The Literature of War Studies in Heroic Virtue [Paperback]

It is widely assumed today that heroism is obsolete as an ideal, that heroic virtue is a contradiction in terms, and that war literature must be anti-war by definition. The author argues that the theoretical foundations of these assumptions are inadequate and do not fit the literary facts.The subaltern as hero - Kipling and frontier war; the intellectual as hero - Lawrence of Arabia; the common man as hero - literature of the Western Front; the Christian as hero - Waugh's Sword of Honour ; the spy as hero - Le Carre and the Cold War; Epilogue - on realism and the heroic.