Style The speeches by the dead seem too much like “playwright speak” rather than words young soldiers would utter.   The acting was spotty and the tone was weird mixture of expressionist drama and satirical farce.  Since Promethean Theatre Ensemble has mounted many excellent shows, they are allowed one ill advised show. Writing and reading of fiction was seriously disoriented by the events of the Second World War. The paper shortage meant a reduction in published books. There was a proportional increase in the number of short story titles. The short story enabled rapid response to the constantly changing conditions of Phoney War, Conscription, Blitz, housing crisis and the reorganization of the workforce. It reflects the rhythm of everyday life and profound sense of historical discontinuity. Short story was the medium of choice for conveying a shared experience of fragmentation, unpredictability and the psychological stress of having to live from moment to moment. Elizabeth Bowen was clear about the historical role of short fiction and the necessity to defer the writing novels until after war had finished. “When today has become yesterday, it will have integrated” Those novels that were written and published during the war often gravitated towards the problem of integration, specifically towards the challenge of grasping the imaginative, if not the practical, means of maintain the continuity of British traditions, customs and ideas about identity, at the time of historical irresolution. The shock of disorientation is captured most powerfully in representations of Blitz: in the opening strangeness of James Hanley’s novel “No Direction” where a drunken sailor stumbles over broken glass in a London street, imaging himself to be stranded on pack-ice in the course of breaking up; in the fighting stories of William Sansom, that react to the Blitz as a bombardment of the senses into intense to be assimilated by conventional methods of perception and representation. A sharpened awareness of new condition of thought, of a mentality seemingly unrelated to previous historical episodes expressed in the writings of Henry Green. What I saw…….finished blasting. This point of the story concerns the rescue of a man who has been blown down a hole in the ground, the writings slows right down, becomes especially intricate and involved precisely in order to emphasize feelings of isolation and abandonment. In Green’s fiction it is more often a reflection of being “caught” or trapped in a circularity, able to see that things are hidden, constrained, to be uncertain whether the present is intelligibly connected to, or disconnected from, the movement of history. In “The Happy Autumn Fields” the country home and surrounding fields owned by a late Victorian or Edwardian family. There is no direct connection between the characters and events of these two scenarios, or none that can be given a rational basis. The character Sarah, seen in the autumn landscape of the

1. British fiction of
the war
by
Rod Mengham

2. Dr. Rod Mengham, Jesus
 Biographical Information
 Rod Mengham is Reader in Modern English Literature in the Faculty of
English and Curator of Works of Art at Jesus College
 Research Interests
 1930s and 1940s; modernism; contemporary fiction and poetry;
contemporary art
 Areas of Graduate Supervision
 Nineteenth and twentieth century fiction; 1930s; 1940s; modernism;
contemporary poetry and fiction. Contributes to teaching and/or
supervision for the post-1830 MPhil and PhDs on literary subjects in the
post-1830 period.
2

3. Style
 The speeches by the dead seem too much like
“playwright speak” rather than words young soldiers
would utter.
 The acting was spotty and the tone was weird mixture
of expressionist drama and satirical farce.
 Since Promethean Theatre Ensemble has mounted
many excellent shows, they are allowed one ill advised
show.
3

4. 4
Writing and reading of fiction was seriously
disoriented by the events of the Second World War.
The paper shortage meant a reduction in published
books.
There was a proportional increase in the number of
short story titles.
The short story enabled rapid response to the
constantly changing conditions of Phoney War,
Conscription, Blitz, housing crisis and the
reorganization of the workforce.

5. 5
It reflects the rhythm of everyday life and
profound sense of historical discontinuity.
Short story was the medium of choice for
conveying a shared experience of
fragmentation, unpredictability and the
psychological stress of having to live from
moment to moment.

6. 6
 Elizabeth Bowen was clear about the historical role of short fiction and
the necessity to defer the writing novels until after war had finished.
“When today has become yesterday, it will have integrated”
 Those novels that were written and published during the war often
gravitated towards the problem of integration, specifically towards the
challenge of grasping the imaginative, if not the practical, means of
maintain the continuity of British traditions, customs and ideas about
identity, at the time of historical irresolution.

7. 7
The shock of disorientation is captured most powerfully in
representations of Blitz: in the opening strangeness of
James Hanley’s novel “No Direction” where a drunken sailor
stumbles over broken glass in a London street, imaging
himself to be stranded on pack-ice in the course of breaking
up; in the fighting stories of William Sansom, that react to
the Blitz as a bombardment of the senses into intense to be
assimilated by conventional methods of perception and
representation.

8. 8
A sharpened awareness of new condition of thought,
of a mentality seemingly unrelated to previous
historical episodes expressed in the writings of
Henry Green.
What I saw…….finished blasting.
This point of the story concerns the rescue of a man
who has been blown down a hole in the ground, the
writings slows right down, becomes especially
intricate and involved precisely in order to
emphasize feelings of isolation and abandonment.

9. 9
In Green’s fiction it is more often a reflection of being
“caught” or trapped in a circularity, able to see that things
are hidden, constrained, to be uncertain whether the
present is intelligibly connected to, or disconnected from,
the movement of history.
In “The Happy Autumn Fields” the country home and
surrounding fields owned by a late Victorian or Edwardian
family. There is no direct connection between the
characters and events of these two scenarios, or none that
can be given a rational basis.

10. 10
The character Sarah, seen in the autumn
landscape of the turn of the century, seems
to be figure dreamed of by Mary in wartime
London, and it is implied that Mary is
dreamed of by Sarah.
The barrier of realism that keeps them
separate is obscured in the vividness of
their individual reveries.
As Mary regains consciousness it seems
possible just for a moment that she might
wake up not as herself but as Sarah

11. 11
Bowen makes neither character simply the
creature of the other’s imagination and
hesitates in the allocation of active and
passive roles.
As Mary emerges from dream to reality,
she merges into dramatically altered
reality, material environment that is
stranger than any dream.
As she takes her bearings by family
objects, the aftermath of the bombing, the
aftermath of the bombing turns this
experience into one of defamiliarization.

12. 12
The imaginative leap into her own past
reaches after a condition that is now as
divorced from the present as the turn-of-
the-century tableaux.
This story is one of several in the same
volume that locates the center of shared
experiences during the Blitz in the intensity
of dreams, fantasies, hallucinations, in an
imaginative surplus that cannot be housed
satisfactorily in a realist aesthetic.

13. Conclusion
The writing of that time was basically more short
stories, overwhelming desires to restore the coherence
of relation between past, present and future days
draws a large number of war writings.
13