The Inexhaustible Human Vectors. War, crisis, literature from Beowulf to Ian McEwan

Abstract

[eng] War intrudes on all aspects of the human experience: the national and domestic economies, the countries’ internal and foreign relations, the immigration policies, housing, social mores and traditions… Even fashion, sex dynamics, gender politics, the environment, religion and spirituality— are all affected, sometimes irretrievably, by war. As will be discussed in other chapters of this volume, such as those by Helena Duffy, Sue Vice and Piret Viires among others, it can be asserted that it is the most wide‑ranging, pervasive and inexhaustible kind of crisis. Just as the annals of mankind are a compendium of war and its attendant crises, so the history of literature continues to accumulate instances of war narratives, to help us cope and make sense, if only fractionally, of the chaos. War literature, an extension of crisis literature, therefore serves an essential therapeutic, cautionary or educational purpose, which the following lines attempt to survey.