Verses and Trenches: Wilfred Owen's Poetics of War

This thesis examines the poetic production of one of the most celebrated and renowned English war poets, Wilfred Owen. The thesis begins with an in-depth introduction to the historical context in which he lived, namely the First World War, but considering only the role that Great Britain played. It is followed by an analysis of the several stages of his life, giving relevance not only to his school career but also to his working career, concluding with his enlistment. This work focuses on Owen’s various firsthand experiences and the factors that influenced his way of writing. Subsequently, it explores the different authors of romantic literature, Keats, Shelley and Wordsworth who shaped the first part of his poetic life characterized by themes that aimed at the idealization of nature, also seen as a source of inspiration, the search for beauty in pain and the belief that poetry could change man. Specifically, this knowledge represented an important turning point in Owen’s career. The poet, in fact, gave birth to two poetic compositions: the first, “Deep Under Turfy Grass and Heavy Clay”, thanks to the appreciation of Shelley; the second, “To Poesy”, thanks to John Keats. The aim of this thesis is to understand why, in Wilfred Owen's life, there was a shift in vision that started from the glorification of war and ended with its actual condemnation. Wilfred, infatti, aveva della Guerra una visione molto precisa di essa tanto da considerarla come un gesto nobile, enfatizzandone sia il sacrificio onorevole che la gloria. Despite this, everything changes. It is therefore essential to examine all the circumstances that contributed to this change, including the multiple traumas, both physical and psychological, that he suffered because of the war. Undoubtedly, a key moment was the hospitalization, at Craiglockhart War Hospital, that Wilfred had due to shell-shock. To better understand this evolution of thought, I carried out an analysis of four of his poems, “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, “Dulce et Decorum Est”, “Mental Cases” and “Disabled”. The transition that occurred in his poetics was highlighted not only by the themes and contents that emerged, which were macabre, hard, distressing, raw and merciless, but above all by the subjects: veterans and soldiers were the protagonists of his new poems, affected not only by mental but also physical disorders, such as alienation, disorientation, psychosis, deformities, depression and disability. In addition to this, even the language, tone and rhythm underwent a radical change, completely opposite to that of the pre-war period. The results of this meticulous analysis confirm the impact that the war had not only on his life but also on his poetics, leading Owen to be not only one of the most admired war poets in English literature but also the one who managed to put on paper, with a strong realism, the suffering, pain and cruelty that millions of soldiers had to endure owing to the war. Future research could focus on comparing Wilfred Owen’s war poetry with that of many other authors, such as Rupert Brooke, who wrote about war by idealizing it, or even Siegfried Sassoon, who, although having the same vision of war as Owen, expressed himself in an entirely different way compared to him, focusing on sarcasm and satire.