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In recent decades, there has been a marked tendency to look at war literature from a perspective that reaches beyond the experiences of particular nations. Characteristically, though poetry and prose from Poland, Hungary and former Czechoslovakia are included in multi-national anthologies, the war literatures of Eastern Europe seem to have been ignored in critical studies. The Myth of War in British and Polish Poetry. 1939-1945 aims to fill in this critical vacuum. This study concentrates on the processes through which British and Polish poetry contributed to the shaping of myths of war, each offering creative interpretations of historical facts and developments. Both poetic traditions are analysed in the context of their national literary heritage and historical background in order to explain the discrepancies characterising these imaginative versions of war. Yet, the ultimate objective is to discover spheres of convergence within a network of differences. This comparative analysis of British and Polish war poetry paves the way for discussions about the relationships between national and individual experiences of history, inviting consideration of how seemingly unsurpassable borders can be crossed.
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Rebecca Carroll
reviewed The myth of war in British and Polish poetry, 1939-1945 on September 24, 2019
The myth of war in British and Polish poetry
There's not much evidence for this topic that survives from the period in question. Evans has gathered almost all of it in one book, which is an acheivement in itself and should be of interest to anyone who wants to know what the evidence is. He is also very good at squeezing that evidence for information. Admittedly this means there's a lot of repetition, not in the argument but in what's being used to support it.
The book's main strength may be its insistence on the small size of these units in this period. A 'war band' may have been as few as ten to twenty armed men, and Mynyddog's three hundred, celebrated in the Gododdin if not poetic exaggeration, would have seemed an enormous army by comparison.
The weakness is the reliance on the poetry. As an Historical source, Beowulf probably reveals more about the way the audience imagined the past, than how the past was. And there is a definite loop....Beowulf tells us about the history so the history confirms Beowulf.
The weakest chapter is probably the one on the poets. Welsh tradition preserves praise poetry and attributes it to named poets. Leaving aside the arguments about dates, there's enough to substantiate the claim that the poet was a significant figure in Welsh 'heroic' society.
But is there any evidence outside a couple of 'poems' that 'poet' was a recognisable category for the Anglo-Saxons in the way it was for the Welsh. Are there any surviving poems from this period, in Old English, which are about historical characters or events? Is there any evidence outside the poetry, for an English tradition comparable to that which surrounds Taliesn and Aeneirin.
I think arguments about the role of the scop in building and maintaining the ethos of the germanic war band might need to be handled with care and qualified by more recent work such as Emily Thornbury's 'Becoming a poet in Anglo-Saxon England'.
With that qualification this is probably an essential resource for anyone who is interested in this topic and period.
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