Touch and Intimacy in First World War Literature [Hardcover]

Santanu Das uncovers the intimate history of how war was experienced by the body.The First World War ravaged the male body on an unprecedented scale, yet soldiers experienced moments of great tenderness and physical intimacy in the trenches. Touch, the most elusive and private of the senses, became central to the traumatic experience of war. Through extensive archival and historical research, analysing previously unknown letters and diaries alongside literary texts such as the poetry of Wilfred Owen, Santanu Das opens up new ways of understanding First World War writing through an intimate history of how war was experienced by the body.The First World War ravaged the male body on an unprecedented scale, yet soldiers experienced moments of great tenderness and physical intimacy in the trenches. Touch, the most elusive and private of the senses, became central to the traumatic experience of war. Through extensive archival and historical research, analysing previously unknown letters and diaries alongside literary texts such as the poetry of Wilfred Owen, Santanu Das opens up new ways of understanding First World War writing through an intimate history of how war was experienced by the body.War writing is haunted by experiences of physical contact: from the muddy realities of the front to the emotional intensity of trench life. Through extensive archival and historical research, analyzing previously unknown letters and diaries alongside 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 as we try to make meaning in times of crisis.Introduction: 'Touch is the spirit and rule of all'; Part I. Mud: 1. 'A real monster that sucked': the threat of mud in First World War literature; 2. Muddy narrativlCz