ENG31920 War Fiction 1870–1930: Imagined Wars and the Experience of War

Academic Year 2020/2021

‘Seven years before the Great War, its shadow stood out upon our sunny world as plainly as all that, for the “imaginative novelist” – or anyone else with ordinary common sense – to see’ - H. G. Wells (1921). The period from approximately 1870 to 1914 in Britain was notable for the publication of a large body of sensational popular tales which imagined imminent war breaking out on an unprecedented, global scale. This module examines these accounts of imagined war and compares them with the writing that arose out of the actual experience of the First World War after 1914. Students will be introduced to a range of key fin-de-siècle future war tales, and will explore in some detail their relationship to their historical context of imperial conflict. The module will then proceed to examine both classic and overlooked fictional texts of World War I, focusing on the literary techniques their authors use to convey the experience of war. Particular attention will be paid to reading the pre- and post-war texts comparatively to reveal similarities in the literary techniques deployed, to explore the usage of fictional texts as propaganda, and to allow the often surprising anticipations of the experience imminent in 1914 to be elucidated.

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Curricular information is subject to change

Learning Outcomes:

• Demonstrate a detailed knowledge of the primary texts and be able to read them closely, paying attention to form, structure and language
• Discern the complex historical and cultural contexts out of which future war fiction emerged during the period 1870-1914
• Relate the themes and concerns of the texts arising out of WWI to their social, historical, and political contexts and to the lived experience of war
• Perform comparative readings of the pre and post-war texts
• Evaluate the critical debates about and theory on pre and post-war fiction of the period 1870-1930
• Demonstrate skills in research, oral and written communication, class discussion and teamwork
• Undertake research by using available resources such as bibliographies, archives and online material
• Synthesise the theoretical approaches and archival and reading techniques practiced to produce a substantial essay on a topic connected with the module

Indicative Module Content:

Indicative schedule

1. Introduction to war fiction
2. Examples of early invasion fiction: excerpts from George Chesney, The Battle of Dorking (1871) & George Griffith, The Angel of the Revolution (1893)
3. Erskine Childers, The Riddle of the Sands (1903)
4. William Le Queux, The Invasion of 1910 (1906) (excerpts)
5. H. G. Wells, The War in the Air (1908)
6. Introduction to the First World War + Henri Barbusse, Under Fire (1916)
7. Enid Bagnold, A Diary without Dates (1918)
8. Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)
9. Sisir Sarbadhikari, On to Baghdad (1958) (excerpts ed. and trans. by Amitav Ghosh)
10. Excerpts from Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930) and A.O. Pollard, Fire-Eater: The Memoirs of a VC (1932)

Student Effort Hours: 
Student Effort Type Hours
Seminar (or Webinar)

20

Field Trip/External Visits

2

Specified Learning Activities

52

Autonomous Student Learning

126

Total

200

Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
Teaching and Learning approaches in this module include active/task-based learning; peer and group work; critical writing; reflective learning; debates; field-trip; and student presentations. Seminars will usually include short lectures, group discussion, close-reading practice and/or student presentations. 
Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Not applicable to this module.
 
Assessment Strategy  
Description Timing Open Book Exam Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade
Essay: Final research essay. A wide variety of essay topics will be available and students will also have the option to design their own topic in consultation with the lecturer. Coursework (End of Trimester) n/a Graded No

60

Continuous Assessment: 1. Short worksheet (15%)
2. Short essay-type exercise based on examining war fiction/pamphlets in their original format (in online archives) (15%)
Throughout the Trimester n/a Graded No

30

Continuous Assessment: Class contribution/discussion boards Throughout the Trimester n/a Graded No

10


Carry forward of passed components
No
 
Resit In Terminal Exam
Spring No
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 
Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, on an activity or draft prior to summative assessment
• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment
• Group/class feedback, post-assessment
• Self-assessment activities

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Students will receive individual post-assessment feedback on their formative mid-term exercise. Students will receive group feedback in class on their presentations, with the option for peer feedback as well. Prior to their final essay, students will have the option to receive informal feedback on their essay proposals. Should they wish it, students will have the opportunity to receive individual post-assessment feedback on their final essay.

Further Reading for War Fiction (suggested only)

Invasion fiction/ pre 1914
Stephen Arata, Fictions of Loss in the Victorian Fin de Siècle (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996).
Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British literature and imperialism, 1830-1914 (1994).
Piers Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007).
Michael Brown, Anna Maria Barry and Joanne Begiato (eds), Martial masculinities: Experiencing and imagining the military in the long nineteenth century, (Manchester UP, 2019).
Ailise Bulfin, Gothic Invasions: Imperialism, War and Fin de Siècle Popular Fiction (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2018). (on Brightspace)
Ailise Bulfin, ‘“To Arms!”: Invasion Narratives and Late-Victorian Literature’, Literature Compass, 12:9 (Sep 2015), 482-96. (on Brightspace)
Naomi Carle, Samuel Shaw, Sarah Shaw (eds), Edwardian Culture: Beyond the Garden Party (New York: Routledge, 2018).
I. F. Clarke. ‘Before and After The Battle of Dorking’. Science Fiction Studies 24:71 (Mar 1997). (Online at www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/71/clarke71art.htm).
I. F. Clarke, The Great War with Germany, 1890-1914: Fictions and Fantasies of the War-to-come, (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 1997).
I. F. Clarke, The Tale of the Future : From the Beginning to the Present Day : An Annotated Bibliography. 3rd edn. London: Library Association, 1978.
I. F. Clarke, The Tale of the Next Great War, 1871-1914: Fictions of Future Warfare and of Battles Still-to-Come, (Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1995).
I. F. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War: Future Wars 1763-3749, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992).
John Darwin, Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain (2013).
Cecil D. Eby, The Road to Armageddon: The Martial Spirit in English Popular Literature, 1870-1914, (Durham and London: Duke UP, 1987).
A. J. Echevarria II, Imagining Future War: The West’s Technological Revolution and Visions of Wars to Come, 1880-1914 (Westport CA: Praeger Security International, 2007).
Ross G. Forman, ‘Empire’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Fin de Siècle, ed. by Gail Marshall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 91.
Lawrence Freedman, The Future of War: A History (PublicAffairs, 2017).
Charles E. Gannon, Rumors of War and Infernal Machines: Technomilitary Agenda-setting in American and British Speculative Fiction (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).
Andrew Griffiths, The New Journalism, the New Imperialism and the Fiction of Empire, 1870-1900 (Springer, 2015).
Hall, C., Draper, N. & McClelland, K. (eds), Emancipation and the remaking of the British Imperial world (Manchester University Press, 2014).
Martin Hewitt (ed), The Victorian World (London: Routledge, 2012).
Jon Hegglund, ‘Defending the Realm: Domestic Space and Mass Cultural Contamination in Howards End and An Englishman’s Home’, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, 40.4 (1997), 398-423.
Brett Holman, The Next War in the Air: Britain’s Fear of the Bomber, 1908-1941 (Ashgate, 2014).
Michael Hughes and Harry Wood, ‘Crimson nightmares: tales of invasion and fears of revolution in early twentieth-century Britain’, Contemporary British History. 28, 3 (2014). (on Brightspace)
Samuel Hynes, The Edwardian Turn of Mind (Princeton UP, 1968).
Patrick Kirkwood, ‘The Impact of Fiction on Public Debate in Late Victorian Britain: The Battle of Dorking and the “Lost Career” of Sir George Tomkyns Chesney,’ Graduate History Review 4:1 (2012): 1-16. (on Brightspace)
Danny Laurie-Fletcher, British Invasion and Spy Literature, 1871–1918: Historical Perspectives on Contemporary Society (Springer, 2019).
A. Michael Matin, ‘“The Hun is at the gate!”: Historicizing Kipling’s Militaristic Rhetoric, From the Imperial Periphery to the National Center; Part One: The Russian Threat to British India’. Studies in the Novel 31:3 (Fall 1999a): 317-56.
A. Michael Matin, ‘“The Hun is at the gate!”: Historicizing Kipling’s Militaristic Rhetoric, From the Imperial Periphery to the National Center; Part Two: The French, Russian, and German Threats to Great Britain’. Studies in the Novel 31:4 (Winter 1999b): 432-70.
A. Michael Matin, ‘Scrutinizing The Battle of Dorking: The Royal United Service Institution and the Mid-Victorian Invasion Controversy’. Victorian Literature and Culture 39 (2011): 385-407.
A. Michael Matin, ‘The Creativity of War Planners: Armed Forces Professionals and the Pre-1914 British Invasion-Scare Genre’. English Literary History 78:4 (Winter 2011): 801-831.
John M. Mackenzie, Imperialism and Popular Culture (Manchester University Press, 1986).
Christian Melby, ‘Empire and nation in British future-war and invasion-scare fiction, 1871–1914’, Historical Journal, 63:2 (2020): 389–410; doi:10.1017/S0018246X19000232.
David Morgan-Owen, The Fear of Invasion: Strategy, Politics, and British War Planning, 1880–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
Michael Paris, Winged Warfare: The Literature and Theory of Aerial Warfare in Britain, 1859-1917 (Manchester UP, 1992).
Michael Paris, Warrior Nation: Images of War in British Popular Culture, 1850-2000 (Reaktion Books, 2002).
Daniel Pick, War Machine: The Rationalisation of Slaughter in the Modern Age (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1993).
Bernard Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004).
Bernard Porter, The Lion's Share: A History of British Imperialism 1850-2011 (1975; Routledge, 2014).
Petra Rau, English Modernism, National Identity and the Germans, 1890-1950 (Farnham, 2009).
John Rieder, Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008).
Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Vintage, 1994).
Alan Sandison, Robert Dingley (eds), Studies in Fact, Fantasy and Science Fiction (Palgrave, 2000).
Richard Scully, British Images of Germany: Admiration, Antagonism, Ambivalence, 1860-1914. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Richard Scully and Andrekos Varnava (eds), Comic empires: Imperialism in cartoons, caricature, and satirical art (Manchester UP, 2020).
David Seed (ed), Future Wars: The Anticipations and the Fears, (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2012).
Brian Stableford, Scientific Romance in Britain 1890-1950 (London: 4th Estate, 1985).
Sarah E. Stockwell (ed), The British Empire: Themes and Perspectives (2008).
Antony Taylor, ‘London’s Burning’: Pulp Fiction, the Politics of Terrorism and the Destruction of the Capital in British Popular Culture, 1840-2005 (Bloomsbury, 2012)
Tuchman, Barbara. The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World before the War 1890-1914. London: Papermac, 1997.
Iain B. Whyte, ‘Anglo-German Conflict in Popular Fiction 1870-1914’, in Fred Bridgham (ed), The First World War as a Clash of Cultures (Rochester NY, 2006), 43-99.
Jonathan Wild, Literature of the 1900s: The Great Edwardian Emporium, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017).
Harry Wood, ‘Competing Prophets: H. G. Wells, George Griffith, and Visions of Future War, 1893-1914’, The Wellsian, 38 (2015): 5-23.

Post 1914
Aleida Assman, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). See also research project "The Past in the Present: Dimensions and Dynamics of Cultural Memory".
Ian F. W. Beckett, The Great War: 1914-1918 (Routledge, 2014).
Bernard Bergonzi, Heroes’ Twilight: A Study of the Literature of the Great War (1996)
Fred Bridgham (ed), The First World War as a Clash of Cultures (Rochester NY, 2006).
Claire Buck, Conceiving Strangeness in British First World War Writing (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
Cathy Caruth (ed), Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Johns Hopkins UP, 1995).
Christopher M. Clarke, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, (London, 2013).
Mark Connelly, Jo Fox, Ulf Schmidt and Stefan Goebel (eds), Propaganda and Conflict: War, Media and Shaping the Twentieth Century (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)
Santanu Das (ed.), Race, Empire and First World War Writing (Cambridge, 2011).
Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (New York: Mariner Books, 1989).
Astrid Erll, Ansgar Nünning (eds), Cultural Memory Studies. An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, (Berlin, New York, 2008). (see download)
A. Frayn & T. Phillips, ‘Introduction: War and Memory’, Journal of War and Culture Studies, 11:3 (2018): 181-191. doi:10.1080/17526272.2018.1490075
Andrew Frayn, Writing Disenchantment: British First World War Prose, 1914-1930 (Manchester University Press, 2014).
Anne Fuchs, Phantoms of War in Contemporary German Literature, Films and Discourse (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (1975).
Robert Gerwarth, The Vanquished: Why the First Word War Failed to End (Allen Lane, 2018).
John Horne (ed.), A Companion to the First World War (Oxford, Chichester, and Malden, Mass.: Blackwell-Wiley, 2010).
Samuel Hynes, The Soldiers’ Tale: Bearing Witness to a Modern War (Penguin, 1997).
Samuel Hynes, A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture (London, Bodley Head, 1991).
Alan Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
Alan Kramer & John Horne, German Atrocities, 1914. A History of Denial (London and New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001)
Alan Kramer, ‘The First World War as cultural trauma’, in Richard J.B. Bosworth (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Fascism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 32-51.
Andrew Maunder & Angela K. Smith, British Literature of World War I (Pickering & Chatto, 2011).
Jessica Meyer, Men of War: Masculinity and the First World War in Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009).
Kate McLoughlin, Authoring War: The Literary Representation of War from the Iliad to Iraq (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
David Omissi, ‘Europe through Indian Eyes: Indian Soldiers Encounter England and France 1914–1918’, English Historical Review, 122 (2007): 371-396.
Caitriona Pennell, A Kingdom United: Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
Caitriona Pennell and Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses (eds), A World at War, 1911-1949: Explorations in the Cultural History of War (Leiden: Brill, 2019).
W. Scott Poole, Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror (Counterpoint, 2018).
Patrick J. Quinn and Steven Trout, eds, The Literature of the Great War Reconsidered – Beyond Modern Memory (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001).
Vincent Sherry, ed, The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the First World War (Cambridge: CUP, 2005).
Angela K. Smith & S Barkhof, War Experience and Memory in Global Cultures Since 1914 (Routledge, 2018).
Angela K. Smith, Gender and warfare in the twentieth century: Textual representations (2017).
Angela K. Smith, British Women of the Eastern Front: War, writing and experience in Serbia and Russia, 1914-20, (Manchester University Press, 2016).
Zara S. Steiner and Keith Neilson, Britain and the Origins of the First World War (Basingstoke, 2003).
Hew Strachan, The First World War: Volume 1: To Arms (Oxford, 2001).
Andrekos Varnava, Serving the Empire in the Great War: The Cypriot Mule Corps, imperial loyalty and silenced memory (Manchester UP, 2019).
H. P. Willmott, World War I (New York: Dorling Kindersley, 2003).
Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (1995).
Jay Winter (ed), Cambridge History of the First World War, 3 vol.s (Cambridge: CUP, 2014).
Jay Winter, ‘Popular Culture in Wartime Britain’, in Aviel Roshwalt and Richard Stites (eds), European Culture in the Great War: The Arts, Entertainment and Propaganda, 1914–1918, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 330–48


Web resources
The Invasion Network: https://invasionnetwork.wordpress.com/
The Riddle of the Sands research blog: http://www.theriddleofthesands.com/
Island Mentalities research blog: https://invasionscares.wordpress.com/
Airminded: Air power and British Society research blog http://airminded.org/
Oxford literary resource site: https://writersinspire.org/themes/first-world-war
Oxford history resource site: http://ww1centenary.oucs.ox.ac.uk/
Franco-Prussian war images archive http://www.laguerrede1870enimages.fr/
1914-1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of World War I http://www.1914-1918-online.net/