Authoring War: The Literary Representation of War from the Iliad to Iraq

Description

Kate McLoughlin's Authoring War is an ambitious and pioneering study of war writing across all literary genres from earliest times to the present day. Examining a range of cultures, she brings wide reading and close rhetorical analysis to illuminate how writers have met the challenge of representing violence, chaos and loss. War gives rise to problems of epistemology, scale, space, time, language and logic. She emphasises the importance of form to an understanding of war literature and establishes connections across periods and cultures from Homer to the 'War on Terror'. Exciting new critical groupings arise in consequence, as Byron's Don Juan is read alongside Heller's Catch-22 and English Civil War poetry alongside Second World War letters. Innovative in its approach and inventive in its encyclopedic range, Authoring War will be indispensable to any discussion of war representation.

Kate McLoughlin is Lecturer in English Literature at Birkbeck, University of London.

'Its scope is astonishing: McLoughlin writes authoritatively about Homer and Heller, Virgil and Vonnegut. She crosses genres and periods sure-footedly ... impeccably scholarly and well written ... I would strongly recommend it to anyone interested in the relationship between war and literature.' Tim Kendall, War Poetry '... fantastic ... the range of references is just stunning ... theoretically astute and beautifully written.' Santanu Das '... an exceptional monograph that incisively and originally engages with a great number of war texts and a vast body of research on war literature ... [Kate McLoughlin's] perceptive claims are an invaluable resource to those working in the field.' War, Literature and the Arts '... an important intervention into critical discussion of war literature.' Roy Scranton, Partial Answers