Review by Choice Review
A rich, evocative conclusion to Hynes's sweeping three-volume exploration of literary and artistic interpretations of English cultural history from the death of Queen Victoria to WW II. As in The Edwardian Turn of Mind (CH, Jan'69) and The Auden Generation (CH, Nov'77), the author draws widely and perceptively on an impressive array of important and not-so-important novelists, poets, diarists, painters, journalists, philosophers, even politicians, to reconstruct the impact of events on contemporary, and, particularly in this work, later imagination. Few would disagree with Hynes's claim that WW I was the great military and political event of its time nor with his interpretation that it created an era of profound "radical discontinuity" that persisted throughout the interwar years. Undoubtedly this work will be compared with Paul Fussell's pathbreaking study The Great War and Modern Memory (1975). Hynes goes well beyond Fussell in tracing the evolution of the cultural myth that emerged and predominated in English culture in the decade after 1918 and its role in the rise of modernism. The result is a compelling analysis not of the war itself, but of the way it opened an imaginative chasm between the past, the present, and the future. It certainly belongs in all university and college libraries as well as in larger public libraries.-R. A. Soloway, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
While a generation of young Englishmen launched suicidal assaults on German trenches, British artists and writers back home fought a different kind of war, a battle to discern the imaginative meaning of unprecedented carnage. A distinguished critic, Hynes chronicles the confusing, often ugly battles of this cultural war. Hynes interprets World War I as an utter break in the history of British art and thought, as traditional conceptions failed or seemed mendacious as modes of understanding the cataclysm. The authors and artists of postwar England felt compelled to develop new subjects, new techniques, and new vocabularies. Indeed, at certain points, the raw power of these artists overwhelms Hynes' academic commentary about them. Though focusing chiefly on the evolution of literature and the arts, Hynes sketches in relevant developments in politics and society. Not all readers will share the author's favorable view of postwar apostles of modernism, but his analysis makes clear why English culture acquired a radically different character after the Great War. ~--Bryce Christensen
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This is an interesting, moving excursion in sociopolitical history. In some senses, Hynes (literature, Princeton), who has published widely on literary subjects (e.g., The Auden Generation: Literature and Politics in England in the 1930s , LJ 2/15/77), does for the Great War what Robert Graves and Alan Hodge do for the interwar period in The Long Week-End (1941). He does a better job of capturing the mood and changing nature of English culture, however, and that is saying a great deal. As this book makes manifest, World War I was a social watershed which saw England move from one way of life and values to another. Hynes makes especially good use of sources, drawing not only on standard texts and memoirs but delving into the revealing insights offered by films, music, art, etc. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the evolution of 20th-century British society.-- James A. Casada, Winthrop Coll., Rock Hill, S.C. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Continuing the ground-breaking work of Paul Fussell in The Great War and Modern Memory, Hynes (Flights of Passage, 1988, etc.; Literature/Princeton) looks into the origin and impact of the myth that came into being to explain the significance of WW I. That myth depicted an idyllic England shattered irrevocably by the onslaught of a cruel and unnecessary way, by a generation of brave and idealistic young men lost in trench warfare prolonged by stupid generals and unimaginative politicians, and by the subsequent rejection by the embittered survivors of the values of their society. Hynes, like Fussell, uses major literary works of the period to illustrate the origin and growth of the myth, but also draws on newspapers and magazines, art, music, political debates, films, diaries, and letters. In certain respects, he casts doubt on the truth of the myth: The prewar period, for example, was characterized by labor unrest, Suffragette violence, the threat of civil war in Ireland, and a growing violence in the tone of political discourse. Hynes suggests, too, the difficulty of summarizing complex phenomena in so facile a way: There is, he notes, the picturesque popular image of way, which is clear and easy to respond to, and there is the truth, which is inconsistent, contradictory, and threatening. Thus, for example, the early poetry of Rupert Brooke, full of ideals and of the glory of sacrificing one's life for one's country, continued to be popular with some of the supposedly embittered young men late in the war. Ultimately, Hynes implies, these quibbles are almost irrelevant to shake a myth that has profoundly affected the way war is viewed in the 20th century. More suggestive than conclusive in its analysis of the validity of the myth, Hynes's account of the impact of a terrible war is still rich and satisfying. (Sixteen-page photo insert--not seen.)
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Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
