1. • Name :- Aditi Vala
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• MA Sem :- 02
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• Batch :- 2020-2022
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• Roll no. :- 01
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• Enrollment No. :- 3069206420200018
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• Paper No. :- 110 ( History of English Literature From 1900 to 2000 )
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• Topic :- War poetry Vs Modern poetry
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• Email id :- valaaditi203@gmail.com
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• Submitted to :- S.B.Gardi Department Of English,MKBU
3. What is War Poetry ?
War poetry is a literary genre originated during war time
when hundreds of soldiers, and also civilians caught up
in conflict, started to write poetry as a way of striving to
express extreme emotion at the very edge of experience.
This type of poetry is almost “anti-war”, however it
include the very large questions of life as: identity,
innocence, humanity, compassion, guilt, loyalty, desire
and death.
This poems have a relation of immediate personal
experience to moments of national and international
crisis what gives war poetry an extra-literary importance.
Later on, the work of a handful of these writers became a
“sacred national text”.
4. War poetry is not necessarily ‘anti-war’.
It is, however, about the very large questions of life: identity, innocence, guilt, loyalty, courage, compassion,
humanity, duty, desire, death.
Its response to these questions, and its relation of immediate personal experience to moments of national
and international crisis, gives war poetry an extra-literary importance. Owen wrote that even Shakespeare
seems ‘vapid’ after Sassoon: ‘not of course because Sassoon is a greater artist, but because of the
subjects’.
War poetry is currently studied in every school in Britain.
It has become part of the mythology of nationhood, and an expression of both historical consciousness and
political conscience. The way we read – and perhaps revere – war poetry, says something about what we
are, and what we want to be, as a nation.
5. What is a Modern Poetry ?
Modernist poetry refers to poetry written, mainly in Europe and North
America, between 1890 and 1950 in the tradition of modernist
literature, but the dates of the term depend upon a number of factors,
including the nation of origin, the particular school in question, and the
biases of the critic setting the dates.
The critic/poet C. H. Sisson observed in his essay Poetry and Sincerity
that “Modernity has been going on for a long time. Not within living
memory has there ever been a day when young writers were not
coming up, in a threat of iconoclasm.”
6. : The Theme of Both of The Poetry :
War Poetry :-
The loss of innocence
Brotherhood and Relationship
The Horror of war
Disillusionment with religion
Nature
Irrationality of war
Emotional and feelings
Modern Poetry :-
Literature & Writing. “Of Modern Poetry” is
about one thing: what poetry is supposed
to be doing in the modern age. …
Spirituality. You can’t really talk about
Wallace Stevens without talking about
spirituality. …
Dissatisfaction. …
Life, Consciousness, and Existence.
7. : Characteristics of War Poetry :
It used gruesome and showing imagery.
It signed a break off from the contemporary poetic tradition.
It uses the actual language of the men engaged in war.
Realistic documentation of war with all its brutality.
8. : Characteristics of the Modern Poetry :
Diverse Variety of Themes.
Realism.
Love.
Pessimism.
Romantic Elements.
Nature.
Humanitarian and Democratic Note.
Religion and Mysticism.
9. War Poet :-
Rupert Brooke
Siegfried Sassoon
Wilfred Owen
Robert Graves
Edward Thomas
Isaac Rosenberg
John Beaching
Sidney Keyes
Ivor Gurney
Modern Poet :-
Wallace Stevens
T. S. Eliot
William Carlos Williams
W. H. Auden
Rainer Maria Rilke
Ezra Pound. …
Fernando Pessoa
Arthur Rimbaud
E. E. Cummings
10. : Difference Between War Poetry & Modern Poetry :
The typical messages in war poems are of the destructions that cause them, families lose loved
ones, houses, etc; Your daily routines are forced to change drastically. Another of the typical
messages is that there should not be wars again or that the same mistakes that occurred at the
time of the outbreak of the conflict are not committed.
Modern poetry is written in simple language, the language of every day speech and even
sometimes in dialect or jargon like some poems of Rudyard Kipling (in the jargon of soldiers). 2.
Modern poetry is mostly sophisticated as a result of the sophistication of the modern age, e. g. T.
S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”.
11. : Reference:
Daiches, David. “Poetry in the First World War.” Poetry, vol. 56, no. 6, 1940, pp. 323-332.
JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20582263.
NEMEROV, HOWARD. “What Was Modern Poetry ?” Salmagundi, no. 25, 1974, pp. 30-46.
JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40546805.
Shmoop Editorial Team. “Of Modern Poetry Themes.” Shmoop. Shmoop University, Inc., 11
Nov. 2008. Web. 21 Jun. 2021.
What is a War Poem? By Kate McLoughlin at https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/ via
http://writersinspire.org/content/what-war-poem. Accessed on Monday, June 21, 2021.
