Wilfred Owen and The Modernism

The greatest works of the Modernist era were written around and during the time of the Great War (1914-1918) and conveyed the turmoil that transpired in European war-time society. At the commencement of the war, there was a rush on the part of young men in Europe to enlist in the armed forces. Many of these new recruits were talented, educated men and when exposed to the harsh reality of warfare, they ‘naturally engaged in writing verse about the heightened emotion of those times…what was known as war verse’ (Swinnerton 249). One of the more popular war poets is Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), who began his

‘The high summer of Modernism was an age of bold experiments and broken taboos, of new techniques, new sensibilities, new bearings, new directions’ (Gross xii). Owen’s allusions both to the poetry of the Romantic period and to the Modernist era, and his effective combination of the two is a true product of modernist thinking, whereby the unique correlation of old and new artistic styles result in an innovative style of writing- a concept richly lauded by modernist followers. Despite Owen’s personal reasons behind his war poetry, his critics can not help but notice the superior quality of his poems, which stands out, among the work of other poets of his time, as a tragic testimony of the horror that was World War One.

‘my heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains,’ ( Purkis 117)

Nor ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.

Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;

Some topics in this essay:
World War, Keats’s House’, War Stanza, Stolen Child’, William Coleridge, Frost Midnight’, Mankind Modernism, Coleridge’s Keats’s, Dance Provençal, Despite Owen’s, god’s love, world war, modernist era, burn nor suns, dying lines, purkis 117, stolen child’, ‘the stolen, love god, iced east, ‘the stolen child’, child field fruit, true child field, owen’s poem,