| Contents |
What Was in the Air : Europe at the Start of the Twentieth Century -- A Hot Summer : July-September 1914 -- The Voice of Steel : Autumn and Winter 1914 -- The Smell of Mustard Gas in the Morning : The War in 1915 -- A Europe of Words, a Europe of Action : Nationalism and Revolution, 1915-1916 -- Writing Poetry After Verdun and the Somme : The Battles of 1916 -- Cafe Dada : Anti-Semitism, Pacifism and the Avant-garde -- Total War : Peace Plans, Revolution and Mutiny in 1917 -- Last Man Standing : Endgame, 1918 -- 11/11 and After : Europe, 1918-1925 -- Afterword. |
| Scope and content |
"The poets' Great War--violence, revolution and modernism. The First World War changed the map of Europe forever; empires collapsed, new countries emerged, revolutions shocked and inspired the world. The Great War is often referred to as 'the literary war, ' the war that saw both the birth of modernism and the precursors of futurism. During the first few months in Germany alone there were over a million poems of propaganda written. In this cultural history of the First World War, the conflict is seen from the point of view of poets and writers from all over Europe, including Rupert Brooke, Alexander Blok, James Joyce, Fernando Pessoa, Andre Breton and Siegfried Sassoon. Everything to Nothing is a transnational history of how nationalism and internationalism defined both the war itself and post-war dealings--revolutionary movements, wars for independence, civil wars, Versailles--and of how poets played a vital role in defining the stakes, ambitions and disappointments of postwar Europe"-- Provided by publisher. |
