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Considered by many to be the finest American combat memoir of the
First World War, Hervey Allen’s Toward the Flame vividly
chronicles the experiences of the Twenty-eighth Division in the
summer of 1918. Made up primarily of Pennsylvania National
Guardsmen, the Twenty-eighth Division saw extensive action on the
Western Front. The story begins with Lieutenant Allen and his men
marching inland from the French coast and ends with their
participation in the disastrous battle for the village of Fismette.
Allen was a talented observer, and the men with whom he served
emerge as well-rounded characters against the horrific backdrop of
the war. As a historical document, Toward the Flame is
significant for its highly detailed account of the controversial
military action at Fismette. At the same time, it easily stands as
a work of literature. Clear-eyed and unsentimental, Allen employs
the novelist’s powers of description to create a harrowing
portrait of coalition war at its worst.
"Memorial Fictions" offers a major reassessment of Willa Cather's
career and artistic achievements, provides a plethora of
information on popular culture during and immediately after the
Great War, and demonstrates the importance of literature as a
cultural forum for addressing issues and ideas fundamental to
American culture. Based on extensive archival research and a
variety of scholarly sources drawn from several disciplines, Steven
Trout shows how Cather's analysis of the First World War in "One of
Ours" and "The Professor's House" represents a considerable
accomplishment, one worthy of standing next to her groundbreaking
treatment of Nebraska settlers in "O Pioneers!" and "My Antonia"
and her virtual reinvention of the historical novel in "Death Comes
for the Archbishop" and "Shadows on the Rock," Furthermore, he
argues that Cather's First World War-related fiction deserves
consideration alongside such established classics as Ernest
Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms," Erich Maria Remarque's "All Quiet
on the Western Front," and Vera Brittain's "Testament of Youth,"
Though awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1923, One of Ours was a
frequently maligned and misunderstood book. Contemporary male
reviewers reviled the work, and it has been Cather's most neglected
novel among later generations of readers and scholars. Trout not
only reevaluates the impact of the First World War on Cather's
fiction but also demonstrates that "One of Ours," far from
representing a dubious achievement within the Cather canon, renders
the American experience of the war with prophetic insight and
considerable imaginative vigor. He also offers a detailed
reappraisal of "The Professor's House," showing it to be anovel
haunted by the phantomlike presence of the Great War.
Cather Studies 6 is part of a growing body of scholarship that
seeks to undo Willa Cather's longstanding reputation as a writer
who remained aloof from the cultural issues of her day. This
chronologically arranged collection demonstrates that Cather found
the subject of war both unavoidable, because of her position in
history, and artistically irresistible. The volume begins with an
essay addressing the American Civil War as part of Cather's
southern cultural inheritance and concludes with an account of the
aging writer's participation in the Armed Services Editions Program
of World War II. Military matters surface not only in "One of Ours"
and "The Professor's House," Cather's two major contributions to
the literature of World War I, but in most of her other works as
well, including "My Antonia," in which the Plains Indian Wars and
the Spanish-American conflict of 1898 are subtly but significantly
evoked, and "Sapphira and the Slave Girl," Cather's largely ironic
contribution to the genre of southern "Lost Cause" fiction.
Containing essays by leading Cather scholars, such as Ann Romines
and Janis Stout, and work by specialists in war literature, whose
inclusion expands the number and range of critical perspectives,
this volume breaks new ground.
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