As we know, a war is highly destructive and can cause different influences in different sectors of a society, including a country's literary production.
The dangers provided by a war were portrayed in poetry in different ways. Many poets preferred to report the horrors that the soldiers witnessed, along with the fear and uncertainty that the battlefield provided for their lives. Other poets preferred to portray other issues related to war, such as the loss of innocent lives, the destruction of a generation and the changes and traumas caused within a society.
Even the revolt and anger towards the rulers was portrayed in poetry that portrayed the period of the war, and not even religion was left out, where the poets asked why God allowed it and what the purpose of the battle was.
Answer:
Not only were British Citizens thrust into a tragic world war, many of the soldiers who fought the war were also thrust into the art of poetry.
Some of the poets whose works rose out of the ashes of the War are:
Thomas Hardy, Robert Browning, William Tennyson, Rupert Brooke and other.
Rupert Brooke, for instance, chose to capture the entrance into the war with vigour. Some of his works such as The Soldier and The Dead were published and known to give off a tonality of audacity and vitality. As a British Citizen, he was said to have been tired of the world as it was to him. He captured this picture as "a world which had grown cold and weary". It was very ironical that a poetic soldier who looked forward to the glory of the war never lived to fight in it, for he had died of blood poisoning on the way to the battle between the British and the Turks.
Owen much like Rupert didn't make it out of the War. He, however, forged a very useful relationship with another soldier turned poet who became the reason Owen's poetry is known today. Owen met Siegfried Sassoon another soldier turned poet both of whom wrote of the gore and horrors of way. Many literature enthusiasts view their works are more open, perhaps realistic when compared to that of Rupert Brooke.
Sassoon's poems, very uncommonly, speaks about the terror and futility of war very from a personal perspective. This caused his work to stand out especially among war poems.
Sassoons poems very uncommonly speaks about the terror and futility of war. This caused his work to stand out expecially among war poems.
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