UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA
School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing
UG Main Series Examination 2012-13
THE LITERATURE OF WORLD WAR ONE
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Time Allowed: 2 hours
Do not turn over until you are told to do so by the invigilator.
Answer TWO questions. In each answer you must comment on at least two texts.
Note: For the purpose of this paper, ‘literature’ can be interpreted as non-fictional
writing of any kind, i.e. letters, memoir, diary material, newspaper text, official
discourse and so on, as well as fictional literature.
Notes are not permitted in this examination
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Copyright of the University of East Anglia
Module Contact: Dr Tim Marshall, LDC
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1. ‘War is fought with the mind as well as the body’. How does the literature of World
War One comment on this proposition?
2. How does the literature of World War One represent the perspective of the nonparticipant (in the actual combat)?
3. ‘A major landmark in the social and cultural history of death’. Discuss the
representation of death in World War One literature.
4. What place is there for satire and/or comedy in literature that comments on the
‘Great War’?
5. Examine the representation of the medical profession in World War One literature.
6. ‘And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.’
‘Adlestrop’ (Edward Thomas, 1915).
What is the function and effect of pastoral sentiment in World War One writing?
7. ‘Against censorship and propaganda, the literature of World War One often
embraces protest, personal testimony and individual freedom of conscience’.
Discuss.
8. ‘The soldier’s moral experience, including in many cases his sexual experience,
was broadened beyond that of normal bourgeois life’. Discuss.
9. ‘No one/ bears witness for/the witness’ The witness is always, in some sense,
deprived. There is something eerie and ghostly about the solitude of bearing
witness’. In what ways did the soldier-poets, or indeed any poet, of World War
One bear witness?
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10. How does the literature of World War One represent the actuality of life in the
trenches and the soldiers’ everyday experience?
11. ‘It was no comfort for a mother or a widow to be told that her son or husband had
died for nothing in a futile war. The old lie of ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’
might deserve exploding, but its devaluing had left a vacuum.’ (Adrian Gregory)
Discuss the representation of bereavement and sacrifice in World War One writing.
12 ‘What was tested, under crippling pressure, during World War One was the
English social class system.’ Discuss.
END OF PAPER
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