The Spectre of Defeat in Post-War British and Us Literature: Experience, Memory and Post-Memory (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781527563551)

It is a commonplace belief that history is written by the victorious. However, less recognised but equally common is the idea that the defeated also write history, even if their particular account is rather different.

This collection looks at these matters from a novel and distinct perspective. It essentially presents the idea that victors often perceive themselves as defeated, by examining the ways in which the idea of defeat comes to dominate the victorsâ (TM) own sense of superiority and achievement, thereby undermining the certainties that victory is conventionally thought to create.

The contributions here discuss fiction (mostly UK and US) published since the First World War. Through the frameworks of experience, memory and post-memory, they examine this subliminal defeat, basically as seen in conflict itself, in the societies that it affects, and in the individual lives of those who it destroys. The result is an innovative literary account of the victorious-yet-somehow-defeated.

Author: David Owen
ISBN-10: 1527563553
ISBN-13: 9781527563551
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Language: English
Published: 01/28/2021
Pages: 255
Format: Hardcover