2015 Theses Bachelor's

Tilting After the Trenches: The Quixotic Return of Heroism in G.K. Chesterton’s Modernism

Foster, Luke

An inquiry into G.K. Chesterton's use of heroic imagery to conceptualize World War I. Tracing the impact of Chesterton's poetry and novels upon war poets like Joyce Kilmer, this English department senior essay complicates the narrative of Paul Fussell's "The Great War and Modern Memory." While the First World War did prove a watershed moment in English poetry, producing a famous literature of "disenchantment," an alternative tradition of heroic mythology retained vitality even in literary modernism.