English 12 / Unit 6: Modern and Postcolonial Literature
6.1 The Poets of World War I
Notes
World War I (1914 to 1918) changed how writers saw war. Early poems often praised patriotism; later poems showed horror.
- Rupert Brooke's "The Soldier" (1914) is idealistic: "If I should die, think only this of me: / That there's some corner of a foreign field / That is for ever England."
- Wilfred Owen (killed 1918) wrote realistic poems about gas and trench life. In "Dulce et Decorum Est" the soldiers are "Bent double, like old beggars under sacks."
- Owen calls the Latin phrase "Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori" ("it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country") "the old Lie."
- Techniques: vivid sensory imagery, simile, irregular rhythm, and irony in the title.
Practice
How does Rupert Brooke's "The Soldier" mainly view dying for one's country?
Brooke's early-war poem is patriotic and comforting.
"Bent double, like old beggars under sacks" is an example of:
The "like" comparison shows exhaustion.
Owen calls "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" "the old Lie." What is he arguing?
He uses the horrors he describes to deny the glory of war.
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