WORLD WAR 1 in literature

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WORLD WAR 1in literature

• Birdsong

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The context

• It is absolutely imperative that the context be
  fully understood before reading of the novel
  commences.
• Please see the attached research project

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Birdsong

• Sebastian Faulks
• Find out about the author and where the
  inspiration for Birdsong came from
• In November 1988 I was sent to the Western
  Front with a group of veterans on a visitI stood
  in the mud with men who had fought there in
  1915 one of them held my hand as he described
  picking up the pieces of his dead friendAnd on
  that morning the war ceased to be history to me
  and became a real living thing

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The front cover

• Study the various front covers on the
• editions available to you
• What do they imply that the novel is about?
• How effective are they in ensuring you read the
  book?

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The blurbs

• Read the blurb on the book you are
• studying
• Discuss what the novel is about and what might
  happen in it

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The Reviews

• Does your book have reviews on its cover?
• If so, read these reviews and discuss in
• pairs how they alter your pre-conception
• of the book

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Coursework

• This text is to be studied for a
• coursework module. It will also form part
• of wider reading for the topic World
• War One in Literature.
• Please see attached coursework guide

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How to study a novel

• Please see attached guide

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France 1910

• Part One
• Please see attached study booklet for
• this section of the novel

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Part 2 Please see attached Study Booklet on this
section

• France 1916

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Authorial techniqueDiscuss the techniques and
their effect in the following extracts

• By the time they transported him to the dressing
  station the fever had started to recede. The
  pain in his arm and neck had vanished. Instead
  he could hear a roaring sound of blood in his
  ears. Sometimes it would modulate to a hum and
  at others rise to a shriek according to how hard
  his heart was pumping. With the noise came
  delirium. He lost touch with his physical being
  and believed himself to be in a house on a
  French boulevard in which he searched and called
  the name of Isabelle. With no warning he was in
  an English cottage, a large institution, then
  back in the unremembered place of his birth. He
  raved and shouted.
• Please see attached worksheet

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Authorial technique contd

• Then under the indifferent sky his spirit left
  the body with its ripped flesh, infections, its
  weak and damaged nature. While the rain fell on
  his arms and legs, the part of him that still
  lived was unreachable. It was not his mind, but
  some other essence that was longing now for peace
  on a quiet, shadowed road where no guns sounded.
  The deep paths of darkness opened up for it, as
  they opened up for other men along the lines of
  dug earth, barely fifty yards apart.
• As the fever in his abandoned body reached its
  height and he moved towards the welcome of
  oblivion, he heard a voice, not human, but clear
  and urgent. It was the sound of his life leaving
  him. Its tone was mocking. It offered him,
  instead of the peace he longed for, the
  possibility of return. At this late stage he
  could go back to his body and to the brutal
  perversion of life that was lived in the turned
  soil and torn flesh of the war he could, if he
  made the effort of courage and will, come back to
  the awkward, compromised and unconquerable
  existence that made up human life on earth. The
  voice was calling him it appealed to his sense
  of shame and of curiosity unfulfilled but if he
  did not heed it he would surely die
• Please see attached worksheet

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Part 3Please see attached Study Booklet on this
section

• Part 3
• England 1978

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Links between past and present

• In the tunnel of the underground
• Why is this a good sentence to begin Part 3?
• Hint who dug the tunnels?

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Part 4Please see attached Study Booklet on this
section

• France 1917

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Part 5Please see attached Study Booklet on this
section

• England
• 1978-1979

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Part SixPlease see attached Study Booklet on
this section

• France 1918

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Part SevenPlease see attached Study Booklet on
this section

• England 1979

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The AssignmentPlease see the attached Coursework
and Assessment Guide