DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Verses of a V.A.D" by Vera Brittain. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
During the First World War and its immediate aftermath, hundreds of women wrote thousands of poems on multiple themes and for many different purposes. Womens poetry was published, sold (sometimes to raise funds for charities as diverse as Beef Tea for Troops or The Blue Cross Fund for Warhorses), read, preserved, awarded prizes and often critically acclaimed. Tumult and Tears will demonstrate how womens war poetry, like that of their male counterparts, was largely based upon their day-to-day lives and contemporary beliefs. Poems are placed within their wartime context. From war worker to parent; from serving daughter to grieving mother, sweetheart, wife; from writing whilst within earshot of the guns, whilst making the munitions of war, or whilst sitting in relative safety at home, these predominantly amateur, middle-class poets explore, with a few tantalising gaps, nearly every aspect of womens wartime lives, from their newly public often uniformed roles to their sexuality.
This collection of Vera Brittain's poetry and prose, some of it never published before, commemorates the men she loved - fiancé, brother and two close friends - who served and died in the First World War. It draws on her experiences as a VAD nurse in London, Malta, and France, and illustrates her growing conviction of the wickedness of all war. Illustrated with many extraordinary photographs from Brittain's own albums, and edited with a new introduction by Mark Bostridge, Because You Died is an elegy to men who lost their lives in a bloody conflict, and a volume of remembrance to mark the ninetieth anniversary of the Armistice.
As we approach the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, this timely reissue, first published in 1991, evaluates the function of poetry in wartime Europe, arguing that war poetry must be understood as a social as well as a literary phenomenon. As well as locating the work of well-known French, English and German war poets in a European context, Elizabeth Marsland discusses lesser-known poetry of the war years, including poems by women and the neglected tradition of civilian protest through poetry. Identifying shared characteristics as well as the unique features of each nation’s poetry, The Nation’s Cause affords new insight into the relationship between nationalism and the social attitudes that determined the conduct of war.
The Arts of Memory and the Poetics of Remembering This collection of essays explores the dynamics of representation, transmission and circulation of memory, as well as the role of personal and collective memory in shaping meanings, values, attitudes and identities. Bringing together a group of international scholars from different disciplines, the book examines various literary, artistic, psychological, social, historical and political narratives, ranging from British women’s elegies of the First World War to the Brooklyn Dodgers to the constructed narratives of Lincoln University’s founding ideals to photographs of the Holocaust and Nazi Camp testimonies. Among the key features of the book’s approach is its focus on memory, not as a static entity, but as a set of malleable patterns and strategies that highlight both the unity of the concept of memory and the diversity of its human expressions and artistic forms.
The First World War has given rise to a multifaceted cultural production like no other historical event. This handbook surveys British literature and film about the war from 1914 until today. The continuing interest in World War I highlights the interdependence of war experience, the imaginative re-creation of that experience in writing, and individual as well as collective memory. In the first part of the handbook, the major genres of war writing and film are addressed, including of course poetry and the novel, but also the short story; furthermore, it is shown how our conception of the Great War is broadened when looked at from the perspective of gender studies and post-colonial criticism. The chapters in the second part present close readings of important contributions to the literary and filmic representation of World War I in Great Britain. All in all, the contributions demonstrate how the opposing forces of focusing and canon-formation on the one hand, and broadening and revision of the canon on the other, have characterised British literature and culture of the First World War.
