FROM SOLDIER-POET TO VETERAN MEMOIRIST: SIEGFRIED SASSOON, THE COMPLETE MEMOIRS OF GEORGE SHERSTON, AND THE LIMITS OF LIFE-WRITING IN PROSE

AUTOR(ES)
FONTE

Ilha Desterro

DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2021-08

RESUMO

Abstract The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston is a key text supporting Siegfried Sassoon’s reputation as Britain’s pre-eminent Great War-writer. Critics have nevertheless reached no consensus as to whether these lightly fictionalised “memoirs” represent true accounts of Sherston’s/ Sassoon’s war or fictional constructions. They have also yet to account for the differences between the Memoirs and Sassoon’s war-poetry, and between Sherston’s stated commemorative goals and his complete account. This article dissects the Memoirs’ adaptation of Sassoon’s front-line poetics of commemoration: it reads their new application of this poetics via his compositional difficulties, his dependence upon his own wartime writings, and life-writing’s uneasy relationship to truth. As I show, Sherston has more in common with his author than Sassoon intended, but differences remain; still, his memoirshave as much right to that appellation as any other text in the language.

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