The aim of this collection is to "illustrate the fresh perspectives brought to Great War scholarship in recent years" by exploring "promising new areas of research" (4). Our perspective on World War I literature has shifted from Paul Fussell's indispensable The Great War and Modern Memory (1975), as editors Patrick J. Quinn and Steven Trout stress in their introduction. They argue that a "far more complex, varied and contradictory assemblage of works confronts us, as the designation 'war literature' has moved beyond the battlefield to include the creative expressions . . . of anyone, soldier or civilian, man or woman, who struggled to interpret the unthinkable" (1).


This definitive volume will alter our understanding of the literature of World War I. New critical approaches have, over the last two decades, redefined the term "war literature" and its cultural legacy. Consisting, in equal measure, of essays by male and female scholars (from several different countries), and devoted to both familiar and lesser-known works, this book presents the many faces of Great War literary study at the millennium.