War and Literary Studies

This is the first volume to provide a systematic overview of the core concepts in contemporary scholarship of war literature.

This volume builds on the growing scholarly interest in war within literary studies as well as the burgeoning awareness of the importance of literary perspectives on warfare. The essays are intended both to serve as a guide for researchers and students and to advance scholarship in the field.War and Literary Studies poses two main questions: First, how has war shaped the field of literary studies? And second, when scholars today study the literature of war what are the key concepts in play? Seeking to complement the extant scholarship, this volume adopts a wider and more systematic approach as it directs our attention to the relation between warfare and literary studies as a field of knowledge. What are the key characteristics of the language of war? Of gender in war? Which questions are central to the way we engage with war and trauma or war and sensation? In which ways were prominent 20th century theories such as critical theory, French postwar theory, postcolonial theory shaped by war? How might emergent concepts such as 'revolution,' 'the anthropocene' or 'capitalism' inflect the study of war and literature?