Review by Choice Review
Those interested in literature and war will find both these titles useful additions to library collections. Quinn and Trout's intelligent collection, The Literature of the Great War Reconsidered, continues the project of expanding and rehabilitating the concept of canon as applied to war literature. Taken as a whole, the 15 essays push back the borders of what should be considered as suitable literary material for exploration--a broadening that would embrace, for example, French writing on WW I, which has been almost completely ignored by English and American scholars. The organization and structure of this volume act as a reasoned argument for this expansive project. The essays in part 1, "Textuality and War," argue for readings informed by cultural studies and new historicism. Those in part 2, "Beyond the Trenches," explore writing of women (Harriet Monroe and Stella Benson, in particular), which has not often been viewed as war literature. Part 3, "Nationality and Response," examines how nationality shapes war writing; part 4, "Modernists at War," explains why writers of this period are important. And part 5, "Revising the War Poets," looks at Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon from some of the implicit and explicit critical perspectives advanced earlier in the collection. Including extensive footnotes and bibliographies, this collection pushes light into some of the forgotten corners of writing from the Great War.Mengham and Reeve hope to remove the veil from a period of literary production that has suffered neglect for various reasons--some justified, some not. The 11 essays cover Henry Green, Elizabeth Bowen, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Malcolm Lowry, Elizabeth Taylor, Jocelyn Brooke, Joyce Cary, Rosamond Lehmann, and William Sansom. Contributors point out that some of the works produced during WW II seem too experimental, derivative of the modernist movement but lacking both the transformative energies of the earlier period and the clarity and sense of purpose that postwar literature displays. One essayist admits that she has given up teaching the author she writes on because the experimental style renders the novels incomprehensible, an admission that begs several questions but also points directly toward the project of this collection: to convince students and scholars that the bulk of the literature of this period should be critically reassessed. Taken collectively, these essays present a good, if not strong, argument for critical reassessment. Both volumes will serve graduate students through faculty; the usefulness of Mengham and Reeve's volume extends to undergraduates. B. Adler Valdosta State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
