War Poets and Other Subjects

In the opening section of these related studies of modern literature, Bernard Bergonzi considers the poetry and fiction of two World Wars, including discussions of Wilfred Owen, Richard Aldingtons Death of a Hero, Pat Barkers Regeneration, and the poetry of the Desert War of the 1940s. The second section deals with a number of prominent twentieth-century authors. Among other subjects, it looks at Ford Madox Fords The Good Soldier as a novel anticipating the Great War, the treatment of memory in Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four, and aspects of the poetry of T.S. Eliot, responding to arguments about its anti-semitism. The final section is on Catholic writers, from Hopkins and Chesterton to Graham Greene and David Lodge. The book continues Bergonzis extensive career as a critic and literary historian of the modern period, and takes a fresh look at the subjects of some of the earlier books, such as Hopkins, Eliot, Wells, and the literature of war.