A war imagined: The First World War and English culture
According to Hynes ( The Auden Generation ), WW I engendered a sense of idealism betrayed, turned high-mindedness into cynicism and gave rise to resentment of politicians as the conviction emerged that the war was meaningless, fought for no good cause. Calling this cluster of attitudes the "Myth of the War," Hynes shows how these received views, filtered through the '30s generation of Auden, Orwell, Waugh and Greene, became "the truth about war." In this splendid study, the Princeton professor of literature draws on novels, poems, films, plays, paintings, music and diaries to show how WW I fostered radical discontinuity with the past, an upsurge in images of violence and cruelty, and the alienation of a "lost generation"; and intensified pacificist and women's rights activism. Photos.Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.