This document examines the historical accuracy of the novel Regeneration and its portrayal of shell shock treatment in World War I. It discusses key figures involved in treating shell shock like W.H. Rivers and the Craiglockhart hospital. It also analyzes Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen's poetry from this time period. The document argues that as a work of historiographic metafiction, Regeneration can take liberties with history to serve as both a fictional exploration and a meditation on real historical events.

1. RE-REGENERATION
Exploring Regeneration’s Realities
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by Ivan Raczycki

2. To Ponder:
• If the realities of Barker’s Regeneration
are weak, what purpose does it serve
as a piece of history?
• Alternately, if the realities are strong,
what purpose does it serve as a piece
of fiction?

3. HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION
• Historiographic metafiction is one kind of postmodern
novel which rejects projecting present beliefs and
standards onto the past and asserts the specificity
and particularity of the individual past event.
(Hutcheon)

4. Craiglockhart
• Arguably most “famous” shell-shock hospital
• Nicknamed “Dottyville” by Sassoon
• Only open for 28 months
• “The commandant was notified that someone else would take over his
commandancy, and the rest of the staff sent in their resignations as a
demonstration of loyalty to him” (Sassoon)
• After Bryce’s ejection, taken over by Colonel Balfour Graham
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5. HYDRA
• Not strictly
poetry
• Event listings
• Thick with
advertisement
• Once edited by
Owen
• Enemy of Balfour
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6. W.H. Rivers
• Never fit for army
• A ship’s surgeon
• Attended and taught at Cambridge
• Stammered
• Aware of Freud, though did not necessarily subscribe to his methods
• Great friend of Sassoon
• Died in 1922 of hernia complications
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7. Wilfred Owen
• Originally served 4 months in war
• Published exclusively in Hydra
• Said to have mimicked Sassoon
originally, but found own voice
• “I can see no excuse for deceiving you
about these last four days. I have
suffered seventh hell”
• “I know I shall be killed. But it's the only
place I can make my protest from.”
• Died Nov 4, news of death reached
home Nov 11
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8. ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.8
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

9. Siegfried Sassoon
• Decorated war “hero”, nicknamed Mad
Jack
• Brother Hamo killed in 1915
• Sent home in 1916, brought back, left
again in 1917
• Published his Declaration in the Times in
June 1917
• Became mentor to Owen at Craiglockhart
• Posted first to Palestine, then to France,
where he suffered a head wound and
remained in England
• Despite homosexuality, married Hester
Gatty and had a son, George
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10. DECLARATION AGAINST THE WAR
I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority,
because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who
have the power to end it.
I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe
that this War, on which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now
become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purpose for which I
and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated
as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the
objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.
I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer
be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and
unjust.
I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political
errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.
On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the
deception which is being practised on them; also I believe that I may help to
destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard
the contrivance of agonies which they do not, and which they have not sufficient
imagination to realize.

11. THE ISSUE OF BILLY PRIOR
• Not an issue.
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12. Regeneration (1997)
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HOW META IS THIS!?

13. FINAL STATEMENT
• If the function of a historiographic metafiction
is to gaze at moments since passed with the
same in-the-moment meditations and beliefs,
Regeneration is successful. If its function is to
exaggerate, or rather, take liberty of historical
situations to further fiction as means of
explanations for these events, it succeeds as
well. The appropriation of history not as a
commentary, but truly as an engaged work of
fiction: the definition refined.

14. END.
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