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First World War Poetry and Historical Literacy

2022; Springer International Publishing; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-030-95576-2_8

2662-6527

Torunn Skjærstad, Juliet Munden,

Literacy, Media, and Education

This chapter explores the close relationship between historical literacy and sustainability. Affective engagement, critical thinking, and historical awareness are central aspects of historical literacy, as well as being core values in a sustainable future. We argue that engaging with poems and studying them in the context of their historical and ideological sites of production can contribute to the development of historical literacy. To make this argument, we consider three poems written during the First World War: Rupert Brooke’s “The Soldier,” Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est,” and Siegfried Sassoon’s “Does It Matter?” Brooke’s poem in praise of war, and Owen’s in detestation of it, are amongst the most anthologised poems of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, while Sassoon’s poem confronts readers with the anguish of a soldier’s trauma and invalidity. As situated cultural expressions and as masterful examples of poetic form and language, the poems open spaces for affective engagement and critical thinking, which we hold to be crucial for making sense of the past in ways that can contribute to a sustainable future.