I love--totally, totally love--war literature. All genres, all periods. War movies, too, whether they involve the battlefield or the homefront.
And this semester I'm teaching a course that involves nothing but war literature (and which I've given this title).
Damn. I'm such a boy.
13 comments:
I love it! I often include the incredibly craptastic Mel Gibson film "The Patriot" because it is such a naked piece of ideology. No way could I keep that up for an entire semester.
You're a woman of mystery...
Seems like an appropriate title to me.
Ooohh, I hope you're teaching Tamburlaine which is my favorite war play of all time!
I love war literature -- and movies and poetry and paintings and artifacts and locations. The Imperial War Museum is one of my favorite places in London. One of my best units when I was teaching high school was the one I created on WWI (All Quiet on the Western Front, clips from movies, poetry by Owen and Sassoon). When I was about 12, the family vacation was a tour of Civil War battlefields (I couldn't have been happier). I've always wondered what this says about me...
ooo and Britton's War Requiem? and Chris Hedges' book _War is a force that gives us meaning_?!
Whereas I hate it -- what with war being hell and all -- except when it comes to the Civil War, when I get all excited. Although even then I prefer the homefront stuff to the actual battlefield descriptions.
Enjoy your class!
Flavia:
Pat Barker's WWI trilogy? Faboo. Also Doctorow's recent The March, on Sherman's march through Georgia.
have fun, girl,
TR
Hey - this sounds like a great class! Teaching any Elaine Scarry?
Enjoy (*bang! bang!*)
even Heinlein, Haldeman, Card and other sf war lit?
Damn, you guys--these are all such good suggestions!
Unfortunately, the class isn't about war literature in the way that I'd like it to be; rather, that's the organizing principle for my section of what is, actually, our sophomore-level, intro-to-the-major course. So we're reading great stuff, but rather less of it than I would otherwise assign.
Maybe some year in the future, though.
chiming in late, here, but i too love war movies (maybe not so much with the literature); i.e., i have man-type tastes and am a lady. i also like ranch dressing!
Right there with you!
So I hope you're teaching ... The Iliad, The Peloponnesian Wars, Lysistrata, maybe The Persians, The Gallic Wars, a little Josephus?, Roland, Henry V, Richard III, Cymbeline, OH! and a bunch of Napoleonic war stuff ... or maybe bits of Thackeray (Barry Lyndon and Vanity Fair, Maybe even War and Peace, and Simplicissimus ... and then lots of WWI poets???
Post a Comment