Influence Of Modern Literature On The Representation Of The First World War

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The advent of the modern era ushered in a great demand imagist works and garnered a lot of popularity, especially in connection to literature. War and all atrocities associated with it were important focal points for creators of imagist literature and reality had become a very important aspect to create an impact on the patrons of such literature. In this paper, a parallel will be drawn between films and poems to show the transition in the representation of war in literature from anti- war and victorian sentiments to realistic depiction of war. In order to do so, I will make references to poems and films pertaining to the First World War and show the change in representation of the First World War between 1914 -1917 and also post 1917. Influence of Modern poetry in representation of war was seen in 1914 and the following years very prominently. Until then, most poets would focus on themes like patriotism, loyalty, honor, love and other positive ideal concepts. It took the occurrence of a world war for poets to begin looking at war for the horror that it was and letting its reality set in. A very prominent example of this is Channel Firing by Thomas Hardy. The verses of the poem are as follows,

That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgment-day

This poem was written by Hardy just after the War had begun. It
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