WAR POETS AND WAR POETRY OF THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

Dr Uzma Nikhat

Vol. 6, Jul-Dec 2018

Abstract:

Wordsworth has rightly said,"poetry is the spontaneous flow of powerful feelings. It has its origin in emotions collected in tranquility." No doubt it has its origin in the internal feelings of the poet, be it whatever kind of poetry. Poets have written about their first hand experience of war since Greeks and later war poem was established as a literary genre by the young soldier poets of the First World War. Their first hand experience, feelings and emotions which they have vent out through their poetry, have become one of the defining texts of 20th century Europe. The first half of the twentieth century has witnessed both kinds of war poets- the romantic poets and the realistic war poets. The romantic war poets as Rupert Brooke and few others wrote poems which were popular before the outbreak of the war in which they idealized and honoured war and felt proud to die for the country but the realistic war poets as Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen portrayed the true picture the horrors and brutality of war and felt that there wasn't anything great in it. It was just prepared by the states or ministers or political parties to gain power and feather their own nest at the cost of common innocent people.

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