Remembering Rupert Brooke and Siegfried Sassoon in Gelibolu Novels
Remembering Rupert Brooke and Siegfried Sassoon in Gelibolu Novels
Yazar: Kemaloğlu, Azer Banu
Dergi: Çanakkale Araştırmaları Türk Yıllığı, Vol. 16 No. 25, 2018
Anahtar kelimeler: Gallipoli/Gelibolu,1915,fiction,Rupert Brooke,Siegfried Sassoon,New Historicism,commemoration

Gelibolu Campaign (1915) is an inspiration for fiction writers as they delve into the ancient and present history of the campaign in their fictional constructions. Although in different ways the novels pay tribute to the memories and heroes of the campaign while connecting the carnage of 1915 to the classical times, of Homer’s Troy. References to Iliad and Odyssey appear in fictional stories representing Gelibolu battlefield as a mythical land. T.S. Eliot’s anti-war poem The Wasteland (1922) is echoed in novels lamenting the loss. Besides classical examples British war poets Rupert Brooke and Siegfried Sassoon are also remembered in fictional representations of the campaign. Yet, the representations offer an alternative discourse sought by New Historicism replacing the romantic and heroic representations of war with bitter and traumatic ones. This study aims to analyse the tributes to Brooke and Sassoon in Stanton Hope’s Richer Dust (1925), Bruce Scates’s On Dangerous Ground (2012), Rachel Billington’s Glory (2015), and Peter Yeldham’s Barbed Wire and Roses (2007) as they try to unearth the voices of First World War poets and discuss new perspectives offered by novelists in their understanding of the poets. Although wars consume poets besides the intellectual and educated mass, the power of poetry is still heard and remembered thanks to fictional representations creating a dialogue between voices of past and present.

Gelibolu Campaign (1915) is an inspiration for fiction writers as they delve into the ancient and present history of the campaign in their fictional constructions. Although in different ways the novels pay tribute to the memories and heroes of the campaign while connecting the carnage of 1915 to the classical times, of Homer’s Troy. References to Iliad and Odyssey appear in fictional stories representing Gelibolu battlefield as a mythical land. T.S. Eliot’s anti-war poem The Wasteland (1922) is echoed in novels lamenting the loss. Besides classical examples British war poets Rupert Brooke and Siegfried Sassoon are also remembered in fictional representations of the campaign. Yet, the representations offer an alternative discourse sought by New Historicism replacing the romantic and heroic representations of war with bitter and traumatic ones. This study aims to analyse the tributes to Brooke and Sassoon in Stanton Hope’s Richer Dust (1925), Bruce Scates’s On Dangerous Ground (2012), Rachel Billington’s Glory (2015), and Peter Yeldham’s Barbed Wire and Roses (2007) as they try to unearth the voices of First World War poets and discuss new perspectives offered by novelists in their understanding of the poets. Although wars consume poets besides the intellectual and educated mass, the power of poetry is still heard and remembered thanks to fictional representations creating a dialogue between voices of past and present.