Portrayal Of War Research Articles

Sri Lankan Anglophone Literature as a Mode for Dialogue and Reconciliation in the Portrayal of War in Sri Lanka (1983-2009)

From ancient times, war has played a main role in the lives of people and has been a major theme for literature, history, and as well as for political discourses. The period between 1983-2009 marks the war that took place in Sri Lankan history, which impacted the country politically, culturally, and economically. The realms of Sri Lankan English, Sinhala, and Tamil literature also went through change during this period, and many fiction, poems, dramas, and films were composed in response to the war both during and in its aftermath. The Sri Lankan Anglophone writers: residential authors as well as authors of the diaspora portray the war through their literary compositions. This critical literature review examines the role Anglophone literature plays as a mode for dialogue and reconciliation in the portrayal of war. Above ten studies conducted on Sri Lankan Anglophone literature and its role in portraying war published between 1992 and 2020 were reviewed. The findings of the review indicate that many scholars consider Sri Lankan Anglophone literature as a platform that plays a significant role as a mode for dialogue and reconciliation while some consider it as literature composed by the English-speaking class for its own class. This review concludes that the Sri Lankan Anglophone literature plays a substantial role as a medium for dialogue and reconciliation in the portrayal of war in Sri Lanka (1989-2003).

(Re)Presenting War: A Study of Resilience in Tim O’ Brien’s the Things They Carried

War has registered itself as an inseverable reality of modern times. However, it has marked its presence since the inception of human civilization, and so have the narratives centring it. An investigation into the traditional mainstream narratives divulge the repeated construction of lofty perceptions around war. Per contra to the representation, there have been stories from the battlefield that have created cervix in the narration. Modern times, with the increasing number an intensity of war, resulted in the increase in aberrations in the traditional presentation and brought forth the not-so-glorious-and-glamourous aspects that had been shoved under the carpet by the authors. Tim O’ Brien, in his collection The Things They Carried, touches upon his own experiences and those of a few others during the Vietnam War. He presents the stories as fictional accounts and still manages to give words to the “unspeakable.” As an addition to the conventional presentation of wounds as physical, Brien and various other authors of modern times delve into exploring the emotional and psychological damage as well, that, no doubt, leaves indelible prints while on the field and clings on to some beyond war too. The research paper attempts to delve into exploring the role of resilience in veterans combatting the lone war in the midst of expectations that the traditional war narratives have given birth to. Through this, the paper also strives to locate truth in the portrayal of war.

The Anzac Iliad: Early New Zealand School Journals and the development of the citizen-child in the new dominion

The New Zealand School Journal was established in 1907 to provide reading material across the primary school curriculum. Linked to reforms of the school curriculum, the School Journal aimed to introduce curriculum content relevant to New Zealand children. With the outbreak of the First World War, however, the School Journal became harnessed to the war effort, becoming entrenched in civic instruction and an upsurge in imperialism. Inclusion of patriotic reading material strongly reflected notions of self-sacrifice and reinforced concepts of the dutiful citizen-child. This article explores how preparation for war, and portrayal of war, fostered a particular notion of New Zealand’s developing identity and the role that the citizen-child had to play in the new dominion. Literary integration of subjects and genres, collapses of time and location, along with juxtaposition of items within the School Journal, particularly through the use of the Anzac story, solidified this emergent New Zealand identity. The School Journal, as de facto curriculum, became complicit in the creation and maintenance of the Anzac myth as a basis for the ideal New Zealand citizen through annual commemorative issues of the School Journal, culminating with Anzac Day as a newly created national holiday in 1923.

Kempowski's War

This article reads Walter Kempowski's Das Echolot as an instance of war writing. By analyzing the connection between Kempowski's portrayal of war and the main formal devices and ethical dimensions of Das Echolot, this essay posits Kempowski's groundbreaking work as a response to the challenge to language and representation posed by the Second World War as it was fought on the Eastern Front—a battleground that saw the intertwining of absolute war and total war. Specifically, I attempt to demonstrate that Das Echolot is both a formal refraction of total war and an ethical reversal of absolute war. Kempowski's opus magnum formally internalizes the structure of total war in order to cancel out the deadly notion of the “other” implied in absolute war. Ultimately, this essay seeks to reveal the radicalism, originality, and historical importance of Kempowski's writing of war.

The Struggle overThe Valour and the Horror: Media Power and the Portrayal of War

AbstractThe Valour and the Horroris a series of three documentary films describing Canadian participation during the Second World War which were aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in 1992. The series aggressively challenged “official” war history, arguing that while ordinary soldiers served with dignity and bravery, the incompetence and immorality of senior British and Canadian commanders produced terrible blunders and losses and grotesque assaults against civilian populations in Germany. This article analyzes the controversy that surrounded the series, a controversy that mushroomed into a political struggle over who had the right to control “memory” and who had the right to produce and interpret “reality.” The struggle produced a Senate subcommittee investigation, placed the CBC under intense pressure and scrutiny and evoked strong reactions from veterans' groups and the journalistic and artistic communities. Three frameworks are used to assess the forces that contend against each other in media production: the hegemonic view (that the media celebrate and reinforce the dominant interests in society); the organizational or institutional perspective (that media organizations pursue their own interests even if these interests do not necessarily coincide with those of other dominant groups in society); and the journalist-centred framework (that journalists as professionals exercise considerable discretion over their own work). The article suggests that each of these perspectives can provide valuable insights, but that each by itself fails to provide a satisfactory explanation for the events. By utilizing multiple perspectives for the analysis, a wider range of questions is addressed.

The Portrayal of War and the Fighting Man in Novels of the Vietnam War

The Portrayal of War and the Fighting Man in Novels of the Vietnam War