kipling, John Mansfield and Robert Bridges. Also, many
poems showed perseverance, sorrow happiness, determination for the end of war
and giving endurance to the people. "The Happy Warrior" by Herbert, for example,
reflects all these ideas. In his book, Wilfred Owen comments "My subject is war, and
the piety of war. The poetry is in the piety." Eliot's poems, "The waste land" and "The
hollow men", express a sense of despair about life, using a patchwork style and
many different literary, religious and historical references.

During this time, writers started to experiment with new literary techniques. In terms
of style and content those writers showed and represented a sharp break in the
literature of the past, and started the type of literature we see today.

As for the novel, many writers published their personal diaries and memories in the
aftermath of the war. In fact the war had a great impact on the genre and style of
novels published. Most of these novels were about the war and its outcomes. Novels
conveyed the writers' concern about the horror of the war hopelessness of society.
The sharp break which happened to the style of poetry also happened to novels.
Romantic Clichés were abandoned and became replaced by the truthful and real
styles of war and desperation. Also, James Joyce developed a style known as
"stream of consciousness" which showed not only the external actions of the
character, but also the inner thoughts. At the end, we can say that literature today is
a totally different concept in society than it was in the past.
 Fiction in World War II

We will shed the light on two major branches of fiction: novel, and short story. At
first, English novel during and after World War II. The modernist writers reacted
against realism in fiction by introducing technical innovations that could be used to
look at reality from the point of view of the irrational, the subconscious, the anti-
sentimental or the highly individualistic.

The period between 1945 and 1955 witnessed a nostalgic look at the lost pre-war
past combined with a look at the new reality faced by the generation growing up in
the 1940s. For example, Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited" analyses the
present by looking backwards, searching for the flaws that cause the desolation of
the individual speaking in the present. On the other hand, the idea that civilization
contains the seeds of corruption is perhaps best expressed in William Golding's "Lord
of the Flies". William Cooper's "Scenes from Provincial Life" was the mirror in which
the new writers found an appropriate model to narrate the discontent of the post-war
generation.

The period between1945-1960 also witnessed the emergence of three important

elements in the English novel on a large scale. These elements are fantasy, realism
and experimentalism. Orwell's Political fantasies "Animal Farm" and "Nineteen
Eighty-Four” exemplify this trend. Orwell's other works are regarded as the most
important social and political commentaries of the 20th century. Orwell's use of
fantasy suggests that fantasy can be a way of expressing the anxieties caused by
history in an alternative way. On the other hand, writers such as, Henry Green and
Lawrence Durrell seem to bridge the gap between experimentalism and realism,
whereas others alternate realism with experimentalism.

Durrell’s work shows that the experimentalism derived from Modernism found a new
vein in the novel of the late 1950s. Anthony Burgess's The Clock Work Orange is an
outstanding novel outside the realistic framework, but it was written, however, by a
novelist who was also proficient in the writing of more traditional realistic novels.
If we have a look at the English novel during 1975-1990, we will find that it reveals a
healthy state of affairs, despite the constant warnings about decaying standards.
Women novelists, Angela Carter and Fay Weldon, challenge feminist tenets in their
work. The most famous female writer of novels after the war period was Agatha
Christie. She was a writer of crime novels, short stories and plays. She is
remembered for her 80 detective novels and her successful West End theatre plays.
Her famous detective work was “Hercules Poirot” which has given her the title
"Queen of Crime" and made her one of the most important and innovative writers in
the development of the genre. Other novels by Christie include "Murder on the orient
Expels" and "Death on the Nile". Another popular female writer during the Golden
Age of detective fiction was Dorothy L. Sayers.
+ Short story
 Events of World war

Even after the official end of World War I, its far-reaching effects resounded in the world for

decades in the forms of changing politics, economics and public opinion. Some of these effects

lead to the Second World War.

As a result of World War I, socialistic ideas experienced a boom as they spread not only in

Germany and the Austrian empire but also made advances in Britain and France. However, the

most popular type of government to gain influence after World War I was the republic. Before the

war, Europe contained 19 monarchies and 3 republics, yet only a few years afterward, had 13

monarchies, 14 republics and 2 regencies.

A second political outcome of World War I centers solely on the treatment of Germany in the

Treaty of Versailles of 1919. The Treaty of Versailles ended World War I between

Germany and the Allied Powers. Because Germany had lost the war, the treaty was
very harsh against Germany. Germany was forced to "accept the responsibility" of
the war damages suffered by the Allies. The treaty required that Germany pay a
huge sum of money called "reparations". Germany was only allowed to have a small
army and six naval ships. Also, land was taken away from Germany and give to
other countries. The treaty left the German economy in ruins. People were starving
and the government was in chaos. The open hostility and simmering feelings of revenge
exhibited by Germany foreshadowed the start of World War II.

After World War I, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power. The Germans were
desperate for someone to turn around their economy and restore their national pride.
Hitler offered them hope. In 1934, Hitler was proclaimed the "Fuhrer" (leader) and
became dictator of Germany. Hitler resented the restrictions put on Germany by the
Treaty of Versailles. Then Hitler looked to restore Germany to power by expanding
his empire. He first took over Austria in 1938. When the League of Nations did
nothing to stop him, Hitler became bolder and took over Czechoslovakia in 1939.
These events were the major factors which led to the outbreak of World War II.

The establishment of League of Nations was one of the outcomes of World War I.

League of Nations was an international organization set up in 1919 to help keep

world peace. According to the league, if any disputes broke out
between countries, they could be settled by negotiation rather than force. If this
failed, Countries would stop trading with the aggressive country. The main reasons

for the failure of the League of Nations were as follows: 1- Not all the countries joined

the league. 2- The league had no power. 3- The league had no army. 4- The league was

unable to act quickly.

Technology experienced a great boost after the war, as the production of automobiles, airplanes,

radios and even certain chemicals, skyrocketed. By 1914, Europe had won the respect of the world

as a reliable money-lender, yet just four years later was greatly in debt to her allies for their

generous financial contributions toward the war effort. Members of the middle class who had been

living reasonably comfortably on investments began to experience a rocky financial period.

Germany was hit the hardest in terms of struggling with war reparations, and inflation drastically

lowered the value of the German mark.

Psychologically, World War I had effects similar to those of a revolution. A growing sense of

distrust of political leaders and government officials pervaded the minds of people who had

witnessed the horror and destruction that the war brought about. A feeling of disillusionment

spread across the world as people bitterly decided that their governments in no way knew how to

serve the best interests of the people.

Summary

World War I did not completely end with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, for its political,

economic and psychological effects influenced the lives of people long after the last shot was fired.

Two main political changes rocked the world after the war: a greater number of countries began to

adopt more liberal forms of government, and an angered Germany tried to cope with the punitions

doled out to them by the victors, as its hostilities rose to the point where it provoked the Second

World War two decades later. Despite the advantages brought forth by developing technologies,

the war mainly had a damaging effect on the economies of European countries. People's hopes and

spirits also floundered, as they grew distrustful of the government and tried to cope with the

enormous death toll of the war. The turbulent period after World War I called for a major

readjustment of politics, economic policies, and views on the world.

 Short notes

Causes of Second World War:

The Second World War was one of the results of “the Great War”. It was launched in 1939 until

1945. During this war, there were two armed camps. The first camp included; Great Britain,

France, USA, Poland, and the Soviet Union. The Second Camp included Germany, Japan, Italy and

Spain. There were many causes behind this war. These causes can be divided as follows:

(1)Treaty of Versailles: The Treaty of Versailles ended World War I between

Germany and the Allied Powers. Because Germany had lost the war, the treaty was
very harsh against Germany. The treaty required that Germany pay a huge sum of
money called reparations. This treaty left the German economy in ruins. People were
starving and the government was in chaos.

(2) Fascism: With the economic turmoil left behind by World War I, some countries

were taken over by dictators who formed powerful fascist governments. The first
fascist government was Spain which was ruled by the dictator Franco. Then
Mussolini took control of Italy. These dictators wanted to expand their empires and
began to look for new lands to conquer.

(3) Hitler and the Nazi Party

In Germany, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power. In 1934, Hitler was
proclaimed the "Fuhrer" (leader) and became dictator of Germany. Hitler resented
the restrictions put on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. He looked to restore
Germany to power by expanding his empire. He first took over Austria in 1938. When
the League of Nations did nothing to stop him, Hitler became bolder and took over
Czechoslovakia in 1939.

(4) Appeasement: After World War 1, the nations of Europe were weary and did not
want another war. Countries, such as Britain and France, tried to make Germany and
Hitler happy rather than try to stop him. Unfortunately, the policy of appeasement
backfired. It only made Hitler bolder. It also gave him time to build up his army.
Poetry of the First World War:

World War I had a tremendous effect on English literature. The war was
reflected in the poetry of those poets who had participated in this war such as
Wilfred Owen and others. Their poems were more innovative in subject matter
than in structure. For example, they started to deal with devastated
landscapes and poison gas attacks, and the titles of their poems were
expressive of the shameful and atrocious events of this war.
During the war, many writers and poets joined the army, and they started to
read poetry as a source of home memories. Then they began to write poetry
themselves. Such works are known as "war poetry" and their authors are
called "The war poets". The most famous one of those poets was Rubert
Brooke. His most famous poem is "The Soldier".
WWI is closely related to poetry. At that time, many poets began to evolve
and become inspired by the horror and the brutality of the war. For example,
Poets expressed consequences of the war in their poems, but with different
styles and ways. Among those poets are Rudyard Kipling, John Mansfield
and Robert Bridges. Also, many poems showed perseverance, sorrow
happiness, determination for the end of war and giving endurance to the
people. "The Happy Warrior" by Herbert, for example, reflects all these ideas.
Eliot's poems, "The waste land" and "The hollow men", express a sense of
despair about life, using a patchwork style and many different literary,
religious and historical references.
Women writings:
Short notes
Monarchy:

The aftermath of World War I also marked the practical end of

monarchy on the continent and of European colonialism throughout the
rest of the world. Most European nations began to rely increasingly
upon parliamentary systems of government, and socialism gained
increasing popularity. The brutality of the conflict and the enormous loss
of human life inspired a renewed determination among nations to rely
upon diplomacy to resolve conflicts in the future. This resolve directly
inspired the birth of the League of Nations. Before the First World war, Europe
contained 19 monarchies and 3 republics, yet only a few years afterward, had 13 monarchies, 14

republics and 2 regencies.

World War 1 was devastating for European monarchies from the defeated

nations. It effectively ended the monarchies of Germany, Austria-Hungary and

Russia. But it is worth bearing in mind that many other monarchies survived, and

it was actually World War 2 that ended up finishing them. Both the Romanian and

Serbian/Yugoslav monarchies were effectively ended by World War 2, and the

Greek and Italian monarchies did not long survive the unpopularity wrought by

the war.
Germany signed the treaty because of food shortages in their country after the British
put a naval blockage on the country.

the First World War looms so much larger in English Literature, as taught in
schools and universities, than in the literatures of the other belligerents.

From the very first week, the 1914-18 war inspired enormous quantities of
poetry and fiction. The claim that three million war poems were written in
Germany in the first six months of hostilities is difficult to substantiate, but
Catherine W. Reilly has counted 2,225 English poets of the First World War,
of whom 1,808 were civilians. For example, William quickly decided that his
war poems should be 'so much in evidence that people [would] be saying that
W.W. is the real national poet in this crisis', and had sixteen different war
poems printed in various newspapers in the first six weeks.

The listing of wartime poets writing in French in Jean Vic's La Litterature de la Guerre
runs to eighteen pages. One of the most influential of all war novels, Henri
Barbusse's Le Feu, appeared in 1916, won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in the
following year. Among the novel's admirers were the English poets, Siegfried
Sassoon and Wilfrid Owen. Vincente Blasco Ibanez's international best-seller, Los
Cuatro Jinetes del Apocalipsis, which was made into a spectacular film after the war,
starring Rudolph Valentino, was also first published in 1916, the English version, The
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, appearing in 1918.

With regard to prose writing in general, Second World War writing simply has
never had the benefit of the ideological cross-currents that helped establish
the reputation of Ernst Junger, Erich Maria Remarque, Robert Graves and
Siegfried Sassoon, though some of the Second World War memoirs that have
been published are very good indeed, especially some of those printed during
the last twenty years when war reminiscences have been somewhat out of
fashion. With regard specifically to fiction, the Second World War has
probably inspired work of much higher quality than the First, though in many
instances Second World War novels were produced by authors who either
had previously written, or were later to write, better things: Evelyn Waugh,
Norman Mailer, Albert Camus, Heinrich Boll may be cited as examples. Two
British authors whose very best work, somewhat lost amongst large oeuvres
of consistently high quality, was inspired by their wartime experiences at
some distance from the firing line, are Anthony Powell and Graham Greene.
None of the six writers just mentioned are normally seen specifically as war
writers in the way Junger, Remarque or Sassoon are seen, despite their
writings on other topics. There is no real objective reason for this: it is simply a
matter of perspective, perhaps one should say, of critics' convenience.

But the question of how we see the past is not merely theoretic and academic.
We live in a world which the events of 1914-18 helped to shape – for example
both Iraq and the still-not-quite-dead federal state of Yugoslavia were
creations of the post-war settlement – and, more important, our perception of
modern warfare is to a large extent something which has been transmitted to
us by those who experienced the 1914-18 war at first hand. What e they have
to tell us, despite its remote incongruous- seeming and extravagantly horrific
details, is still painfully relevant. The First World War ended seventy-five years
ago this month, but events in Sarajevo still mock our hopes of a peaceful and
secure future.
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It seems however that warfare was not regarded as a suitable subject for
literature, and though the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars extended over
twenty-three years they figure as little more than an off-stage rumble in the
works of most writers of the period. This was the case not only in Britain,
where there was no military conscription and where the war was mainly
something reported (very sketchily) in the newspapers, but also in France,
Spain and the Italian states. A partial exception was Germany, where the
nationalist revival between 1809 and 1814 engendered some novels (quickly
forgotten) and a great deal of verse, much of it still in print and making a
contribution to German nationalist sentiment in 1914.

It is no coincidence that the reputation of the First World War poet who is
most admired today, Wilfrid Owen, dates from the 1960s, a period which
developed its own distinctive image of the 1914-18 war. The moral and
intellectual timeliness of what writers have to say is at least as important for
their standing with the critics as the way they say it: this has been evident in
more recent times in the case of books (and films) about the Vietnam War.

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How lead to ii

In terms of actual quantity, more has now been written about the Second
World War than about the First World War, except, it seems, in verse. That
there is less poetry of the Second World War than the First must be attributed
to a shift in the status of poetry during the intervening years, though this shift
is not in itself a sign of decline in the form's real vitality, as the vast majority of
First World War poems are distinctly reminiscent of nineteenth-century album
verse and are less a statement of contemporary sensibility than a proof of the
capacity of the outmoded to survive, in literature as elsewhere.

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It is probable however that the real difference between the literature of 1914-
18 and of 1939-45 is in the way in which we see it. Of Catherine W. Reilly's
2,225 English poets of the First World War, scarcely a dozen are
remembered, and perhaps fewer than a dozen others have any real claim to
be added to the anthologies. In Germany and Italy there were writers who had
major reputations in the 1920s and 1930s but whose standing has been
radically affected by the downfall of the German and Italian dictatorships in
the 1940s. In both countries the works of frontline authors such as Ernst
Junger, Werner Beumelberg, Paolo Monelli and Piero Jahier made a crucial
contribution to the intellectual and ideological climate within which the fascist
regimes established themselves.

Equally, the lesser bulk of Second World War poetry is still bulky enough to
include, potentially, some major poets. But, as already suggested, more than
99 per cent of First World War poetry is not very impressive, and if 99.9 per
cent of First World War poets were not as good as Wilfred Owen or Isaac
Rosenberg, the fact that none of the Second World War poets were as good
may be put down to chance – including the chance of being recognised – as
much as anything else.

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By contrast, the 1939-45 war began when many of the artistic and literary
innovations of the earlier years of the century were wearing themselves out.
Perhaps more important, the battlefield horrors which had had a shocking
novelty in 1914 were now drearily familiar. As the poet Keith Douglas
explained in 1943:

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In France the tradition of naturalisme was the determining influence on

Barbusse's Le Feu; he had already made his name as a neo-naturalist
novelist with L'Enfer before the war. Amongst British writers the rather
different brand of realism popularised by Thomas Hardy (both as novelist and
as poet) was a major influence. The degree to which the war came in 1914 at
just the moment when the idiom by which to describe it was being developed
is even more evident in painting: among British artists, Christopher Nevinson
found in Italian Futurism, and Paul Nash in the newly voguish art of Paul
Cezanne, a pictorial medium with which to portray the effect of machine-age
warfare on men and on landscape.

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I when the First World War began, the literary and intellectual climate was
much more favourable to war literature than in any earlier period. Tolstoy's
War and Peace, with its graphic evocations of combat and its interweaving of
peacetime preoccupations and wartime catastrophes, was internationally
admired as one of the world's greatest novels – perhaps the greatest – and
was still recent enough to suggest imitation. Amongst writers influenced by it
was Walter Bloem, whose novel trilogy about the Franco-Prussian War of
1870 was a best-seller in Germany: later, his reminiscences of life as a
frontline officer in the First World War were to show the advantages both of a
practised pen and of a trained sensibility.

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There can be no dispute that the 1914-18 conflict was far more of a literary
event than the previous continent-wide war, that of 1792-1815, though one
tends to overlook how much was also written about this earlier struggle.
William Matthew's British Autobiographies (1955), under the index entry for
the Napoleonic and Peninsular Wars, lists eighty-seven published journals
and memoirs by army personnel alone – including, in anticipation of Siegfried
Sassoon's 1950s classic, a volume entitled Memoirs of an Infantry Officer.
There were also a couple of score novels by participants (John Davis' The
Post-Captain of 1806 was the model for authors like Frederick Marryat,
Edward Howard and Frederick Chamier whose naval yarns were a staple of
young people's literature later in the nineteenth century) and a quantity of
verse, some of it by combatants, nearly all of it deathly rather than deathless.