This definitive volume will profoundly alter our understanding of the literature of the Great War. New critical approaches have, over the last two decades, redefined the term 'war literature' and its cultural legacy. Consisting, in equal measure, of essays by male and female scholars (from several different countries), and devoted to both familiar and lesser-known works, this book presents the many faces of Great War literary study at the millennium.

A new edition of Paul Fussell's literate, literary, and illuminating account of the Great War, now a classic text of literary and cultural criticism.

In an introduction written for this edition, Alexander Saxton reveals that he does not regret having been a Communist, even though his political convictions cost him job opportunities.

How does irony affect the evaluation and perception of the First World War both then and now? Irony and the Poetry of the First World War traces one of the major features of war poetry from the author's application as a means of disguise, criticism or psychological therapy to its perception and interpretation by the reader.

This book brings together a collection of works by scholars who have produced some of the most innovative and influential work on the topic of First World War nursing in the last ten years. The contributors employ an interdisciplinary collaborative approach that takes into account multiple facets of Allied wartime nursing: historical contexts (history of the profession, recruitment, teaching, different national socio-political contexts), popular cultural stereotypes (in propaganda, popular culture) and longstanding gender norms (woman-as-nurturer). They draw on a wide range of hitherto neglected historical sources, including diaries, novels, letters and material culture. The result is a fully-rounded new study of nurses’ unique and compelling perspectives on the unprecedented experiences of the First World War.

Recent scholarship has broadened definitions of war and shifted from the narrow focus on battles and power struggles to include narratives of the homefront and private sphere. To expand scholarship on textual representations of war means to shed light on the multiple theaters of war, and on the many voices who contributed to, were affected by, and/or critiqued German war efforts. Engaged women writers and artists commented on their nations' imperial and colonial ambitions and the events of the tumultuous beginning of the twentieth century. In an interdisciplinary investigation, this volume explores select female-authored, German-language texts focusing on German colonial wars and World War I and the discourses that promoted or critiqued their premises. They examine how colonial conflicts contributed to a persistent atmosphere of Kriegsbegeisterung (war enthusiasm) that eventually culminated in the outbreak of World War I, or a Kriegskritik (criticism of war) that resisted it. The span from German colonialism to World War I brings these explosive periods into relief and challenges readers to think about the intersection of nationalism, violence and gender and about the historical continuities and disruptions that shape such events.