Politics and Literature at the Dawn of World War II

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Description

Mining the borderlands where history meets literature in Britain and Europe as well as America, this book shows how the imminence and outbreak of World War II ignited the imaginations of writers ranging from Ernest Hemingway, W.H. Auden, and James Joyce to Bertolt Brecht, Evelyn Waugh, Henry Green, and Irne Nmirovsky. Taking its cue from Percy Shelleys dictum that great writers are to some extent created by the age in which they live, this book shows how much the politics and warfare of the years from 1939 to 1941 drove the literature of this period. Its novels, poems, and plays differ radically from histories of World War II becausebesides being works of imagination-- they are largely products of a particular stage in the authors life as well as of a time at which no one knew how the war would end. This is the first comprehensive study of the impact of the outbreak of the Second World War on the literary work of American, English, and European writers during its first years.

Reviews

Jim Heffernan takes us on an amazing tour of literature from across Europe in the first years of World War II. He shows how novelists, playwrights, poets, and journalists responded to the opening stages of one of the great crises of civilization. His lucid introductions and thoughtful analyses show how at times fiction can represent historical experience more truthfully than journalism. -- Pericles Lewis, Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of Comparative Literature, Yale University, UK
An exciting, novel, and comparative account of the impact of World War II on literature produced in the US, UK, Germany, and France and their authors. * Edward Lebow, Professor of International Political Theory, Kings College, London, UK *
Spoiler alert: this book will unsettle your fixed ideas about the difference between history and fiction, reality and imagination. Ranging across historical novels, poems, and theories of history from the ancients to the moderns, and focused intensely on literary production at the dawn of World War II, Heffernan teases us into thoughtfulness about the way we inhabit time and tell ourselves tales about its meaning. A must for both the general reader and the scholarly specialist. * W. J. T. Mitchell, Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago and Senior Editor of Critical Inquiry *
This beautifully written jewel of a book offers a truly original perspective on a very old theme. Bringing together a suite of literary works all written around 1939, it shows brilliantly how writers, both famous and lesser-known, captured the sense of crisis in a world on the brink of war. Highly recommended. * Ann Rigney, Professor of Comparative Literature, Utrecht University, the Netherlands *
One rarely dips into a book of literary criticism for pleasure, not these days. But Heffernans brilliant study of major writers, mostly novelists and poets, on the brink of the Second World War is both salutary and inspired. Its also compulsive reading. Looking at an unlikely crew that includes Hemingway and Brecht, Auden, Woolf, Waugh and Henry Green, Heffernan shows how the terrifying imminence of war excited and refined the imaginations of these writers. This is a book to savor, and one that sends us quickly back to the writers under discussion. * Jay Parini, American novelist, poet, biographer, and critic *
A wonderfully written, subtle, and penetrating account of the interplay of history, politics, and art. James Heffernans compelling and surprising readings not only reveal the complex histories behind great works, but offer new avenues of appreciation for and judgment of the writers who dared to grapple with a world in crisis. * Phil Klay, American writer, winner of the 2014 National Book Award for Redeployment, a collection of short stories *
An important revisionary study of how major writers, both American and European, reacted to the prospect of a second world war by mostly rejecting earlier concepts of heroism. Does the war in Ukraine, which broke out after Heffernan completed this fascinating book, dispel his thesis Well see. But in the meantime, his is an original and sobering account of what really happened! * Marjorie Perloff, Author of Edge of Irony: Modernism in the Shadow of the Habsburg Empire *

Author Bio

James A. W. Heffernan is Professor of English Emeritus at Dartmouth College, USA.