Grief in wartime : private pain, public discourse / Carol Acton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Acton, Carol, 1958-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

War and society.

War and literature.

War--Psychological aspects.

War.

Grief.

Physical Description:

viii, 224 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Summary:

Drawing on private expressions of grief expressed in letters, diaries, memoirs and poetry, Carol Acton focuses on the lived experience of wartime loss and on the power of the dominant public narratives to shape and control private experience of grief and its articulation. She shows how the experience of bereavement challenges the binaries through which war is constructed, `home' and `the front', `ally' and `enemy', and collapses constructions of war that confine it within geographic limits and dates. Since prescribed bereavement behaviour in British and North American cultures is gendered, and since the defining and regulating of gender roles becomes extreme in a country at war, the author pays particular attention to the gendering of representations of loss in wartime.

Contents:

Part 1 War and Grief at `Home'

1 For Women Must Weep 17

2 Grieving the `Good' War 47

3 Vietnam: The War at Home 80

Part 2 War and Grief at the `Front'

4 Mourning and Combat: `No One Sings: Lully, Lully' 105

5 `Can't Face the Graves Today': Nurses Mourn on the Western Front 132

6 Vietnam: Bringing Home the Front 154

7 Epilogue: `Mother to Mother': The War in Iraq 176.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 209-221) and index.

ISBN:

1403946965

9781403946966

OCLC:

74354132

Online:

Publisher description