This study concentrates on the processes through which British and Polish poetry contributed to the shaping of myths of war, each offering creative interpretations of historical facts and developments. Both poetic traditions are analysed in the context of their national literary heritage and historical background in order to explain the discrepancies characterising these imaginative versions of war

the author has two declared aims...."to show that the respresentation of war in Western European literatur, as exemplified by Brith poetry, is merely one of its possible representations........poetries shaped by disparate traditions and disparate circumstances of war need not exclude similarity"