"This is no case of petty right or wrong
That politicians or philosophers
Can judge. I hate not Germans, or grow hot
With love of Englishmen, to please newspapers."

'This Is No Case Of Petty Right Or Wrong' ll. 1–4, Edward Thomas

The Great War, with its carnage of ruling class rhetoric, put paid to some of the more strident forms of chauvenism on which English had previously thrived...[literature] represented a search for spiritual solutions on the part of the English ruling class... [it] would be at once solace and reaffirmation, a familiar ground on which Englishmen could regroup both to explore, and to find some alternative to, the nightmare of history

Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), p. 30.

Introduction

The divisions in Europe created by the Great War are still felt today. Socially, the War provided an enormous upheaval in perceptions of hierarchy and duty. It fed on existing prejudices and created new ones that are still present throughout Europe today (as witnessed in the continuing struggles in the Balkans). Many of these were later replayed in the Second World War.

First World War poetry to a degree, breaks free of many of the stereotypes one would associate with war poems, yet at the same time perpetuates many myths. On the one hand the poets presented in the previous tutorials find common cause with Thomas's sentiments expressed above. It is almost impossible to find in the poetry of Sassoon or Owen anything which could be described as anti-German per se. Sassoon, for example, does not choose to direct his anger towards the enemies in the opposing trenches but instead at the High Command or the public back home. Owen, also, chastises the war-mongers and jingoists in Britain (as with 'Dulce et Decorum est') or concentrates on the pitiful nature of the conflict. Yet at the same time the study of First World War poetry is very insular, and the tutorials in this series could also be accused of suffering from this. Nearly all of the poems presented so far have been British, and even more narrowly focusing entirely on the poetry of the Western Front.

This tutorial attempts to redress the balance. Not only will it bring some other poets to the fore from non-British backgrounds, but it will also ask users to question their own inherent prejudices. To most people in English-speaking countries the German, Turkish, or Austrian soldier is an unknown quantity, vaguely referred to in some of the poems. Yet what sentiments were the poets from those countries attempting to express? Similarly, even though they were allies during the War, the poetry of the soldiers of France, Russia, or Italy are seldom read outside of their countries by the beginning student.

Stuart D. Lee

Why not Comparative Literature?

It is interesting to note that the title of this tutorial deliberately avoids the much used, abused, and argued over term 'comparative literature' and adopts the much safer term 'comparing literature'. Although many students of literary theory will see this as a 'neglection of duty' it is a deliberate policy to avoid entering into the debate. However, if pushed, it is perhaps noticebale that the form the tutorial takes, at its most simplistic level, is similar to the 'American School', but at the same time at odds with it as the discussion of 'nationality' is central to the way the tutorial progresses. To remind readers of what is meant by the 'American School' I repeat the often used definition by Henry Remak in Stallknecht and Frenz (eds.) Comparative Literature: Method and Perspective (1961), p. 3:

Comparative Literature is the study of literature beyond the confines of one particular country, and the study of the relationships between literature on the one hand, and other areas of knowledge and belief, such as the arts...In brief, it is the comparison of one literature with another or others, and the comparison of literature with other spheres of human expression

We should also bear in mind the following definitions:

Comparative Literature: 'The examination and analysis of the relationships and similarities of the literatures of different peoples and nations.'
Weltliteratur: 'A term coined by Goethe which means...that literature which is of all nations and peoples, and which, by a reciprocal exchange of ideas, meiates between nations and helps to enrich the spirit of man.'

Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms

I will leave it to the individual reader to choose if they wish to pigeon-hole the activities of this tutorial under one title or ano