Siegfried Sassoon

Description

From 1914 until 1918, World War I ravaged Europe, devastating country after country and taking millions of lives. Responsible for more battlefield casualties than any war before or since, the confrontation is remembered as one of the most gruelling and tragic in western civilization. Out of the horror, however, came an astonishing legacy in the form of poetry. The violence of combat awoke strong emotions in a group of renowned Englishmen who were able to translate their experience and emotion into verse: Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, and not least, Siegfried Sassoon. Born into a privileged family in Kent in 1886, Sassoon spent a largely unremarkable childhood. Upon completing his last year at the distinguished secondary school Marlborough College, a schoolmaster wrote of him: "shows no particular intelligence or aptitude for any branch of his work; seems unlikely to adopt any special career." After two years at Cambridge and a few more pursuing gentlemanly pastimes, Sassoon decided to concentrate on his poetry, which remained mediocre. The was to change with his entry into the army, just a few days before Britain entered the war, and the inspiration the horrors of trench warfare provided him. His war poems were to have an immediacy and vibrancy unmatched by any he had written before. In this study, Sanford Sternlicht examines not only this poetry but Sassoon's other literary endeavors, including the widely acclaimed The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston, to create the most comprehensive study on him to date. The first book to profit from the publication of Sassoon diaries in the 1980s, Siegfried Sassoon is an authoritative and well-balanced introduction to the life and works of a fascinating writer. It also provides strong evidence against the popular view that Sassoon was a purely Georgian poet, placing his combat poetry squarely in the modernist tradition. Sassoon's copious post-World War I satirical and religious poetry is fully explicated and evaluated.

Subjects

Series Statement

• Twayne's English authors series ;