Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

For those who experienced the Great War, whether as combatants or non-combatants, on the battlefields or on the home front, the Bible was a central and resonant force. It consoled and inspired, and its language was an intrinsic part of everyday as well as literary speech. This chapter considers the ways in which the poets of the Great War drew on and reinterpreted biblical themes, imagery, and language to make sense of and bear witness to the trauma of 1914 – 18.The “poets of the Great War” were not a homogeneous group, made up solely of those now in the “canon” of war literature, such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Isaac Rosenberg. It is important to bear in mind that hundreds of other lesser known – and admittedly less accomplished – poets were writing and publishing verse that appeared in newspapers, magazines, individual volumes, and edited collections often “sold for the benefit of charities.” The contents of the 1915 collection The Fiery Cross, for instance, are indicative of the outpouring of verse – and the public's appetite for it. Pride of place is given to Rupert Brooke's “The Soldier” (discussed below), but the work of poets who were enormously popular in their day, yet almost unknown to us now, such as Alfred Noyes, Owen Seaman, and Alice Meynell, is also included. And for them the Bible was a key source of inspiration and expression. Noyes's “Veterans,” for ... log in or subscribe to read full text