Item – Theses Canada

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OCLC number
46557839
Author
Bell, Amy Helen,1973-
Title
Nought were we spared : British women poets of the Great War.
Degree
M.A. -- Dalhousie University, 1997
Publisher
Ottawa : National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, [1998]
Description
3 microfiches.
Notes
Includes bibliographical references.
Abstract
This thesis addresses the exclusion of British women's poetry from the literary and cultural canon of war literature. The introduction focuses on the historical ommission of women writers from literary anthologies and critical works, and the construction of a masculinist vision of war experience and representation. The first chapter describes the social history of women in war time, both in terms of their war work and conditions at home. The second chapter looks at women poets' literary representation of their wartime experiences. These poems show the tension between traditional stereotypes of femininity and the new tasks women were asked to perform in war. They also reveal the guilt, shame and anger that women felt as "non-combatants", and the losses they faced through bereavement and privation. The third chapter examines the various metaphors and images women poets used to characterize war itself. British Women's Great War poetry reveals the various literary and ideological strategies these writers used to explore a femininity problematized by the experiences and rhetoric of war. It is only by looking critically at the works of women poets. and the historical circumstances in which they were written that the exclusion of these writers from the cultural canon can be redressed.
ISBN
0612249565
9780612249561