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Echoes of the western front: Images of trench warfare in the post-war fiction of West, Faulkner, and Caldwell

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Date Issued:
1992
Summary:
The war novels and propaganda of World War I infused Americans with a consciousness of trench warfare through images of degradation, discontinuity, and the irrelevance of human effort. Three modernist novels, The Day of the Locust (1933) by Nathanael West, As I Lay Dying (1930) by William Faulkner, and God's Little Acre (1934) by Erskine Caldwell, are infused with this same imagery. Though neither West, Faulkner, nor Caldwell participated in the war, their works symbolically echo the images of trench warfare, a development uniquely central to World War I. Although these novels do not mention war, the world of "The Great War" is their world. There has been much written on the symbolism in these three novels. No critic, however, associates the symbols with trench warfare. This thesis therefore relies on the historical and psychological research of World War I, which is then applied to the works of West, Faulkner, and Caldwell.
Title: Echoes of the western front: Images of trench warfare in the post-war fiction of West, Faulkner, and Caldwell.
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Name(s): McFather, Moira Kathleen.
Florida Atlantic University, Degree grantor
McGuirk, Carol, Thesis advisor
Type of Resource: text
Genre: Electronic Thesis Or Dissertation
Issuance: monographic
Date Issued: 1992
Publisher: Florida Atlantic University
Place of Publication: Boca Raton, Fla.
Physical Form: application/pdf
Extent: 47 p.
Language(s): English
Summary: The war novels and propaganda of World War I infused Americans with a consciousness of trench warfare through images of degradation, discontinuity, and the irrelevance of human effort. Three modernist novels, The Day of the Locust (1933) by Nathanael West, As I Lay Dying (1930) by William Faulkner, and God's Little Acre (1934) by Erskine Caldwell, are infused with this same imagery. Though neither West, Faulkner, nor Caldwell participated in the war, their works symbolically echo the images of trench warfare, a development uniquely central to World War I. Although these novels do not mention war, the world of "The Great War" is their world. There has been much written on the symbolism in these three novels. No critic, however, associates the symbols with trench warfare. This thesis therefore relies on the historical and psychological research of World War I, which is then applied to the works of West, Faulkner, and Caldwell.
Identifier: 14854 (digitool), FADT14854 (IID), fau:11640 (fedora)
Collection: FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection
Note(s): Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1992.
Subject(s): West, Nathanael,--1903-1940--Criticism and interpretation
Faulkner, William,--1897-1962--Criticism and interpretation
Caldwell, Erskine,--1903---Criticism and interpretation
World War, 1914-1918--Literature and the war
Held by: Florida Atlantic University Libraries
Persistent Link to This Record: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/14854
Sublocation: Digital Library
Use and Reproduction: Copyright © is held by the author, with permission granted to Florida Atlantic University to digitize, archive and distribute this item for non-profit research and educational purposes. Any reuse of this item in excess of fair use or other copyright exemptions requires permission of the copyright holder.
Use and Reproduction: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Host Institution: FAU
Is Part of Series: Florida Atlantic University Digital Library Collections.