World War I / Modernist Poetry Analysis Exercise
- Examine the differing perspectives on World War I presented in poetry by three or more World War I poets of the early twentieth century (examining poetry specifically referencing the war). Be sure to identify and analyze the imagery used to present their perspectives, such as sleep imagery, water imagery, or imagery related to imprisonment, entrapment, restriction, and stagnation. I suggest you divide up the work, each student in a group choosing one World War I poet and one or two of the poems related to the war from those below:
Thomas Hardy (2096-98): "Channel Firing” (2106-7); "And There Was a Great Calm" (2108-9); “The Great War: Confronting the Modern” (2112); Cicely Hamilton: “Non-Combatant” (2113-14); Siegfried Sassoon (2130-31): “The Glory of Women” (2131), “The Rear-Guard” (2131-32); Pauline Barrington: “‘Education’” (2132-33); Rupert Brooke(2134-35): “The Soldier” (2136-37); Teresa Hooley: “A War Film” (2137); Wilfred Owen (2157-58): "Strange Meeting" (2158-58); "Disabled" (2159-60); "Dulce Et Decorum Est” (2160-61). William Butler Yeats (2174-77): “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” (2180-81).
- Examine one or more of the following themes in poetry by Hardy, Yeats, and Eliot: fragmentation, identity, anxiety, alienation, aging, masculinity, and/or sexuality. Identify some of the same imagery as you noted above in the World War I poets.
Thomas Hardy (2096-98): "Hap" (2098); "The Darkling Thrush" (2099-2100); William Butler Yeats (2174-77): “The Second Coming” (2183); “No Second Troy” (2178); "Sailing to Byzantium" (2185-86); "Leda and the Swan" (2194-95); “Under Ben Bulben” (2201-03); T. S. Eliot (2284-87): "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (2287-91); from “The Waste Land” (2297-98), lines 1-42 (2298-2300); lines 76-172 (2300-2303); lines 322-434 (2307-2310).