Politics and Literature at the Dawn of World War II

Mining the borderlands where history meets literature in Britain and Europe as well as America, this book shows how the imminence and outbreak of World War II ignited the imaginations of writers ranging from Ernest Hemingway, W.H. Auden, and James Joyce to Bertolt Brecht, Evelyn Waugh, Henry Green, and Irene Nemirovsky. Taking its cue from Percy Shelley''s dictum that great writers are to some extent created by the age in which they live, this book shows how much the politics and warfare of the years from 1939 to 1941 drove the literature of this period. Its novels, poems, and plays differ radically from histories of World War II because-besides being works of imagination-- they are largely products of a particular stage in the author''s life as well as of a time at which no one knew how the war would end. This is the first comprehensive study of the impact of the outbreak of the Second World War on the literary work of American, English, and European writers during its first years.>

About the author

James A. W. Heffernan is Professor of English Emeritus, Dartmouth College, USA.

Product details

• Authors: James A W Heffernan, James A. W. Heffernan
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 08.08.2024
• EAN: 9781350474802
• ISBN: 978-1-350-47480-2
• No. of pages: 216
• Dimensions: 154 mm x 232 mm x 12 mm
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; LITERARY CRITICISM / European / German, LITERARY CRITICISM / European / French, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, LITERARY CRITICISM / Subjects & Themes / Historical Events, Second World War, c 1938 to c 1946 (World War Two period), Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000