The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of World War II [Paperback]

An overview of writing about the war from a global perspective, aimed at students of modern literature.This book provides the new reader with the essential knowledge and conceptual tools for reading the literature of World War II. With its chronology and guide to further reading, it will be an invaluable source of information and inspiration for students and scholars of modern literature and war studies.This book provides the new reader with the essential knowledge and conceptual tools for reading the literature of World War II. With its chronology and guide to further reading, it will be an invaluable source of information and inspiration for students and scholars of modern literature and war studies.The literature of World War II has emerged as an accomplished, moving, and challenging body of work, produced by writers as different as Norman Mailer and Virginia Woolf, Primo Levi and Ernest Hemingway, Jean-Paul Sartre and W. H. Auden. This Companion provides a comprehensive overview of the international literatures of the war: both those works that recorded or reflected experiences of the war as it happened, and those that tried to make sense of it afterwards. It surveys the writing produced in the major combatant nations (Britain and the Commonwealth, the USA, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, and the USSR), and explores its common themes. With its chronology and guide to further reading, it will be an invaluable source of information and inspiration for students and scholars of modern literature and war studies.Chronology; Introduction Marina MacKay; Part I. Anglo-American Texts and Contexts: 1. War poetry in Britain Adam Piette; 2. British fiction of the war Rod Mengham; 3. War poetry in the USA Margot Norris; 4. The American war novel James Dawes; 5. War journalism in English Leo Mellor; Part II. Global Perspectives: 6. The French war Debarati Sanyal; 7. The German war Dagmar Barnouw; 8. The Soviet war Katharine Hodgson; 9. The Italian war Robert S. C. Gordon; 10. lCz