The silent morning

Culture and memory after the Armistice

Edited by Trudi Tate, Kate Kennedy

Publication date:

31 October 2013

Length of book:

352 pages

Publisher

Manchester University Press

Dimensions:

216x138mm

ISBN-13: 9780719090028

This is the first book to study the cultural impact of the Armistice of 11 November 1918. It contains 14 new essays from scholars working in literature, music, art history and military history. The Armistice brought hopes for a better future, as well as sadness, disappointment and rage. Many people in all the combatant nations asked hard questions about the purpose of the war. These questions are explored in complex and nuanced ways in the literature, music and art of the period. This book revisits the silence of the Armistice and asks how its effect was to echo into the following decades. The essays are genuinely interdisciplinary and are written in a clear, accessible style.

Introduction: ‘This grave day’ – Trudi Tate and Kate Kennedy
1. The parting of the ways: The Armistice, the Silence and Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s end – John Pegum
2. Alfred Döblin’s November 1918: The Alsatian prelude – Klaus Hofmann
3. ‘A strange mood’: British popular fiction and post-war uncertainties – George Simmers
4. Fighting the peace: Two women's accounts of the post-war years – Alison Hennegan
5. King Baby: Infant care into the peace – Trudi Tate
6. ‘What a victory it might have been’: C. E. Montague and the First World War – Andrew Frayn
7. The Bookman, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Armistice – Jane Potter
8. ‘Misunderstood ... mainly because of my Jewishness’: Arthur Schnitzler after the First World War – Max Haberich
9. Leaping over shadows: Ernst Krenek and post-war Vienna – Peter Tregear
10. Silence recalled in sound: British classical music and the Armistice – Kate Kennedy
11. Sacrifice defeated: The Armistice and depictions of victimhood in German women’s art 1918–24 – Claudia Siebrecht
12. ‘Remembering, we forget’: British art at the Armistice – Michael Walsh
13. Indecisive victory? : German and British soldiers at the Armistice – Alexander Watson
14. Mixing memory and desire: British and German war memorials after 1918 – Adrian Barlow
Bibliography
Notes on contributors
Index

One thing is certain: among the thousands of books published to mark the centenary of the Great War, there will be few, if any, which examine the immediate aftermath of the fighting as originally, incisively and movingly as the collections of essays in 'The Silent Morning'.