The Argonauts of the Western Front – Poets as Ethnographers of theCulture de Guerrein the First World War

For over a century, historians and literary critics appear to have been at odds regarding the poetry of the First World War. This schism owes itself to processes of canonization which restrict (in Britain) or completely ignore (in France) the full extent and diversity of wartime poetic practices. Investigating a new corpus of French poets of the First World War, and considering poetry as a social and cultural category and as a wartime practice whose functions go beyond literary value, this article argues that war poets can be read as ethnographers of wartime culture. In proposing this analogy, it aims to present the ethnographic conventions as a common ground where History and Poetics can establish a dialogue. For scholars aiming to investigate how cultural production shapes experiences of armed conflict, this ensures poets are seen as the producers of interpretive knowledge of war and poems as more than either transparent documents or hermetic lyrical creations

Art · Ethnography · Front (military · Literature · Poetics · Poetry · Political science · Politics · Schism · Spanish Civil War · Diverse Cultural and Historical Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · North African History and Literature

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• Anthropology

  Rohan Bastin•Anthropological Forum•2019

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  James Campbell, James Scott Campbell•New Literary History•1999

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  Anne Rasmussen, John Horne et al.•Vingtième Siècle Revue d histoire•2002

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• The Evidence of Experience

  Joan W Scott•Critical Inquiry•1991

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