War Novels Research Articles

Say the Words: Reading for Cohesion in Don DeLillo's Novel Point Omega

This essay turns to Don DeLillo's novel Point Omega to revisit a blind spot of narrative theory—narrative's relation with lyricality and poeticity. Responding to recent debates on this topic by shifting the emphasis toward modes of reception and readerly engagement, my essay examines how the novel's experimental mix of literary forms changes the game of what narrative commonly does. Point Omega's unusual brevity (it is the shortest of DeLillo's recent short novels) and eventlessness (nothing much happens, and much of what happens evades reconstruction) are key to this operation. I argue that the novel endorses lyric and poetic strategies—among them, slowing down the reading process by amplifying the demand for "speakerly appropriation" (Schlaffer), and spacing the narrative by exploiting the cinematic frame as the prime compositional measure—with the effect of impairing the temporal reign of emplotment along with the knowledge-generating logic of cause and effect. As a result of downplaying narrative dominance (and frustrating our expectations to find out what has happened), we read for cohesion (a sense of unity) rather than for coherence (a system of rules). I contend that this poetological agenda and the receptive mode that it harbors mark a break with—or plot against—the concern with paranoia that was the staple of DeLillo's earlier, longer, Cold War novels. And I suggest that Point Omega's post-paranoid style casts a lyric-poetic instance on the fundamental unknowability of reality against the blazing knowledge regimes of our crisis-ridden age.

The Construction of Korean Female Images in the Korean War Novels From an Orientalist Perspective

Abstract The Korean female images as prostitutes, bar girls, refugees, and victims of sexual violence are often found in both American novels and Korean novels of the Korean War. This essay tries to analyze how the exotic portrayals and images are constructed in American novels in accordance with Western indigenous culture and the general conception of Eastern inferiority in comparison to the superiority of Western civilization. With the pervasiveness of ethnocentrism, the Korean female images are portrayed as the Other and exotica of the East. Consequently, what they suffered in the calamity of war has been erased. However, similar female images that appeared in the Korean novels of the Korean War are far more complicated. They are relegated to a peripheral status in the national calamities wrought by the war. They are constructed within the frame of the absence of men's support in families, extreme poverty, and the legitimization of prostitution and breakdown of traditional Korean society and culture. In a word, the construction of these Korean female images conveys strong cultural and historical influences.

Development through time and writing style in the war novels of american authors

Development through time and writing style in the war novels of american authors

Arsène Lupin Goes to War

Despite significant scholarly interest in the cultural impact of the First World War, little critical attention has hitherto been paid to the way in which popular fiction responded to the experience of war. This article argues that the popular novel underwent its own crisis of representation during the First World War through a close reading of the three Arsène Lupin novels set between 1914 and 1918. The Lupin novels are a privileged site for examining this issue not only because of their immense success but also because the character of Lupin embodied a certain ideal of heroism that had emerged in the wake of the debacle of 1870. Testing that idea against the reality of industrialized warfare, the Lupin war novels demonstrate its friability, and through the development of an aesthetics of the uncanny register the trauma of war in unexpected and unexpectedly revealing ways.

Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms: A Critical Study of war and its negative impact From an Ironic Perspective

Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899-1961) is one of the many American writers who lived during the World War-I and was highly affected by it. He wrote a number of well-known war novels and the most famous of them is his war novel A Farewell to Arms (1929). Hemingway has adopted an ironic method to show the contrast between the ideal and the real of the world of war and its influence upon both the military and the civil people as well. Irony as used in this study involves the recognition of incongruities, the contrast between the appearance and reality. The role of irony in his fiction is to elucidate this attitude which affects his vision of the modern world and its horrible war. By analyzing the method of irony in A Farewell to Arms, this study aims at showing the writer's ironic point of view in treating the negative effects of the war and its atmosphere both physically and psychologically.

Immunity and Community in Italian War Novels Set in Afghanistan

concept of immunity as developed by Roberto Esposito is complementary with the category of community and contrasts the notion of with that of external contamination. In this article, the logic of immunity is applied to two 2012 Italian war novels set in Afghanistan, namely Melania Mazzucco's Limbo and Paolo Giordano's The Human Body. In these novels, the space of the Forward Operating Base's so-called security bubble represents both the protective and the thanatopolitical sides of immunity, an ambivalent notion that offers the narrative framework to study Esposito's affirmative biopolitics. Both novels are part of the post-9/11 return to the real, in that reconstruction and affect prevail over deconstruction and relativism. They thematize the mediatized experience of humanitarian and globalized warfare and raise questions about layered memories of war and national identity. Therefore, these narrations can be analyzed as examples of Vermeulen's narratives of affect, De Boever's narratives of care, and Breu's late-capitalist literature of materiality, studies that question the relationship between literature and biopolitics.

Postmodernist Literary Movement: A Comprehensive Study of Technique in Vonnegut’s Novels

Kurt Vonnegut is an integral part of the postmodernist literary movement and a master of satire, gallows humor, and science fiction. The uniqueness of Vonnegut's works is that in addition to having excellent themes, the novels are also technically accomplished and colorful. Vonnegut refuses to confine himself to a single form of fiction, which is something that is certainly clear from a review of his books. In reality, modal diversity is demonstrated in each of his works. Vonnegut, a man of profound vision, tries to experiment with brilliant techniques in his novels, including science fiction, comic science fiction, black humor, dark humor, morbid humor, gallows humor, meta-fiction, satire, political satire, postmodernism, dark comedy, war novels, absurdist fiction, modes of absurdity, and semi-autobiographical writing. In his works, he deftly weaves these strategies around his theme. He draws attention to the numerous social defects, the atrocities of war, and the sorrows of modern man. He imagines a society free of societal ills, where people are not enslaved by technology. This essay aims to analyze the literary devices used by Vonnegut in his works.

Psychological Warfare and the Representation of Korean War POWs in Ha Jin’s War Trash and Paul Yoon’s Snow Hunters

Two recent Korean War novels, Ha Jin’s War Trash and Paul Yoon’s Snow Hunters, both highlight a critical yet virtually unknown controversy over the...

Enemy as the "Other" in Novels of Spain Civil War(by Stress on L'Espoir‬)

The most obvious type of "Other" in War Literature is the enemy which militate against 'self" forces. In fighting with foreign enemy we clearly know the "Other" but in Civil Wars recognition of it is not easy. "Other" in Civil War comes from "Self" forces, "self" turns to "Other" in way sometimes we cannot distinguish between them. The identity of this "Other" is in border; sometimes is "Self" and sometimes is the "Other" during the novel. This research is done to answer to this question: Is enemy as an "Other" different and variable in war novels? Is the process of making "Other" is different in militating with internal and external enemy? This survey uses the theories of Cultural Studies about representation of "Other" and "Self" in studying the novel of L'Espoir (The Hope) written by Andre Malraux which is about the Civil War of Spain. The study shows that how and in which process during the novel, "Self" and the "Other" turn to each other. It represents in comparison with novels about war between two foreign enemy and country, the enemy is the "Other" throughout the story, in the most Civil War novels such as L'Espoir (The Hope), because of the same nation, in somewhere the distinguishing border between "Self" and the "Other" becomes defaced so in some cases there is a doubt including enemy as the "Other".

The War Novel in Africa

The War Novel in Africa

ThePícaroat War: Vernacular Language and Violent Conflict in Grimmelshausen and Saro-Wiwa

This essay compares Grimmelshausen'sSimplicissimus(1669) and Saro-Wiwa'sSozaboy(1985), approaching them as picaresque war novels that tell the story of a vernacular language becoming literary through brutal war. Despite differences of language, nation, and time, the novels of Grimmelshausen and Saro-Wiwa share a structural similarity traceable to their respective postwar contexts. These novels rewrite the expected relation between war and language. Instead of privileging the damage done to speech, they authorize a spoken language through the medium of a highly mobile rogue protagonist. Grimmelshausen and Saro-Wiwa contend with the question of whether a language, lacking the official status guaranteed by a sovereign state, is strong enough to constitute and represent a territory divided by civil war. In their works, war tears apart a territory and lays the foundation for its autonomous postwar culture all at once.

Reflection of War Rhetoric in the Persian War Novel Zimistān-i 62 (The Winter of 1983)

Abstract As one of the most influential historical events of the late twentieth century, the Iran‒Iraq war (1980–88) enriched the corpus of Persian novels from a thematic standpoint.1 This war introduced the war novel to Iranian society, a new literary genre that focused not only on the Iran‒Iraq war but also on the pertinent issues that stemmed from it. During the war, Persian war novels attempted to strengthen the military sentiment for the war and mobilize the masses to join the front lines. They did so by depicting the war as a great blessing and particularly by accentuating the Islamic nuances embodied in martyrdom. Ismā’īl Faṣīḥ’s Zimistān-i 62 (The winter of 1983) was one of the earliest Persian war novels that promoted martyrdom among Iranian volunteers. This article highlights the utility of the various genres of expression—such as dirge (nauḥa), slogan (shu’ār), and martyrs’ testaments (vaṣiyyatnāma-yi shuhadā)—that played a central role in propagating the concept of martyrdom in that novel. Analyzing the novel’s war rhetoric makes it possible to understand how it was received in Iranian society and adopted into the government’s policies in the course of the war. Furthermore, since the novel is often a reflection of the various aspects of the author’s society, ranging from politics to culture, analyzing The Winter of 1983 from this perspective makes it possible to reveal the complexities of Iranian culture at yet another pivotal time in its history, the Iran‒Iraq war.

Representations of the Spanish Civil War in Twenty-First Century Anglophone Novels (2000–14)

The literary contributions to historical understandings of the Spanish Civil War have been widely examined. Recent studies have investigated the impact of post-millennial trends towards restorative justice and breaking the code of silence imposed by the Civil War and the 1977 Amnesty Law preventing retribution among former partisans, as reflected in contemporary Spanish literature. This article seeks to extend this research regarding Spanish Civil War novels beyond the recent resurgence in Spanish literature to examine this theme as explored in contemporary Anglophone novels written in the US and the UK. Using three novels as case studies — (Sansom, C. J. 2006. Winter in Madrid. London: Pan Macmillan), (Hislop, V. 2009. The Return. London: Headline) by Victoria Hislop and (Boling, D. 2008. Guernica. New York: Bloomsbury) — it finds that these novels fail to embrace the multi-perspectival possibilities of literary meta-narrative, generally eschewing the social and political nuances that characterize contemporary Spanish literature regarding this turbulent historical period.

A Study on Vietnam War Novels of Korean, American, and Vietnamese Writers: Based on Bourdieu’s Theory on ‘Field’ and ‘Habitus.

A Study on Vietnam War Novels of Korean, American, and Vietnamese Writers: Based on Bourdieu’s Theory on ‘Field’ and ‘Habitus.

Chinese Netizens’ Reactions to Red Classics Cinema Animation A Case Study of Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy (2011)

<p class="1Body">‘Red Classics’ can be considered as an important subgenre of Chinese cinema animation, which is often adapted from war novels, revolutionary model opera, songs and live-action films<em>. </em>Animated film <em>Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy (2011)</em>, as a Red Classics cinema animation production, has provoked heated discussion among Chinese netizens in two largest online film communities and review aggregator sites <em>Douban Movie </em>and <em>Mtime</em>. This paper reveals the Chinese netizens’ reception process of this movie before and after public screening by analysing the relevant brief comments and longer film reviews from the above two websites. Chinese audiences’ expectation on <em>Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy</em> was relatively negative before exhibition in cinema. This can be partly attributed to the emotional discontent over the previous Chinese animation and government intervention on artistic creation. However, there has been a gradual shift in the attitudes of netizens towards this movie after the public exhibition, the reviews have become more objective, rational and positive. This article aims to identify the reasons behind such attitude change by applying reception studies approach, and how and to what extent these elements have affected Chinese netizens’ evaluation process.</p>

The Comforts of Home: Sex Workers and the Canadian War Novel

Canadian cultural memory of the First World War is conspicuously asexual considering Canadians had among the highest rates for venereal disease in the British Expeditionary Force. There is an inherited reticence to discuss soldiers’ sex lives. There is no such silence in Canadian war novels. In these novels, sex workers facilitate the forging of a distinctly domestic space. Indicative of the persistent schism between the front and the home-front, however, this proxy space inevitably becomes untenable and the relationship between soldier and sex worker comes to stand in for the fraught relationship between soldier and home-front and vice versa.

Sex and love as routes for border crossing and homing desire in anglophone Lebanese fiction

This article marshals key concepts from studies of diasporic literatures and close readings of two post-civil war anglophone Lebanese novels – Koolaids: The Art of War by Rabih Alameddine and De Niro’s Game by Rawi Hage – to explain how sex and love, whether gay or straight, serve as both literary strategies and social/psychological border crossings. To do so, it examines both adolescent sexuality and love relationships in wartime Lebanon and more mature ones in western locations. It argues that, for male Lebanese characters living outside Lebanon, memories interact with diasporic realities in which sexual and amorous affairs form an essential part of their homing desire. Abroad, in multiple spaces and places, networks of physical and/or emotional liaisons generate opportunities for crossing borders-as-barriers that, in turn, help establish new feelings of being-at-home.

Stanislav Krakov: A biography

The key goal of this paper is the reconstruction of key moments in Stanislav Krakov?s (1895-1968) biography. He was a famous Serbian man of letters, prominent interwar journalist, war hero and finally an emigrant publicist. The paper is based on personal testimonies, biographical notes, archive material from Stanislav Krakov Collection kept in the Archives of Yugoslavia, documents from the National Library of Serbia and the Yugoslav Cinematheque, periodicals and contemporary newspapers, as well as on testimonies of Krakov?s contemporaries. This paper shows the life of Stanislav Krakov from his early life circumstances: volunteering in the First and Second Balkan War, participation in the World War I as an officer, concluding with the perilous journey through Albanian mountains to the Adriatic Sea, and breakthrough on the Macedonian Front in 1918 via Kaymakchalan. Wounded and decorated several times, he did not stay in the army. He dedicated himself to literature and journalism. The stressful and jagged atmosphere in interwar Yugoslavia Defined Stanislav Krakov. While being a kind of a Balgrade dandy he was also a prominent patriotic figure - a decorated young veteran, editor of Politika and editor- in-chief of Vreme newspapers, writer of war novels, travel memoirs, theater critic, and so on. Family and ideological connections with general Nedic determined his journalist career and personal life during the World War II - when he was the editor of Obnova and editor-in-chief of Novo Vreme - as well as after it. As a collaborator, after the WWII, this well-known hero of the WWI and the Balkan Wars passed away as a fugitive and emigrant, never bringing to an end the intended monograph about general Nedic, nor his own memoirs.

Nabokov’s Cold War Novels and the Containment of American Sexuality

This paper focuses on Nabokov's American fiction as novels of the so-called “Long 1950s” and tries to divert traditional debate of Nabokov’s work from its canon of post-modern reception, as centering on language play and upended narrative codes. By focusing on the ever present subtext of Cold War culture in Nabokov’s narratives, this research tries to identify the complex elaboration of “subversive sexuality” in Nabokov’s key novels of the Long 1950s, Lolita and Pale Fire , his most successful and most widely commented works.

Representation of History in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2006

This study deals with the conflict of Nigerian Biafran War 6 July, 1960-15 January, 1967 as represented in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Half of a Yellow Sun (2006). The study attempts to address the following four questions: first, what are the causes-effects of Biafran/Civil war? Second, why Nigerians have been suffering during the wartime? Third, how does the representation of Nigerian history enable understanding of the post-colonial issues? And final, what is the role of conflict in Nigerian history? In order to understand this conflict, the study addresses the detailed analysis of war conflict, ethnic conflict, class conflict, military conflict and eco-political conflict. The post-colonial approach becomes one of the ways of engaging the theoretical understanding of the novel Half of a Yellow Sun. In sum up, the novel is located with the issues of marginality, history and conflict, which interrogates through post-colonial theoretical formations and the six-phase structure of war novels.