‘There are Many Strange Animals that will Repay […] study’: Humour and Identity in Trench-Newspaper Natural Histories

Abstract

During the First World War, trench newspapers regularly printed parodies of natural history, depicting servicemen as half-human, half-animal creatures. These parodies present a new angle on the role that trench newspapers played in articulating servicemen's senses of identity, in relation both to the experience of joining the military and to human identity in a time of war. Servicemen present themselves simultaneously as estranged war-zone beings and as expert guides to an exotic realm, negotiating complex tensions between alienation and communication, and offering alternative pictures of the war zone to those that have become most familiar. The parodies indicate the representational value of humorous modes for depicting nuanced aspects of servicemen's experiences of the First World War. In using humorous tropes that first arose in response to nineteenth-century scientific advances, in addition, the parodies suggest a new strand to the cultural history of the trench press.