Author: Neil Ramsey
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351885677
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
Examining the memoirs and autobiographies of British soldiers during the Romantic period, Neil Ramsey explores the effect of these as cultural forms mediating warfare to the reading public during and immediately after the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Forming a distinct and commercially successful genre that in turn inspired the military and nautical novels that flourished in the 1830s, military memoirs profoundly shaped nineteenth-century British culture's understanding of war as Romantic adventure, establishing images of the nation's middle-class soldier heroes that would be of enduring significance through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As Ramsey shows, the military memoir achieved widespread acclaim and commercial success among the reading public of the late Romantic era. Ramsey assesses their influence in relation to Romantic culture's wider understanding of war writing, autobiography, and authorship and to the shifting relationships between the individual, the soldier, and the nation. The memoirs, Ramsey argues, participated in a sentimental response to the period's wars by transforming earlier, impersonal traditions of military memoirs into stories of the soldier's personal suffering. While the focus on suffering established in part a lasting strand of anti-war writing in memoirs by private soldiers, such stories also helped to foster a sympathetic bond between the soldier and the civilian that played an important role in developing ideas of a national war and functioned as a central component in a national commemoration of war.
The Military Memoir and Romantic Literary Culture, 1780–1835
Author: Neil Ramsey
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351885677
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
Examining the memoirs and autobiographies of British soldiers during the Romantic period, Neil Ramsey explores the effect of these as cultural forms mediating warfare to the reading public during and immediately after the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Forming a distinct and commercially successful genre that in turn inspired the military and nautical novels that flourished in the 1830s, military memoirs profoundly shaped nineteenth-century British culture's understanding of war as Romantic adventure, establishing images of the nation's middle-class soldier heroes that would be of enduring significance through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As Ramsey shows, the military memoir achieved widespread acclaim and commercial success among the reading public of the late Romantic era. Ramsey assesses their influence in relation to Romantic culture's wider understanding of war writing, autobiography, and authorship and to the shifting relationships between the individual, the soldier, and the nation. The memoirs, Ramsey argues, participated in a sentimental response to the period's wars by transforming earlier, impersonal traditions of military memoirs into stories of the soldier's personal suffering. While the focus on suffering established in part a lasting strand of anti-war writing in memoirs by private soldiers, such stories also helped to foster a sympathetic bond between the soldier and the civilian that played an important role in developing ideas of a national war and functioned as a central component in a national commemoration of war.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351885677
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
Examining the memoirs and autobiographies of British soldiers during the Romantic period, Neil Ramsey explores the effect of these as cultural forms mediating warfare to the reading public during and immediately after the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Forming a distinct and commercially successful genre that in turn inspired the military and nautical novels that flourished in the 1830s, military memoirs profoundly shaped nineteenth-century British culture's understanding of war as Romantic adventure, establishing images of the nation's middle-class soldier heroes that would be of enduring significance through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As Ramsey shows, the military memoir achieved widespread acclaim and commercial success among the reading public of the late Romantic era. Ramsey assesses their influence in relation to Romantic culture's wider understanding of war writing, autobiography, and authorship and to the shifting relationships between the individual, the soldier, and the nation. The memoirs, Ramsey argues, participated in a sentimental response to the period's wars by transforming earlier, impersonal traditions of military memoirs into stories of the soldier's personal suffering. While the focus on suffering established in part a lasting strand of anti-war writing in memoirs by private soldiers, such stories also helped to foster a sympathetic bond between the soldier and the civilian that played an important role in developing ideas of a national war and functioned as a central component in a national commemoration of war.
The Military Memoir and Romantic Literary Culture, 1780 1835
Author: Neil Ramsey
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780367887681
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 282
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780367887681
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 282
Book Description
On Military Memoirs
Author: L.H.E. (Esmeralda) Kleinreesink
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004330240
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402
Book Description
Winner of the Caforio prize for the best book in armed forces and civil-military relations published between 2015 and 2016 In On Military Memoirs Esmeralda Kleinreesink offers insight into military books: who were their writers and publishers, what were their plots, and what motives did their authors have for writing them. Every Afghanistan war autobiography published in the US, the UK, Germany, Canada, and the Netherlands between 2001 and 2010 is compared quantitatively and qualitatively. On Military Memoirs shows that soldier-authors are a special breed; that self-published books still cater to different markets than traditionally published ones; that cultural differences are clearly visible between warrior nations and non-warrior nations; that not every contemporary memoir is a disillusionment story; and that writing is serious business for soldiers wanting to change the world. The book provides an innovative example of how to use interdisciplinary, mixed-method, cross-cultural research to analyse egodocuments.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004330240
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402
Book Description
Winner of the Caforio prize for the best book in armed forces and civil-military relations published between 2015 and 2016 In On Military Memoirs Esmeralda Kleinreesink offers insight into military books: who were their writers and publishers, what were their plots, and what motives did their authors have for writing them. Every Afghanistan war autobiography published in the US, the UK, Germany, Canada, and the Netherlands between 2001 and 2010 is compared quantitatively and qualitatively. On Military Memoirs shows that soldier-authors are a special breed; that self-published books still cater to different markets than traditionally published ones; that cultural differences are clearly visible between warrior nations and non-warrior nations; that not every contemporary memoir is a disillusionment story; and that writing is serious business for soldiers wanting to change the world. The book provides an innovative example of how to use interdisciplinary, mixed-method, cross-cultural research to analyse egodocuments.
The Veterans' Tale
Author: Frances Houghton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108496911
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 307
Book Description
Reveals how memoirs are rich repositories of information about the ways in which veterans remembered, understood, and recounted their war.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108496911
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 307
Book Description
Reveals how memoirs are rich repositories of information about the ways in which veterans remembered, understood, and recounted their war.
Suffering and Sentiment in Romantic Military Art
Author: Philip Shaw
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351547445
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 310
Book Description
In a moving intervention into Romantic-era depictions of the dead and wounded, Philip Shaw's timely study directs our gaze to the neglected figure of the common soldier. How suffering and sentiment were portrayed in a variety of visual and verbal media is Shaw's particular concern, as he examines a wide range of print and visual media, from paintings to sketches to political prose and anti-war poetry, and from writings on culture and aesthetics to graphic satires and early photographs. Whilst classical portraiture and history painting certainly conspired with official ideologies to deflect attention from the true costs of war, other works of art, literary as well as visual, proffered representations that countered the view that suffering on and off the battlefield is noble or heroic. Shaw uncovers a history of changing attitudes towards suffering, from mid-eighteenth century ambivalence to late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century concepts of moral sentiment. Thus, Shaw's story is one of how images of death and wounding facilitated and queried these shifts in the perception of war, qualifying as well as consolidating ideas of individual and national unanimity. Informed by readings of the letters and journals of serving soldiers, surgeons' notebooks and sketches, and the writings of peace and war agitators, Shaw's study shows how an attention to the depiction of suffering and the development of 'liberal' sentiment enables a reconfiguring of historical and theoretical notions of the body as a site of pain and as a locus of violent national imaginings.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351547445
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 310
Book Description
In a moving intervention into Romantic-era depictions of the dead and wounded, Philip Shaw's timely study directs our gaze to the neglected figure of the common soldier. How suffering and sentiment were portrayed in a variety of visual and verbal media is Shaw's particular concern, as he examines a wide range of print and visual media, from paintings to sketches to political prose and anti-war poetry, and from writings on culture and aesthetics to graphic satires and early photographs. Whilst classical portraiture and history painting certainly conspired with official ideologies to deflect attention from the true costs of war, other works of art, literary as well as visual, proffered representations that countered the view that suffering on and off the battlefield is noble or heroic. Shaw uncovers a history of changing attitudes towards suffering, from mid-eighteenth century ambivalence to late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century concepts of moral sentiment. Thus, Shaw's story is one of how images of death and wounding facilitated and queried these shifts in the perception of war, qualifying as well as consolidating ideas of individual and national unanimity. Informed by readings of the letters and journals of serving soldiers, surgeons' notebooks and sketches, and the writings of peace and war agitators, Shaw's study shows how an attention to the depiction of suffering and the development of 'liberal' sentiment enables a reconfiguring of historical and theoretical notions of the body as a site of pain and as a locus of violent national imaginings.
Staging the Peninsular War
Author: Susan Valladares
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317050711
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 472
Book Description
From Napoleon's invasion of Portugal in 1807 to his final defeat at Waterloo, the English theatres played a crucial role in the mediation of the Peninsular campaign. In the first in-depth study of English theatre during the Peninsular War, Susan Valladares contextualizes the theatrical treatment of the war within the larger political and ideological axes of Romantic performance. Exploring the role of spectacle in the mediation of war and the links between theatrical productions and print culture, she argues that the popularity of theatre-going and the improvisation and topicality unique to dramatic performance make the theatre an ideal lens for studying the construction of the Peninsular War in the public domain. Without simplifying the complex issues involved in the study of citizenship, communal identities, and ideological investments, Valladares recovers a wartime theatre that helped celebrate military engagements, reform political sympathies, and register the public’s complex relationship with Britain’s military campaign in the Iberian Peninsula. From its nuanced reading of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's Pizarro (1799), to its accounts of wartime productions of Shakespeare, description of performances at the minor theatres, and detailed case study of dramatic culture in Bristol, Valladares’s book reveals how theatrical entertainments reflected and helped shape public feeling on the Peninsular campaign.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317050711
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 472
Book Description
From Napoleon's invasion of Portugal in 1807 to his final defeat at Waterloo, the English theatres played a crucial role in the mediation of the Peninsular campaign. In the first in-depth study of English theatre during the Peninsular War, Susan Valladares contextualizes the theatrical treatment of the war within the larger political and ideological axes of Romantic performance. Exploring the role of spectacle in the mediation of war and the links between theatrical productions and print culture, she argues that the popularity of theatre-going and the improvisation and topicality unique to dramatic performance make the theatre an ideal lens for studying the construction of the Peninsular War in the public domain. Without simplifying the complex issues involved in the study of citizenship, communal identities, and ideological investments, Valladares recovers a wartime theatre that helped celebrate military engagements, reform political sympathies, and register the public’s complex relationship with Britain’s military campaign in the Iberian Peninsula. From its nuanced reading of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's Pizarro (1799), to its accounts of wartime productions of Shakespeare, description of performances at the minor theatres, and detailed case study of dramatic culture in Bristol, Valladares’s book reveals how theatrical entertainments reflected and helped shape public feeling on the Peninsular campaign.
Veteran Poetics
Author: Kate McLoughlin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108573665
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 333
Book Description
In this first full-length study of the war veteran in literature, Kate McLoughlin draws new critical attention to a figure central to national life. Offering fresh readings of canonical and non-canonical works, she shows how authors from William Wordsworth to J. K. Rowling have deployed veterans to explore questions that are simultaneously personal, political, and philosophical: What does a community owe to those who serve it? What can be recovered from the past? Do people stay the same over time? Are there right times of life at which to do certain things? Is there value in experience? How can wisdom be shared? Veteran Poetics features veterans who travel in time, cause havoc with their reappearances, solve murders, refuse to stop talking about the wars they have been in, and refuse to say a word about them. Through this last trait, they also prompt consideration of possible critical responses to silence.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108573665
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 333
Book Description
In this first full-length study of the war veteran in literature, Kate McLoughlin draws new critical attention to a figure central to national life. Offering fresh readings of canonical and non-canonical works, she shows how authors from William Wordsworth to J. K. Rowling have deployed veterans to explore questions that are simultaneously personal, political, and philosophical: What does a community owe to those who serve it? What can be recovered from the past? Do people stay the same over time? Are there right times of life at which to do certain things? Is there value in experience? How can wisdom be shared? Veteran Poetics features veterans who travel in time, cause havoc with their reappearances, solve murders, refuse to stop talking about the wars they have been in, and refuse to say a word about them. Through this last trait, they also prompt consideration of possible critical responses to silence.
Embodying the Militia in Georgian England
Author: Matthew McCormack
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191008664
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 230
Book Description
The militia was a key institution in Georgian England, and arguably one that was very characteristic of its age. A 'militia' is an informal military organisation made up of part-time civilians rather than professionals. As an island, Britain had historically relied on forces of this type for home defence, but threats of a French invasion during the Seven Years War (1756-63) highlighted that the militia had fallen into disrepair and prompted calls for its revival. In this important new study, Matthew McCormack re-examines the debates on the militia, and argues that this military reform was informed and driven by concerns about politics, nationalism, and gender. The militia tells us a great deal about the political culture of the eighteenth century, which was suspicious of professional armies and executive power, and which placed great emphasis on the liberties and masculine attributes of the ordinary citizen. Its advocates even suggested that mass military service would prompt a reinvigoration of English masculinity. The Militia Act passed into law in 1757. From this date until the New Militia's slow demise after the Napoleonic Wars, Embodying the Militia in Georgian England considers civilian men's experience of military service. How was the militia 'embodied' - both in the contemporary sense of assembling for service, and also as a gendered bodily experience? Chapters explore questions such as physical training, masculine honour, material culture, self-identity, and citizenship. As such, the volume's interdisciplinary approaches offer new perspectives on the history of war.
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191008664
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 230
Book Description
The militia was a key institution in Georgian England, and arguably one that was very characteristic of its age. A 'militia' is an informal military organisation made up of part-time civilians rather than professionals. As an island, Britain had historically relied on forces of this type for home defence, but threats of a French invasion during the Seven Years War (1756-63) highlighted that the militia had fallen into disrepair and prompted calls for its revival. In this important new study, Matthew McCormack re-examines the debates on the militia, and argues that this military reform was informed and driven by concerns about politics, nationalism, and gender. The militia tells us a great deal about the political culture of the eighteenth century, which was suspicious of professional armies and executive power, and which placed great emphasis on the liberties and masculine attributes of the ordinary citizen. Its advocates even suggested that mass military service would prompt a reinvigoration of English masculinity. The Militia Act passed into law in 1757. From this date until the New Militia's slow demise after the Napoleonic Wars, Embodying the Militia in Georgian England considers civilian men's experience of military service. How was the militia 'embodied' - both in the contemporary sense of assembling for service, and also as a gendered bodily experience? Chapters explore questions such as physical training, masculine honour, material culture, self-identity, and citizenship. As such, the volume's interdisciplinary approaches offer new perspectives on the history of war.
Napoleon in British Culture
Author: James Gregory
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350422959
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 307
Book Description
This book studies British cultural engagement with Napoleon Bonaparte from his 1815 surrender and time in British custody, until the return of his remains to France in 1840. Adopting a chronological approach, James Gregory studies the British use of Bonaparte in various spheres – covering political, dramatic, literary, and visual culture, and popular entertainment over a 25-year period. Gregory acknowledges not only canonical literary treatments, but also appearances of the figure in novels, anecdotes, travelling shows, and private collections – in order to analyse contemporary fascination with Napoleon. Centring on key themes such as responses to Napoleon's presence on British territory, and later reactions to his death, Gregory also takes into account the influence of factors such as geography and gender, in order to craft a comprehensive picture of cultural engagement with Napoleon in the period 1815-40. Covering factors including the role of commemoration, the impact of Peterloo and Queen Caroline's death, and the rise of Romanticism, this book demonstrates how truly pervasive the myth of Napoleon became in 19th-century Britain.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350422959
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 307
Book Description
This book studies British cultural engagement with Napoleon Bonaparte from his 1815 surrender and time in British custody, until the return of his remains to France in 1840. Adopting a chronological approach, James Gregory studies the British use of Bonaparte in various spheres – covering political, dramatic, literary, and visual culture, and popular entertainment over a 25-year period. Gregory acknowledges not only canonical literary treatments, but also appearances of the figure in novels, anecdotes, travelling shows, and private collections – in order to analyse contemporary fascination with Napoleon. Centring on key themes such as responses to Napoleon's presence on British territory, and later reactions to his death, Gregory also takes into account the influence of factors such as geography and gender, in order to craft a comprehensive picture of cultural engagement with Napoleon in the period 1815-40. Covering factors including the role of commemoration, the impact of Peterloo and Queen Caroline's death, and the rise of Romanticism, this book demonstrates how truly pervasive the myth of Napoleon became in 19th-century Britain.
Writing War in Britain and France, 1370-1854
Author: Stephanie Downes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429821115
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 403
Book Description
Writing War in Britain and France, 1370-1854: A History of Emotions brings together leading scholars in medieval, early modern, eighteenth-century, and Romantic studies. The assembled essays trace continuities and changes in the emotional register of war, as it has been mediated by the written record over six centuries. Through its wide selection of sites of utterance, genres of writing and contexts of publication and reception, Writing War in Britain and France, 1370-1854 analyses the emotional history of war in relation to both the changing nature of conflicts and the changing creative modes in which they have been arrayed and experienced. Each chapter explores how different forms of writing defines war – whether as political violence, civilian suffering, or a theatre of heroism or barbarism – giving war shape and meaning, often retrospectively. The volume is especially interested in how the written production of war as emotional experience occurs within a wider historical range of cultural and social practices. Writing War in Britain and France, 1370-1854: A History of Emotions will be of interest to students of the history of emotions, the history of pre-modern war and war literature.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429821115
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 403
Book Description
Writing War in Britain and France, 1370-1854: A History of Emotions brings together leading scholars in medieval, early modern, eighteenth-century, and Romantic studies. The assembled essays trace continuities and changes in the emotional register of war, as it has been mediated by the written record over six centuries. Through its wide selection of sites of utterance, genres of writing and contexts of publication and reception, Writing War in Britain and France, 1370-1854 analyses the emotional history of war in relation to both the changing nature of conflicts and the changing creative modes in which they have been arrayed and experienced. Each chapter explores how different forms of writing defines war – whether as political violence, civilian suffering, or a theatre of heroism or barbarism – giving war shape and meaning, often retrospectively. The volume is especially interested in how the written production of war as emotional experience occurs within a wider historical range of cultural and social practices. Writing War in Britain and France, 1370-1854: A History of Emotions will be of interest to students of the history of emotions, the history of pre-modern war and war literature.