PCST 360 - War, Memory, and Literature

(Same as ENG 360.) This course focuses on the war literature of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The great wars of the twentieth century, anticipated by the US Civil War, introduced increasingly accurate and deadly techniques and weapons, and the inspiring words long associated with battle: glory, courage, honor - all accompanied by and confirmed by God’s sanction - began to ring hollow. World War II, with its Holocaust association and its destruction of whole cities, culminating in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, fundamentally changed our vision of war. In this introduction to war literature-novels, memoirs, and poetry-we will see war treated less as a path to glory than as a tragic waste, a foolish and useless source of pain and death, or even as a black comedy. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, God continues to lead some people to war, but for others, God can only be invoked in the name of peace, and for still others, the wars of the last century prove that God is dead. (Offered as needed.) 3 credits