Authoring War: The Literary Representation of War from the Iliad to Iraq

by Kate McLoughlin

Kate McLoughlin's Authoring War is an ambitious and pioneering study of war writing across all literary genres from earliest times to the present day. Examining a range of cultures, she brings wide reading and close rhetorical analysis to illuminate how writers have met the challenge of representing violence, chaos and loss. War gives rise to problems of epistemology, scale, space, time, language and logic. She emphasises the importance of form to an understanding of war literature and establishes connections across periods and cultures from Homer to the 'War on Terror'. Exciting new critical groupings arise in consequence, as Byron's Don Juan is read alongside Heller's Catch-22 and English Civil War poetry alongside Second World War letters. Innovative in its approach and inventive in its encyclopedic range, Authoring War will be indispensable to any discussion of war representation.

Genres: War

232 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2011

Reviews

[sch]

Reading to review. Tried twice before, but this time I'm determined.

[Myrthel]

I might not be entirely fair in my rating. It is a good book but it was not what I was looking for at the moment which might explain my dissappointment.

[فلاح رحيم]

A detailed rhetorical, thematic and linguistic analysis of war literature in diverse cultures. Dunya Michael, the modern Iraqi poetess, is mentioned and brought the name of Iraq to the title.