The Oxford Handbook of British and Irish War Poetry: (Oxford Handbooks)

Thirty-seven chapters, written by leading literary critics from across the world, describe the latest thinking about twentieth-century war poetry. The book maps both the uniqueness of each war and the continuities between poets of different wars, while the interconnections between the literatures of war and peacetime, and between combatant and civilian poets, are fully considered. The focus is on Britain and Ireland, but links are drawn with the poetry of the United States and continental Europe.The Oxford Handbook feeds a growing interest in war poetry and offers, in toto, a definitive survey of the terrain. It is intended for a broad audience, made up of specialists and also graduates and undergraduates, and is an essential resource for both scholars of particular poets and for those interested in wider debates about modern poetry. This scholarly and readable assessment of the field will provide an important point of reference for decades to come.

Table of Contents:
Tim Kendall: Introduction Beginnings 1: Matthew Bevis: Fighting Talk: Victorian War Poetry 2: Ralph Pite: Graver Things, Braver Things: Hardy's Martial Zest 3: Daniel Karlin: From Dark Defile to Gethsemane: Rudyard Kipling's War Poetry The Great War 4: Santanu Das: First World War Poetry and the Realm of the Senses 5: Stacy Gillis: Many Sisters to Many Brothers: Woman Poets of the Great War 6: Mark Rawlinson: Wilfred Owen 7: John Lee: Shakespeare and the Great War 8: David Goldie: Was there a Scottish War Literature? Scotland, Poetry, and the First World War 9: Vivien Noakes: War Poetry, or the Poetry of War? Isaac Rosenberg, David Jones, Ivor Gurney 10: Vincent Sherry: The Great War and Modernist Poetry in England 11: Fran Brearton: A War of Friendship: Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon 12: Marjorie Perloff: 'Easter, 1916': Yeats's World War I Poem Entre Deux Guerres 13: Stan Smith: 'What the dawn will bring to light': Credulity and Commitment in the Ideological Construction of 'Spain' 14: Rainer Emig: Unwriting the Good Fight: Auden's 'Spain' and its Contexts 15: John Lyon: War, Politics and Disappearing Poetry: Auden, Yeats, Empson The Second World War 16: Dawn Bellamy: 'Others have come before you': the Influence of the Great War on Second World War Poets 17: Roderick Watson: Death's Proletariat: Scottish Poets of the Second World War 18: Gerwyn Wiliams: New Territory: Alun Llywelyn-Williams and Welsh Poetry of the Second World War 19: Helen Goethals: The Muse that Failed: Poetry and Patriotism during the Second World War 20: Peter McDonald: 'Since Munich, What?': Louis MacNeice's Poetry of the Second World War 21: Geoffrey Hill: Sidney Keyes in Historical Perspective Continuities in Modern War Poetry 22: Hugh Haughton: Anthologizing War 23: Simon Featherstone: Mina Loy and E. J. Scovell: Defining Women's War Poetry 24: Edna Longley: War Pastorals, 1914-2004 25: Sarah Cole: The Poetry of Pain 26: Peter Robinson: 'Down in the terraces between the targets': Civilians 27: Cornelia D. J. Pearsall: Complicate Me When I'm Dead: The War Remains of Keith Douglas and Ted Hughes 28: Tara Christie: 'For Isaac Rosenberg': Geoffrey Hill, Michael Longley, Cathal O'Searcaigh 29: Jon Stallworthy: The Fury and the Mire 'Post-war' poetry 30: Gareth Reeves: 'This is plenty. This is more than enough': Poetry and the Memory of the Second World War 31: Claire M. Tylee: British Holocaust Poetry: Songs of Experience 32: Alan Marshall: Quiet Americans: Responses to War in some British and American Poets of the 1960s 33: Adam Piette: Pointing to East and West: British Cold War Poetry 34: David Wheatley: Dichtung und Wahrheit: Contemporary War and the Non-Combatant Poet Northern Ireland 35: Paul Volsik: Constructing and Deconstructing the Epic - Contemporary Northern Irish Poetry 36: Brendan Corcoran: 'Stalled in the Pre-Articulate': Heaney, Poetry, and War 37: April Warman: Unavowed Engagement: Paul Muldoon as War Poet Notes on Contributors

About the Author :
Tim Kendall is Professor of English Literature at the University of Exeter. He has published a book of poems, Strange Land, with Carcanet, and full-length studies of Muldoon and Plath. From 1994 until 2003 he edited the international poetry magazine, Thumbscrew. His latest monograph is Modern English War Poetry (OUP, 2006).

Review :
Kendall has assembled a wide range of fresh and important critical perspectives of a remarkably high quality. Tom Walker, The Cambridge Quarterly rich and wide ranging... a thorough, inclusive and invaluable guide to the field, combining accessible and informative overviews with original and insightful research. Jo Gill MLR If a definitive edition of Great War poetry criticism were possible, then this would be it...a vast scholarly effort...a large and rich achievement, with an infectious quality of 'browsability'...it addresses an academic need ambitiously and comprehensively. James Bridges, The Ivor Gurney Society journal ...the real quality of most of the essays. Again and again they are illuminating, thoughtful, and challenging. The array of contributors that Kendall has assembled is stellar, and the result a fine collection, one that will reward turning to again and again. Janis P. Stout, The Review of English Studies ...for the non-specialist, this Handbook acts as a master-class in the reading and understanding of the works considered, whether familiar or not. For the specialists, it promises a never-ending source for debate David Page, The Kipling Journal For once I have to agree with the publisher's claim that this Handbook 'is an essential resource for both scholars of particular poets and forthose interested in wider debates about modern poetry.' I should add that it provides much of value to the non-academic also. David Page, The Kipling Journal