The Many Faces of World War I

TRADITIONALLY, the literature of the First World War has been framed as describing a journey from youthful enthusiasm to prematurely aged disillusionment. As such, it mesmerizes readers, probably because we all trace arcs from innocence to experience in our own lives to greater and lesser degrees. In Teaching Representations of the First World War, editors Debra Rae Cohen and Douglas Higbee claim that this myth of the war, if myth it be, has become “codified”; and they propose to contest this master narrative by situating it in “the wider story—the global story—of the war.” Accordingly, their volume is a valuable resource to anyone interested in expanding their understanding of World War I, specifically those of us entrusted with the task of educating a new generation (these short essays address a target audience of professors/teachers, even providing ideas for lesson plans). However, the volume goes beyond the classroom, introducing readers to new issues of scholarly interest (albeit in bite-sized essays), and including an entire section on web resources. Finally, the collection fulfills its goal by presenting essays on such a wide array of topics that, yes, they chisel away at the monolithic myth of World War I.

Cohen and Higbee’s introduction defines their understanding of the myth of the First World War. To those familiar with World War I literature and scholarship, this section covers well-known terrain, invoking the names of Paul Fussell and Samuel Hynes as originators/expounders (respectively) of the myth of the war; describing how the myth privileges modernism at the expense of other modes; and noting the myth’s emphasis on the Western as opposed to other fronts of the war. Cohen and Higbee also describe what they call “combat Gnosticism,” by which they mean the traditional authority granted only to those who have seen combat. This “incommensurable gap between combatant and non-combatant,” they argue, has shaped our canon of war writings, bringing us Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and T. E. Lawrence at the expense of others who are perceived to be far from the center of action due to their gender, race, nationality, or geographical position. The first section of the book, “Critical Paradigms,” offers readers ways to decenter the myth of the Great War: Patrick Deer encourages students to “read canonical texts alongside lesser known but readily available work of women writers, writers from non-European or international traditions, or popular culture” in his “Rupture or Continuity? The Myth(s) of the War.” While this suggestion is not revolutionary in theory, it works well in practice, as evidenced by the salutary effect of the anthology itself (at least upon this reader).

Opening with the larger questions about the shaping of World War I, Teaching Representations of the First World War moves increasingly toward specificity as it examines various ways to de-center and complicate Great War myth(s). Glenda Abramson’s “Teaching Representations: The Jewish Experience in Eastern Europe during the First World War” is one such example, suggesting that Jews fighting in World War I were, as the Jewish poet Tchernichowsky asserted, “fighting on two fronts: against the enemy and against his own compatriots.” Tchernichowsky, who practiced as a military doctor on the Russian Front, penned poems describing his outrage at having fought for a country that then persecuted him and his family. I found that pairing Tchernichowsky’s 1915 poem, “the Melodies of the Time,” with Claude McKay’s short story, “A Soldier’s Return,” enriched my own first-year seminar; students explored how the war experience differed for those minority groups who found that they returned from the war to another battle on the home front. For some of them, in fact, the war was a distraction from persecution: to this point, Claire Buck’s “The ‘World’ in World War I: Learning to Think Globally” quotes Mark Whalen to note that in “the postwar New Negro Renaissance, no man’s land becomes...