Description: The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell This is the 1975 American Book Club Edition Front cover and spine Further images of this book are shown below Publisher and place of publication Dimensions in inches (to the nearest quarter-inch) New York and London: Oxford University Press 6 inches wide x 9¼ inches tall Edition Length 1975 [xiii] + 363 pages Condition of covers Internal condition Original cloth gilt. The covers are rubbed and a little dull. The spine ends and corners are bumped. There are no internal markings and the text is very clean throughout. The edge of the text block is lightly foxed. Dust-jacket present? Other comments Yes: however, the dust-jacket is scuffed, marked and creased around the edges, with some minor edge tears and a slightly longer half-inch tear on bottom front flap-fold. There is a small chip out of spine panel, at the head. The dust-jacket is discoloured, particularly around the edges and on the spine. Very clean internally, in a scuffed and discoloured dust-jacket which is chipped and torn at the edges. This is the 1975 Book Club edition which is identical to the first U.S. edition in size, binding, production quality and pagination. The principal differences being the lack of both an ISBN and a printed price on the lower front dust-jacket flap. The final two scans below show the Copyright page and the interior of the dust-jacket. Illustrations, maps, etc Contents Please see below for details Please see below for details Post & shipping information Payment options The packed weight is approximately 1000 grams. Full shipping/postage information is provided in a panel at the end of this listing. Payment options : UK buyers: cheque (in GBP), debit card, credit card (Visa, MasterCard but not Amex), PayPal International buyers: credit card (Visa, MasterCard but not Amex), PayPal Full payment information is provided in a panel at the end of this listing. The Great War and Modern Memory Contents I. A Satire of Circumstance II. The Troglodyte World III. Adversary Proceedings IV. Myth, Ritual, and Romance V. Oh What a Literary War VI. Theater of War VII. Arcadian Recourses VIII. Soldier Boys IX. Persistence and Memory Notes Index Illustrations Plumer, the King, Haig The Central London Recruiting Depot, August 1914 Map: the line at the end of 1914 The King inspecting model trenches A trench on the Somme Duckboards going forward, Ypres Salient Siegfried Sassoon The Golden Virgin Near Zonnebeke, Ypres Salient David Jones Robert Graves Edmund Blunden Hill 60 from the air Wilfred Owen with Arthur Newboult Passchendaele The Great War and Modern Memory Preface This book is about the British experience on the Western Front from 1914 to 1918 and some of the literary means by which it has been remembered, conventionalized, and mythologized. It is also about the literary dimensions of the trench experience itself. Indeed, if the book had a subtitle, it would be something like "An Inquiry into the Curious Literariness of Real Life." I have focused on places and situations where literary tradition and real life notably transect, and in doing so I have tried to understand something of the simultaneous and reciprocal process by which life feeds materials to literature while literature returns the favor by conferring forms upon life. And I have been concerned with something more: the way the dynamics and iconography of the Great War have proved crucial political, rhetorical, and artistic determinants on subsequent life. At the same time the war was relying on inherited myth, it was generating new myth, and that myth is part of the fiber of our own lives. In suggesting the forms of that myth, I have tried to supply contexts, both actual and literary, for writers who have most effectively memorialized the Great War as a historical experience with conspicuous imaginative and artistic meaning. These writers I take to be the classic memoirists Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, and Edmund Blunden. I have dealt also with poets of very high literary consciousness like David Jones, Isaac Rosenberg, and of course Wilfred Owen. And to see what the ordinary man has to say about it all, I have compared the scores of amateur memoirs lodged in the collections of the Imperial War Museum. Correctly or not, the current idea of "the Great War" derives primarily from images of the trenches in France and Belgium. I have thus stayed there with the British infantry, largely disregarding events in Mesopotamia, Turkey, Africa, and Ireland, and largely ignoring air and naval warfare. By thus narrowing my view, I have hoped to sharpen it to probe into the origins of what some future "medievalist" may call The Matter of Flanders and Picardy. P. F. Rutgers University January 1975 The Great War and Modern Memory From the dust-jacket: "An original and brilliant piece of cultural history and one of the most deeply moving books I have read in a long time." —Lionel Trilling The Great War and Modern Memory is an absorbing and moving exploration of the first great hell of the modern world— trench warfare. Fussell writes of the blood and muck of the trenches, and of the literary means by which that experience has been assimilated, remembered, and mythologized. Englishmen at the front and at home saw the war with Victorian eyes, eyes that had been educated in special, very English, ways. Thus an English officer on the Western Front issued four soccer balls to his men and offered a reward to the first man to kick one through no man's land all the way to the German lines—at the height of a British assault. The officer was killed as were many of his men. The reality of trench warfare quickly disillusioned and embittered soldiers as the slaughter of the Western Front transformed their nineteenth-century idealism and naiveté into twentieth-century skepticism. As a result, irony became the dominant literary mode. People began looking at their government and leaders and newspapers with different eyes. Reflecting this change in attitudes, writers such as Sassoon, Graves, Owen, and David Jones created a new iconography and forced new images of violence into the language. Their writings considered here, together with contemporary newspaper and magazine accounts, and with private letters and diaries by ordinary but surprisingly literate soldiers, became assimilated and imprinted in the collective consciousness of the twentieth century. Thus for later writers on other wars—especially such novelists as Mailer, Pynchon, and Vonnegut—the British Great War emerged as the original paradigm for much that seems murderous or absurd today. In weaving these threads into one beautiful and gloomy book, Fussell presents us with the harsh reality of war—a reality that has marked ourselves and our century uniquely. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Paul Fussell is Professor of English at Rutgers University. He has written or edited many books, including The Rhetorical World of Augustan Humanism: Ethics and Imagery from Swift to Burke, Theory of Prosody in Eighteenth-Century England, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form, Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing, English Augustan Poetry, and Eighteenth Century English Literature. Please note: to avoid opening the book out, with the risk of damaging the spine, some of the pages were slightly raised on the inner edge when being scanned, which has resulted in some blurring to the text and a shadow on the inside edge of the final images. Colour reproduction is shown as accurately as possible but please be aware that some colours are difficult to scan and may result in a slight variation from the colour shown below to the actual colour. In line with eBay guidelines on picture sizes, some of the illustrations may be shown enlarged for greater detail and clarity. U.K. buyers: To estimate the “packed weight” each book is first weighed and then an additional amount of 150 grams is added to allow for the packaging material (all books are securely wrapped and posted in a cardboard book-mailer). The weight of the book and packaging is then rounded up to the nearest hundred grams to arrive at the postage figure. I make no charge for packaging materials and do not seek to profit from postage and packaging. Postage can be combined for multiple purchases. 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International buyers: To estimate the “packed weight” each book is first weighed and then an additional amount of 150 grams is added to allow for the packaging material (all books are securely wrapped and posted in a cardboard book-mailer). The weight of the book and packaging is then rounded up to the nearest hundred grams to arrive at the shipping figure. I make no charge for packaging materials and do not seek to profit from shipping and handling. Shipping can usually be combined for multiple purchases (to a maximum of 5 kilograms in any one parcel with the exception of Canada, where the limit is 2 kilograms). Packed weight of this item : approximately 1000 grams International Shipping options: Details of the postage options to various countries (via Air Mail) can be obtained by selecting the “Postage and payments” option at the head of this listing (above) and then selecting your country of residence from the drop-down list. 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Please contact me with your name and address and payment details within seven days of the end of the auction; otherwise I reserve the right to cancel the auction and re-list the item. Finally, this should be an enjoyable experience for both the buyer and seller and I hope you will find me very easy to deal with. If you have a question or query about any aspect (shipping, payment, delivery options and so on), please do not hesitate to contact me, using the contact details provided at the end of this listing. Prospective international buyers should ensure that they are able to provide credit card details or pay by PayPal within 7 days from the end of the auction (or inform me that they will be sending a cheque in GBP drawn on a major British bank). Thank you. (please note that the book shown is for illustrative purposes only and forms no part of this auction) Book dimensions are given in inches, to the nearest quarter-inch, in the format width x height. Please note that, to differentiate them from soft-covers and paperbacks, modern hardbacks are still invariably described as being ‘cloth’ when they are, in fact, predominantly bound in paper-covered boards pressed to resemble cloth. Fine Books for Fine Minds I value your custom (and my feedback rating) but I am also a bibliophile : I want books to arrive in the same condition in which they were dispatched. For this reason, all books are securely wrapped in tissue and a protective covering and are then posted in a cardboard container. If any book is significantly not as described, I will offer a full refund. Unless the size of the book precludes this, hardback books with a dust-jacket are usually provided with a clear film protective cover, while hardback books without a dust-jacket are usually provided with a rigid clear cover. The Royal Mail, in my experience, offers an excellent service, but things can occasionally go wrong. 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Price: 49.99 GBP
Location: Flamborough, Bridlington
End Time: 2024-09-22T13:41:17.000Z
Shipping Cost: 29.92 GBP
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Item Specifics
Returns Accepted: Returns Accepted
After receiving the item, your buyer should cancel the purchase within: 30 days
Return policy details: If any book is significantly not as described, I will offer a full refund, including return postage. All books are securely wrapped and posted in a cardboard container.
Return postage will be paid by: Buyer
Non-Fiction Subject: History & Military
Year Printed: 1975
Binding: Hardback
Author: Paul Fussell
Language: English
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Place of Publication: New York and London
Special Attributes: Dust Jacket
