ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -’Dulce et Decorum Est’ is a poem by the British poet Wilfred Owen, drafted at Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh in 1917. Owen had been admitted to the hospital after suffering from shell shock after a period of fighting in the Battle of the Somme.

Detailed explanation-2: -Wilfred Owen wrote ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ because he wanted people to realize what kind of conditions were experienced by soldiers on the front line in World War I.

Detailed explanation-3: -His best known poems include “Anthem for Doomed Youth", “Futility", “Dulce Et Decorum Est", “The Parable of the Old Men and the Young” and “Strange Meeting".

Detailed explanation-4: -The poem was originally dedicated to dedicated to Jessie Pope, a poet who was known for writing pro-war propaganda poems, such as ‘War Girls’.

Detailed explanation-5: -Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori – or the “old Lie”, as Owen describes it – is a quotation from the Odes of the Roman poet Horace, in which it is claimed that “it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country”.