Mark Rawlinson

Pat Barker

Mary A. Favret

Andrew Zurcher

Carol Watts

Catherine A. M. Clarke

Joanna Bellis

James Purdon

Susanna A. Throop

Katie L. Walter

Tom F. Wright

Reflections on the uneasy yet symbiotic relations of war and writing, from medieval to modern literature.

War and Literature

No. 57 Apri - Jun 2010

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Pat Barker is one of the leading British political and historical novelists of her generation. This introduction places her fiction in historical and theoretical contexts. Including a timeline of key dates and an interview with the author, Rawlinson establishes the cultural importance of her work and provides an overview of its critical reception.

Pat Barker has established herself as one of the leading British political and historical novelists of the generation growing up in the wake of the Second World War. This book provides students with an introduction to her work, placing the fiction in clear historical, critical and theoretical contexts. Including a timeline of key dates and an interview with the author, Rawlinson both establishes the cultural importance of Barker's work and provides an overview of its academic and critical reception.

The First World War (1914–1918) marked a turning point in modern history and culture and its literary legacy is vast: poetry, fiction and memoirs abound. But the drama of the period is rarely recognised, with only a handful of plays commonly associated with the war. First World War Plays draws together canonical and lesser-known plays from the First World War to the end of the twentieth century, tracing the ways in which dramatists have engaged with and resisted World War I in their works. Spanning almost a century of conflict, this anthology explores the changing cultural attitudes to warfare, including the significance of the war over time, interwar pacifism, and historical revisionism. The collection includes writing by combatants, as well as playwrights addressing historical events and national memory, by both men and women, and by writers from Great Britain and the United States. Plays from the period, like Night Watches by Allan Monkhouse (1916), Mine Eyes Have Seen by Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1918) and Tunnel Trench by Hubert Griffith (1924), are joined with reflections on the war in Post Mortem by Noël Coward (1930, performed 1944) and Oh What A Lovely War by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop (1963) as well as later works The Accrington Pals by Peter Whelan (1982) and Sea and Land and Sky by Abigail Docherty (2010). Accompanied by a general introduction by editor, Dr Mark Rawlinson.

Night Watches, Mine Eyes Have Seen, Tunnel Trench, Post Mortem, Oh What A Lovely War, The Accrington Pals, Sea and Land and Sky

First World War Plays

Mark Rawlinson

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