Non-Fictional Interwar Narratives by English Writers

The article presents a comparative reading of three nonfictional interwar narratives by British writers who are also well-known as authors of fiction or poetry. Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930) and Robert Graves’s Good Bye to All That (1929) present their authors’ experience...

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Main Author: Barbara PUSCHMANN-NALENZ
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Laboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Monde Anglophone (LERMA) 2020-06-01
Series:E-REA
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/erea/9494
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author Barbara PUSCHMANN-NALENZ
author_facet Barbara PUSCHMANN-NALENZ
author_sort Barbara PUSCHMANN-NALENZ
collection DOAJ
description The article presents a comparative reading of three nonfictional interwar narratives by British writers who are also well-known as authors of fiction or poetry. Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930) and Robert Graves’s Good Bye to All That (1929) present their authors’ experiences in war and peace times. Both had volunteered for the First World War and were deeply disillusioned about the meaninglessness of the sacrifice of lives. The borderlines between fiction and nonfiction often become blurred in these texts, despite their different conceptual approach. George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia (1938) about the Spanish Civil War and the end of the 1930s connects his personal report about a war with his criticism of the conservative British establishment. His essay displays the writer’s engagement with politics and socialism added to his fascination with Spain. Aware of contemporaneous literary texts by the same writers my article aims at defining major counterdistinctive generic features of the different nonfictional narratives with their varying degree of fictionalisation.
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institution Kabale University
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language English
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publisher Laboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Monde Anglophone (LERMA)
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spelling doaj-art-86c122223125404aa4c02acee9a6d5282025-01-09T12:55:07ZengLaboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Monde Anglophone (LERMA)E-REA1638-17182020-06-0117210.4000/erea.9494Non-Fictional Interwar Narratives by English WritersBarbara PUSCHMANN-NALENZThe article presents a comparative reading of three nonfictional interwar narratives by British writers who are also well-known as authors of fiction or poetry. Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930) and Robert Graves’s Good Bye to All That (1929) present their authors’ experiences in war and peace times. Both had volunteered for the First World War and were deeply disillusioned about the meaninglessness of the sacrifice of lives. The borderlines between fiction and nonfiction often become blurred in these texts, despite their different conceptual approach. George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia (1938) about the Spanish Civil War and the end of the 1930s connects his personal report about a war with his criticism of the conservative British establishment. His essay displays the writer’s engagement with politics and socialism added to his fascination with Spain. Aware of contemporaneous literary texts by the same writers my article aims at defining major counterdistinctive generic features of the different nonfictional narratives with their varying degree of fictionalisation.https://journals.openedition.org/erea/9494First World WarnonfictionGravesSassoonOrwellhistoriographic autobiography
spellingShingle Barbara PUSCHMANN-NALENZ
Non-Fictional Interwar Narratives by English Writers
E-REA
First World War
nonfiction
Graves
Sassoon
Orwell
historiographic autobiography
title Non-Fictional Interwar Narratives by English Writers
title_full Non-Fictional Interwar Narratives by English Writers
title_fullStr Non-Fictional Interwar Narratives by English Writers
title_full_unstemmed Non-Fictional Interwar Narratives by English Writers
title_short Non-Fictional Interwar Narratives by English Writers
title_sort non fictional interwar narratives by english writers
topic First World War
nonfiction
Graves
Sassoon
Orwell
historiographic autobiography
url https://journals.openedition.org/erea/9494
work_keys_str_mv AT barbarapuschmannnalenz nonfictionalinterwarnarrativesbyenglishwriters