Men at War: What Fiction Tells Us about Conflict, from the Iliad to Catch-22 by Coker, Christopher

Men at War: What Fiction Tells Us about Conflict, from the Iliad to Catch-22 (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780199382972)

Vendor: Christopher Coker
Product type: Books
Format: Hardcover
$32.50
$32.50
$32.50
Subtotal: $32.50
Men at War: What Fiction Tells Us about Conflict, from the Iliad to Catch-22 by Coker, Christopher

Men at War: What Fiction Tells Us about Conflict, from the Iliad to Catch-22

$32.50
Men at War: What Fiction Tells Us about Conflict, from the Iliad to Catch-22 by Coker, Christopher

Men at War: What Fiction Tells Us about Conflict, from the Iliad to Catch-22

$32.50
Format: Hardcover
Description
Description
x
Since Achilles first stormed into our imagination, literature has introduced its readers to truly unforgettable martial characters. In Men at War, Christopher Coker discusses some of the most famous of these fictional creations and their impact on our understanding of war and masculinity. Grouped into five archetypes-warriors, heroes, villains, survivors and victims-these characters range across 3000 years of history, through epic poems, the modern novel and one of the twentieth century's most famous film scripts.

Great authors like Homer and Tolstoy show us aspects of reality invisible except through a literary lens, while fictional characters such as Achilles and Falstaff, Robert Jordan and Jack Aubrey, are not just larger than life; they are life's largeness-and this is why we seek them out. Although the Greeks knew that the lovers, wives and mothers of soldiers are the chief victims of battle, for the combatants, war is a masculine pursuit. Each of Coker's chapters explores what fiction tells us about war's appeal to young men and the way it makes- and breaks-them. The existential appeal of war too is perhaps best conveyed in fictional accounts, and these too are scrutinized by the author.


Author: Christopher Coker
ISBN-10: 0199382972
ISBN-13: 9780199382972
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Language: English
Published: 06/01/2014
Pages: 325
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.14lbs
Size: 8.60h x 5.50w x 1.00d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 11/01/2014 pg. 438
By Christopher Coker
By Christopher Coker
x

Christopher Coker is Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics. He is the author of Barbarous Philosophers: Reflections on the Nature of War from Heraclitus to Heisenberg and Warrior Geeks, both available from Oxford University Press, USA.

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