Re-remembering the Soldier Hero
The Psychic and Social Construction of Memory in Personal Narratives of the Great War
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4493886 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael Roper (0000-0003-3226-5663, University of Essex, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2000 |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 181-204 |
| Publication date | 2000-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History Workshop Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1363-3554 • E-ISSN: 1477-4569 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/hwj/2000.50.181 |
| OpenAlex | W1987365885 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 33 |
| References cited | 1 |
This article explores the compulsion to re-tell experiences of soldiering. In Soldier Heroes (1994) Graham Dawson stressed the importance of war stories in the subjective composure of masculinity. Here the significance of soldiering as a culturally-vaunted means of narrating a man's life is suggested through a focus on one man's experience of a single event in the First World War, and how his narration of that event changed in a succession of accounts written between 1914 and the 1970s. The image of a soldier hero is not cast in stone, and the qualities ascribed to it may change with aging. With the officer Lyndall Urwick (1891-1983), youthful derision towards the `old incompetents' of the army staff gave way to forgiveness in late career, whilst memories of trench warfare and of death resurfaced in old age. A study of these narrative shifts provides insights into the burdens and discontents of masculinity in the here-and-now of writing. However, the role of postwar gender scripts in the composure of war memory can be overstated. Equally important is the experience of war itself: how trench warfare, in particular, confronted men with feelings which could not be accommodated within prevailing ideals of masculinity. Drawing on Freud's definition of war neurosis, the article argues that remembering can be understood as a part of a continued search for ways of dealing with fear of death and dislike of killing - feelings which date from the war itself. This `underlay' of memory has tended to be ignored in recent work, which has emphasized the role of public and collective gender discourses in shaping personal testimony of war.
Aesthetics · Art · Feeling · HERO · Literature · Masculinity · Narrative · Psychic · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Gender Studies · Gender, Security, and Conflict · History · Military, Security, and Education Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology · World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact
‘He does not appear to have done much useful work since he was wounded’
Masculinity and the Biographical Meanings of Management Theory
Anzac Memories Revisited
Parenthood between Generations
Return to Vietnam
And then there was one’ Cultural Representations of the Last British Veteran of the Great War
Military memoirs, their covers and the reproduction of public narratives of war
Nostalgia for ‘HMP Divis’ and ‘HMP Rossville’
Behind the Stiff Upper Lip
Picture Me As a Young Woman”
Older veterans
Negotiating ungovernable spaces between the personal and the political
Your story is our story
The last post
Truth‐Telling in Trouble
A Crisis of Masculinity? Re‐writing the History of Shell‐shock and Gender in First World War Britain
Using the personal to critique the popular
Fiction and Memoir of Britain’s Great War
We are still ashamed of our own History”
He didn’t really talk about it’
‘Ordinary working men … transformed into giants on the rugby field’
Splitting in unsent letters
Organization Theory and Military Metaphor
The Story of a Diary
Chronologies of Coping
Anzac Stories
Writing about Life Writing
Between Manliness and Masculinity
Nostalgia as an Emotional Experience in the Great War
Herbert Read and the fluid memory of the First World War
Political violence within army barracks
Truth and (self) censorship in military memoirs
The Privatized Meaning of Wartime Deployments
| Unique citing works | 33 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,32 |
| Citation span | 2001 - 2025 (25) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 30 |