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The paper focuses on the portrait of the First World War veterans in selected British and Canadian novels published at the turn of the twenty-first century. The authors use various means to depict the phenomenon of trauma: from flashbacks disrupting the present, through survivor guilt, nightmares and suicide, to aporia and the collapse of representation. The comparative approach used in the article highlights national differences, yet also shows that the discourse of futility and trauma provides a trasnational framework to convey the suffering of the First World War. As a result, although resulting in social castration and disempowerment, trauma serves here as a vehicle for a critique of the disastrous aftermath of the 1914-1918 conflict and the erasures of collective memory. Re-enacting traumatic plots, the British and Canadian novels under consideration explore little known facets of the 1914-1918 conflict, while simultaneously addressing some of our most pressing anxieties about the present, such as social marginalization, otherness, and lonely death.

This article argues that Souviens-toi de moi, a novel published in 2014 by French writer Martine Laffon, reclaims the memory of travailleurs chinois on the Western Front during the First World War, at the same time exposing the deliberate agenda of forgetting in both French and Chinese memory cultures. Referring to Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of contact zone and Leela Gandhi’s concept of affective cosmopolitanism, I show how the novel creates an inclusive ethics across race, gender and species, challenging the fixed hierarchies of Western modernity. Synchronously, by applying the multidirectional framework of noeuds de mémoire, the article demonstrates how Laffon constructs war remembrance at the conjunction of anti-militarism, anti-imperialism, feminism and the struggle for animal rights. The novel thus offers a vision of the First World War that radically departs from the French récit national and the Chinese instrumentalization of the laborers’ war memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article engages with the cultural impact of John McCrae’s canonical poem “In Flanders Fields” (1915), and more specifically the permutations of cultural memory and heritage discourse in In Flanders Fields: 100 Years: Writing on War, Loss and Remembrance, edited by Amanda Betts and published in 2015. It shows how thirteen Canadians explore the revolutionary role of the poem in Canadian collective and individual memory, as well as its omissions and misrepresentations. The article juxtaposes the cultural history of the poem with Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” and its contemporary transformations, also showing how selected essays in the collection bridge the First World War with other armed conflicts. Applying Ann Rigney’s terminology, the article approaches the poem as a textual monument, demonstrating how “In Flanders Fields” has evolved from the role of a stabilizer in Canadian cultural memory, providing a cultural frame for later recollections, to that of a calibrator, becoming a benchmark for critical reflection on dominant memorial practices.

The article is an analysis of the representation of Australian nurses in Thomas Keneally 2012 First World War novel, The Daughters of Mars. Inspired by rigorous research, Keneally fictionalizes the lives of two nursing sisters in the Middle East, on a hospital ship in the Dardanelles, as well as in hospitals and casualty clearing stations on the Western Front. His novel thus reclaims an important facet of the medical history of the First World War. The author of the article situates her analysis in the context of historical research on the First World War and the Australian Anzac myth, illuminating the specifically Australian elements in Keneally’s portrait of the Durance sisters. She demonstrates that The Daughters of Mars celebrates the achievements of “Anzac girls”, negotiating a place for them in the culture of commemoration. Yet, at the same time, Keneally attempts to include his female protagonists in the “manly” world of Anzac values, privileging heroism over victimization. Consequently, they become “misfits of war”, eagerly accepting imperial and nationalist ideologies. Thus, in a way characteristic of Australian First World War literature, The Daughters of Mars fuses the tropes of affirmation and desolation.

This article offers an analysis of mnemonic traces in Galadio, Didier Daeninckx's 2010 novel. I demonstrate that by fictionalizing the history of the persecution of Afro-Germans under National Socialism, the novel exposes antiblackness as a neglected phenomenon of the Third Reich. Synchronously, applying Michael Rothberg's theoretical framework, the article discusses the dialogue between Jewish and Afro-German legacies of violence in the novel, as well as the intricate relation between colony, camp and what Paul Gilroy defines as camp mentality. Furthermore, I argue that Daeninckx engages with French colonial aphasia: in my interpretation, his oblique approach to the French imperial past conveys its simultaneous presence and absence, which is key to disabled memory. Finally, I focus on the ethics of commemoration in Galadio, which claims space for black soldiers in French collective memory of the two world wars, yet at the same time challenges imperial loyalties and homogeneous approaches to French national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an analysis of the representation of tirailleurs sénégalais in At Night All Blood is Black (Frère d'âme), a First World War novel published in 2018 to considerable critical acclaim by David Diop. I show how Diop invokes and at the same time undermines stereotypes of African ferociousness. His tirailleur protagonist becomes an unwilling witness to European barbarity, as the war causes a radical questioning of the colonial order. By focusing on the figure of the dëmm, I offer a 'decolonized' approach to First World War trauma and address excess and ambiguity as strategies of postcolonial transformation in Diop's novel. Finally, I argue that although At Night All Blood is Black commemorates the French African soldiers' contribution to the First World War, rather than simply painting a heroic portrait of the tirailleurs sénégalais, it does so by stressing their vulnerability and their traumatic transformation at the front. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers an analysis of the representation of an enemy encounter in Traitor (2010), a novel by Stephen Daisley, which depicts the relationship between a young New Zealander, David, and a Turkish doctor, Mahmoud, during the First World War. In my interpretation, I show the multiple facets of Sufi ethics as embraced by David under the influence of his Ottoman friend. Applying theoretical approaches rooted in the philosophy of politics, I argue that friendship between enemies in Daisley's novel is a political claim that challenges dichotomous ways of thinking and questions the meaning of such concepts as traitor, friend and enemy. Furthermore, I approach the protagonist's dissent and conscientious objection as deeply ethical acts of embodied resistance. Finally, I demonstrate that the novel represents an intriguing intervention in Australia and New Zealand's Anzac commemorative discourse, thus contributing to a twenty‐first‐century reassessment of the memory of the First World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of my article is an analysis of two war novels by Canadian best-selling author Charles W. Gordon, known to his readers under the pseudonym of Ralph Connor (1830-1937): The Major (1917) and The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land (1919). At the age of fifty-four, Connor was sent to the front as a preacher; only a fourth of his battalion survived, which made his determined to support the cause of the Empire in North America. His sentimental romances were written to support the war effort (The Major) or consolidate the myth of Canada's valorous sacrifice in the Great War (The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land). In my interpretation, I intend to show how in The Major Connor uses Manichean dichotomies to oppose the Allies to German characters; as a result, the Great War is represented in this novel as a defence of Christianity and European civilization. Love relationships in the novel serve, additionally, to depict the binary opposition between the noble British and Canadian characters and the corrupted and aggressive German ones. Larry Gwynne, the hero of the novel, is a Quaker, opposed to violence and bloodshed, yet, in spite of his initial opposition to military conflict, he eventually supports the Sacred Cause. The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land in turn depicts Canadians competing to send money, resources, and soldiers to Europe when the war is declared. Connor's volunteers are only motivated by the desire to defend the Motherland - Britain; he fails to mention such factors as unemployment that, as we know today, had a huge impact on enlistment in Canada. The central protagonist, in spite of his physical weakness, joins the Canadian Corps at the front. In the portrait of Barry Dunbar, Connor refers to the concept of muscular Christianity, an ideal of physical and religious discipline, fusing honour, courage and manhood with a modernised conception of Christian love, responsibility and sacrifice, which was key to his earlier success. Barry is a charismatic preacher, who teaches the soldiers in his battalion to die peacefully for the sake of God and the Empire. Death in the war, represented as a sacred crusade, is the ultimate sacrifice Canadian soldiers, Christ-like, are eager to face, confident about the righteousness of the Holy Cause and their own immortality. In conclusion, I demonstrate, how, using nineteenth-century aesthetic models, Connor created the model of the Great War novel in Canada. Keywords Great War, Canada, Manichean, muscular Christianity, propaganda, At the outbreak of the Great War, the Dominion of Canada joined the conflict immediately after Great Britain. August of 1914 united the Canadians, as thousands of men volunteered for [...]

The article offers an analysis of colonialism, immigration, and the representation of East Africa in Desertion (2005) by Nobel-Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah. By analyzing the complex structure of the novel, the article demonstrates that its protagonists are implicated in multiple stories, which only appear to be incompatible, but in reality are deeply entangled. Applying a variety of postcolonial theories, I focus on Gurnah's representation of the colonial encounter at the end of the 19th century in British East Africa. I show that the colonizers' attitudes in the novel vary from an aggressive perspective on colonial conquest, through to the belief in the legitimacy of the imperial mission, to an ideology which Mary Louise Pratt defines in terms of anti-conquest and reciprocity. However, their uncontrollable, often somatic reactions, illustrate the ambivalence of colonial discourse and foreshadow the decline of colonialism. The article also argues that Gurnah's vision of local interactions in East Africa at the turn of the 20th century is particularly complex and that the writer proposes cosmopolitan ethics. Yet, at the same time, Gurnah does not idealize East Africa and depicts prejudice and discrimination, particularly in relation to women of mixed parentage. Furthermore, the article discusses the cultural shock of the immigrant figure and the phenomena of mimicry and (de)colonization of the mind in Gurnah's novel. Finally, it shows how Gurnah questions the concept of racial divisions, demonstrating their harmful effects in the 1960s both in Britain and in Zanzibar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers an analysis of Underground, published by Canadian writer June Hutton in 2009. The main protagonist of the novel is a young Canadian, Albert Fraser, who suffers severe shock and disillusionment in the trenches of the First World War. He faces unemployment and destitution during the Great Depression and eventually joins the 1,700 Canadian volunteers who fought in the anti-fascist cause during the Spanish Civil War. My purpose is to analyse Hutton's representation of the Canadian veterans' difficult reintegration in the post-war years and the protagonist's prise de conscience which ultimately leads him to Spain, despite his hatred of war. While discussing the veterans' discontent and the Canadian government's attempts to control this unruly population, I refer to Judith Butler's conceptualization of precariousness and precarity, as well as Giorgio Agamben's philosophical reflection on biopolitics and bare life. Central in my reading is the terrain of the camp — the hobo camp, the relief camp, and the POW camp — as a site of biopolitical exclusion, yet also a space of encounter that triggers ethical reflection. Furthermore, I demonstrate how the novel stages unexpected alliances between the protagonist and Chinese characters, which cause Fraser to revise his racist opinions. I propose the concept of multidirectional vulnerabilities to explore the parallels between these apparently disjointed geographies and temporalities. The article shows how Hutton represents the vulnerability of Canadian bodies in a historical period of socio-political upheavals, yet at the same time locates in their vulnerability the possibility of resistance and an alternative ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the representation of Canadian prisoners of war in Alan Cumyn's Great War novel The Famished Lover (2006). Relying on historical sources, I attempt to show how the experience of captivity, marginalized for a long time in historical research, alters our understanding of the First World War and the evolution of forced labour in the twentieth century. I approach Canadian POWs as missing persons, disappeared in the biopolitical regime of the POW camp, the post-war discourses of commemoration, and the gaps in cultural memory. The article explores Cumyn's representation of the camp as a biopolitical space and the production of the POW as Agambenian bare life. Central to the analysis are issues of trauma, masculinity, and heroic defiance. I also engage with the long-lasting sequelae of captivity, as well as the difficult reintegration of the returned POW, based on the example of the protagonist of the novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines Canadian novels about the First World War published since 1979 in relation to the so-called transnational trauma paradigm. Topics include the dominant theme of Canadian Great War novels is war trauma and its aftermath, how the Canadian works of fiction disengage from the national metanarrative of sacrifice, and Canadian works such as "Broken Ground," by Jack Hodgin and Allan Donaldson's "Maclean."

The purpose of this article is to trace the most recent trends in research on Canada's history and commemoration of the First World War since the beginning of the 21st century. The article identifies the major thematic and axiological approaches in interdisciplinary and often transcultural studies of the First World War, referring specifically to the works of P. Berton, N. Gordon, S. Grace, D. Novak, J. F. Vance, Ch.-Ph. Courtois and L. Veyssière, M. Djebabla-Brun, B. Richard, B. Andrès, and others. As far as English Canada is concerned, we explore how recent studies undermine the myth of the Great War as a foundational moment for Canadian national history and identity. We also highlight the double historiographic challenge in the Francophone context: to rediscover the obliterated French Canadian experience during the First World War and to reinterpret the stereotypes, in particular the clichés concerning the conscription crisis of 1917. In our analysis we aim to compare the Anglophone and Francophone discourses and to expose points of convergence in the war experience of the two groups which are traditionally considered incompatible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]