ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Avoiding the sentimentality and jingoism of many war poets, Sassoon wrote of the horror and brutality of trench warfare and contemptuously satirized generals, politicians, and churchmen for their incompetence and blind support of the war. He was also well known as a novelist and political commentator.

Detailed explanation-2: -The First World War evoked a surge in literary output, which included poems, novels and drama. Whilst the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen immediately springs to mind, works by by Ivor Gurney, Edward Thomas, Charles Sorley, David Jones and Isaac Rosenberg are also widely anthologised.

Detailed explanation-3: -During World War I, a genre of poetry emerged from the front lines termed “Trench Poetry.” It was inspired by the soldiers’ daily life on the front, especially the constant witnessing and interacting with horrifying scenes.

Detailed explanation-4: -In battle, soldiers had to charge out of the trenches and across no-man’s land into a hail of bullets and shrapnel and poison gas. They were easy targets and casualties were enormously high. By the end of 1914, after just five months of fighting, the number of dead and wounded exceeded four million men.

Detailed explanation-5: -After the War, a general sense of purposelessness and defeat led to a movement both in modernism and in anti-authoritarianism and nihilism in literature and in art. A sense of separation between the artist and writer and the general public was created during this time.