Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural HistoryJay Winter's powerful 1998 study of the 'collective remembrance' of the Great War offers a major reassessment of one of the critical episodes in the cultural history of the twentieth century. Dr Winter looks anew at the culture of commemoration and the ways in which communities endeavoured to find collective solace after 1918. Taking issue with the prevailing 'modernist' interpretation of the European reaction to the appalling events of 1914–18, Dr Winter instead argues that what characterised that reaction was, rather, the attempt to interpret the Great War within traditional frames of reference. Tensions arose inevitably. Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning is a profound and moving book of seminal importance for the attempt to understand the course of European history during the first half of the twentieth century. |
Contents
Homecomings the return of the dead | 15 |
Communities in mourning | 29 |
Spiritualism and the Lost Generation | 54 |
War memorials and the mourning process | 78 |
Cultural codes and languages of mourning | 117 |
Mythologies of war films popular religion and the business of the sacred | 119 |
The apocalyptic imagination in art from anticipation to allegory | 145 |
Other editions - View all
Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History Jay Winter Limited preview - 2014 |
Common terms and phrases
Abel Gance Annette Becker apocalyptic Apollinaire Armistice army artists Australian War Memorial Barbusse Barbusse's bereavement Berlin Blaise Cendrars Blaue Reiter Britain British Cambridge Catholic celebrated cemeteries Cendrars chapter Christian church cinema civilian combatant commemorative art cultural history dead death Der Blaue Reiter Diary explored express families film France French front Gance Gance's Georges Rouault German grave guerre Heartbreak House Henri Barbusse Ibid imagery images d'Epinal imagined J'accuse Kandinsky Karl Kraus Kathe Kollwitz Ken Inglis killed Kollwitz Kraus language letter literary literature living London Ludwig Meidner Lutyens Max Beckmann Meidner military millions modern monuments aux morts motifs mourning Otto Dix painting Paris patriotic poem poet poetry political popular postwar pre-war RCPC Red Cross religious Resurrection romantic Rouault sacred sacrifice Shaw Somme spiritualism spiritualist Stanley Spencer suffering theme theosophy traditional trans University Press Verdun vision Wakeman wartime widows wounded wrote