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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
The Meaning Of Peace: William Faulkner, Modernism, And Perpetual Civil War, Jason Luke Folk
The Meaning Of Peace: William Faulkner, Modernism, And Perpetual Civil War, Jason Luke Folk
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Much of scholarship regarding the presence of war in literary modernism has foregrounded psychic trauma endured by veterans of World War I. The returning soldier is often figured as representative of the war’s infiltration of the homefront. The common argument claims that the erosion of the distinction between war and peace (as well as private and public) is a mirror image of the veteran’s wounded psyche. This thesis, however, argues that peace and war in the West have always been indistinct. The body politic is, in actuality, constituted by a perpetual civil war. Furthermore, the novels of William Faulkner, because …
“The World Broke In Two”: The Gendered Experience Of Trauma And Fractured Civilian Identity In Post-World War I Literature, Erin Cheatham
“The World Broke In Two”: The Gendered Experience Of Trauma And Fractured Civilian Identity In Post-World War I Literature, Erin Cheatham
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
This thesis examines the complexities of civilian identity and the crisis of gender in twentieth century fiction produced after World War I. Of central concern are four novels written by prominent women authors, novels that deal with themes of trauma, violence, and shifting gender roles in a post-war society: Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier, Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House, and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Jacob’s Room. Although these novels do not directly portray the battlefield experiences of war, I argue that, at their core, they are “war novels” in the fullest sense, concerned with the …