The Remembered Dead

Poetry, Memory and the First World War

The Remembered Dead explores the ways poets of the First World War – and later poets writing in the memory of that war – address the difficult question of how to remember, and commemorate, those killed in conflict. It looks closely at the way poets struggled to meaningfully represent dying, death, and the trauma of witness, while responding to the pressing need for commemoration. The authors pay close attention to specific poems while maintaining a strong awareness of literary and philosophical contexts. The poems are discussed in relation to modernism and myth, other forms of commemoration (photographs, memorials), and theories of cultural memory. There is fresh analysis of canonical poets which, at the same time, challenges the confines of the canon by integrating discussion of lesser-known figures, including non-combatants and poets of later decades. The final chapter reaches beyond the war's centenary in a discussion of one remarkable commemoration of Wilfred Owen.