lingue

Wilfred Owen 1893 - 1918

One of the most significant war poets was Wilfred Owen. He caught trench fever on the Somme and was hospitalised in Edinburgh; during this period he met and was deeply influenced by Sigfried Sassoon. He went back to ht in France in 1918, was decorated for bravery and was then killed on the Sombre Canal one week before the Armistice was signed.

His poems are remarkable for the way that physical detail conveys a vision of horror and apocalyptic desolation.

Texts:

● Dulce et Decorum Est

This is Owen's statement of the horror of war and the hypocrisy and ignorance of patriotism. The central part of the poem deals with the terrible new chemical weapon of World War I: gas. The scene is relived as a nightmare, with men drowning in a green sea of gas.

The soldier poet emerges from the awful reality of the last part, where he follows the wagon carrying dead or dying bodies. He asks the reader to come along and see for himself the ugly face of death. Horace's famous Latin tag is bitterly ironic

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