Touch and intimacy in First World War literature / Santanu Das.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Das, Santanu.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Touch in literature.

Intimacy (Psychology) in literature.

Human body in literature.

War in literature.

World War, 1914-1918--Psychological aspects.

World War, 1914-1918.

Psychological aspects.

Physical Description:

xiii, 269 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Summary:

The First World War ravaged the male body on an unprecedented scale, yet fostered moments of physical intimacy and tenderness among the soldiers in the trenches. Touch, the most elusive and private of the senses, became central to war experience. War writing is haunted by experiences of physical contact: from the muddy realities of the Front, to the emotional intensity of trench life, to the traumatic obsession with the wounded body in nurses' memoris. Through extensive archival and historical research, analysing previously unknown letters and diaries alongside close investigative readings of literary writings by figures such as Owen and Brittain, Santanu Das recovers the sensuous world of the First World War trenches and hospitals. This original and evocative study alters our understanding of the period as well as of the body at war, and illuminates the perilous intimacy between sense experience, emotion and language in times of crisis.

Contents:

Trenches

Slimescapes

Geographies of sense

Intimacies

"Kiss me, Hardy': the dying kiss in the First World War trenches

Wilfred Owen and the sense of touch

Wounds

'The impotence of sympathy': service and suffering in the nurses' memoirs

The operating theatre.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-264) and index.

ISBN:

052184603X

OCLC:

61702418

Publisher Number:

9780521846035