Poeci w mundurach: o brytyjskiej literaturze Wielkiej Wojny

Jacek Wiśniewski

Abstract

The article discusses the historical and literary interpretations of the events of World War I, changing over time; it poses the question whether from a one-hundredyear perspective it is just to consider the Great War the beginning of modern history. The core of this article is an account of the meeting woth Robert graves, a great poet of World War I, a literary critic and a cultures studies specialist, the author of an outstanding autobiography Goodbye to All That. The meeting took place in Warsaw over forty years ago, in the summer of 1974. The text closes with an outline of the most important scholarly publications on British World War I literature, the sources of historical knowledge about the times and a survey of the newest tendencies in studies of war literature (e.g. the myth of the war versus historical reality, the feminist perspective, the war and generational memory).