Representations Of Soldiers Research Articles

Written With Their Blood: Contemplating Death in South Africa in the Newspaper Poems of 1899–1902

Abstract The South African War of 1899–1902 was a moment of crisis for the British Empire. Although it has been called the high point of British imperialism, its resonances in popular culture texts indicate that that the conflict was a source of national trauma and anxiety as well as an occasion for imperial patriotism. This essay explores the ways in which military and civilian poets writing in English for newspaper publication during the war, in Britain and around the world, were particularly troubled by the wartime landscapes of South Africa. I argue that in their representations of soldiers’ deaths, newspaper poets perform two related mapping exercises. In a cartography of loss, they reflect anxiously on a terrain strewn with British bodies, which were exposed to the extremity of the South African elements and threatened by the landscape’s otherness and apparent emptiness. Meanwhile, other newspaper poems attempt a reparative cartography of remembrance, in which a shared consciousness of buried British bodies and shed British blood could turn topographic locations into beacons in a cultural memory map. Employed by newspaper poets of different political persuasions, these tactics often aimed for patriotic or propagandistic effects, but they simultaneously express uneasiness, about British bodies and British imperial ambitions.

Mercenaries at the movies: representations of soldiers of fortune in Mexico and the Congo in American and European cinema

ABSTRACT This paper examines cinematic representations of mercenaries from the era of silent movies to the 1980s. It argues that cinema has been selective in the choice of historical periods to depict mercenaries and soldiers of fortune, ignoring for the most part the centuries of European state building in which mercenaries played a significant role. Most mercenary films are anchored in the near present and the paper focuses on Mexico and the Congo as terrains of political breakdown and external intervention. Since the 1950s, a range of films depict mercenaries in these terrains seeking money, adventure, and the thrills of killing, and the paper examines mercenary movies through the character structures of hero, anti-hero and villain. These three structures have shaped the portrayal of mercenaries in westerns and war movies as well as action and sci fi movies, where they have become hardened in the last two decades into range of stock stereotypes

Portraits of the Nigerian Soldier in Isidore Okpewho’s The Last Duty and Festus Iyayi’s Heroes

An essential feature of Nigerian literatures is their capacity to exploit history and social experience to bring to light the human condition in society without compromising literary aesthetics. Thus, Nigerian novels often appear to be more educative than entertaining by their ability to illuminate social realities far more effectively than historical or sociological texts. This is evident in the representations of soldiers in Nigerian novels which are highly influenced by historical and social circumstances. This paper carries out a comparative and descriptive analysis of portrayals of Nigerian soldiers in Isidore Okpewho’s The Last Duty and Festus Iyayi’s Heroes from a new historical perspective. Most studies on the military in Nigerian novels often focus on their actions in war situations and their disruptive and undemocratic activities in politics. However, these studies frequently explore the military as a group with little attention to the texts as expositions on character types in the Nigerian military. This study therefore contributes to criticism on the nexus between literary representation, history, and society. It further highlights historical and social contexts of military explorations in Nigerian novels and their impacts on the perception of the Nigerian soldier in society. These are aimed at showing that depictions of the military in Nigerian novels go beyond their capacities for disruptions and destructions in society; they represent artistic probing of the nature and character of persons in the Nigerian military.

Impossible Returns: The Trope of the Soldier in Celia de Fréine's Poetry

This essay looks at the representation of soldiers in the poetry of Celia de Fréine, in particular focusing on the moment of homecoming. The poems studied are not tied to any recognizable historical, geographical, or mythological background; instead, warfare is presented as timeless. In this way de Fréine's soldiers contribute to international debates on the trials of militarized masculinity beyond the national frontiers of Irish history. However, these soldier poems are studied here in the context of Ulysses' return to Ithaca after twenty years away. As psychiatrist Jonathan Shay contends, the challenges that going back home posed for Ulysses parallel the difficulties encountered by modern and contemporary soldiers in the aftermath of war, namely post traumatic stress disorder and demonstrations of extreme violence against women. De Fréine's soldiers are also profoundly damaged by war and, like Ulysses, they find readjustment to civilian life challenging. The Odyssey provides a fruitful interpretative framework for these poems since both Homer and de Fréine are asking a fundamental question – is it possible to return, or truly be at home again, after the experience of war.

Happy is the Land that Needs No Heroes

This essay interrogates two articles by the Canadian historian Jeff Keshen and the Australian historian Mark Sheftall, which assert that the representations of soldiers in the First World War (Anzacs in Australia, members of the Canadian Expeditionary Forces, the CEF), are comparable. I argue, however, that in reaching their conclusions, these historians have either overlooked or insufficiently considered a number of crucial factors, such as the influence the Australian historian/war correspondent C. E. W. Bean had on the reception of Anzacs, whom he venerated and turned into larger-than-life men who liked fighting and were good at it; the significance of the “convict stain” in Australia; and the omission of women writers’ contributions to the “getting of nationhood” in each country. It further addresses why Canadians have not embraced Vimy (a military victory) as their defining moment in the same way as Australians celebrate the landing at Anzac Cove (a military disaster), from which they continue to derive their sense of national identity. In essence, this essay advances that differences between the two nations’ representations of soldiers far outweigh any similarities.

From Nak-dong River to Train to the Recruit Training Center - Representation of Soldiers in Songs and Their Meanings

From Nak-dong River to Train to the Recruit Training Center - Representation of Soldiers in Songs and Their Meanings

The Student soldiers and the Mother ―The Representation of Soldiers’ mother in 1940s―

The Student soldiers and the Mother ―The Representation of Soldiers’ mother in 1940s―

‘Our Boys With the Maple Leaf on Their Shoulders and Straps’: Masculinity, the Toronto Press, and the Outbreak of the South African War, 1899

Coverage of the South African War by the Toronto daily press at its outbreak in late 1899 was implicitly gendered. Placed within the context of nineteenth-century connections between manhood and war, claims of ineffective soldiering, poor shooting ability, and indecisive political action were also implicit attacks on the manhood and character of Canadian politicians at home and the Boer enemy in South Africa. Representations of soldiers, enemies, and politicians in the press also expose connections between war and gender and allow historians to question how war is sold and characterized to the nation through ideas about masculinity.

Words about War for Boys: Representations of Soldiers and Conflict in Writing for Children before World War I

During WWI boys and young men volunteered, fought and died in unprecedented numbers. Boys’ books and magazines have been implicated in encouraging boys to enlist through the creation of a mythos that figured war as a time of youthful heroism, male comradeship, and an opportunity to display widely admired characteristics such as loyalty, courage and self-sacrifice. Examination of what boys were reading in the three decades before the war in fact suggests that the range of attitudes to battle, the military, and bureaucrats offered in boys’ fiction was more subtle and conflicted than previous accounts have supposed.

Los sistemas de armamento vislumbrados en las figuras de guerreros del Occidente de México

The following work outlines some of the present details on the study of the war and armament in the designated cultural region like Mesoamerica. It presents in form makes specific the case of the cultural subarea of the West of Mexico, proposing like main archaeological indicator to know the phenomenon the war, the weapons and military tactics in the Preclassic and Classic periods, to the representations of soldiers recognized like part of the archaeological context of the calls Tumbas de Tiro. The study is based on a icongraphic analysis and of the design of the devices that carry these artistic manifestations, considering the respective archaeological limitations that altogether the region.