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- Title
Rupert Brooke and the Growth of Commercial Patriotism in Great Britain, 1914–1918.
- Authors
Miller, Alisa
- Abstract
While Rupert Brooke himself never wrote official propaganda, discussions of his poetry and celebrity in Great Britain, particularly after his death in April 1915, created common points of references informing intersecting social, political and cultural discourses throughout the war period. This article argues that the success of the myth of the poet-soldier lay in the strength of the consensus surrounding ideals associated with volunteerism and commemoration, and the acceptance of Brooke as an icon useful in defining a national image that could in turn aid in ordering individual experiences of the war. It allowed readers to participate in war culture publicly and privately by constructing obituaries, articles and tribute poems, and by purchasing Brooke’s volumes. Utilizing the growing number of sources concerned with the cultural history of the war, and the conditions that predicted and reinforced social continuities, the article presents Brooke not as a relic of 1914, but as a figure who appealed to individuals across political, social and to an extent economic divides. The Brooke myth helped to create the genre of the idealized and, to an extent, untouchable national poet-soldier, and the myth’s successful negotiation of what Donald Sassoon calls ‘cultural markets’ set a precedent and proved persistently relevant throughout the war years and beyond as the poet-soldier became directly associated with issues of national historical memory. The study also operates in the shadow of an ongoing discussion about the functional implications of popular consoling myths created by individuals who, responding to the effects of war culture, turned to public outlets to express personal bereavements. (As Annette Becker puts it, ‘la construction et la reconstruction de l’immense événement 14–18 dans les temps de mémoire et d’oubli concomitants: cultures de guerre privées et publiques, intimes et proclamées.’ Apollinaire: une biographie de guerre (Paris, 2009), 13.)
- Subjects
UNITED Kingdom; BROOKE, Rupert, 1887-1915; WORLD War I; WORLD War II poetry; PATRIOTISM; PATRIOTISM in literature; MILITARY personnel; ECONOMICS; POETRY (Literary form)
- Publication
Twentieth Century British History, 2010, Vol 21, Issue 2, p141
- ISSN
0955-2359
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/tcbh/hwq001