Remembering War : The Great War Between Memory and History in the Twentieth Century

by Jay Winter

• ISBN13: 9780300110685
• ISBN10: 0300110685
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2006-05-26
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

This is a masterful volume on remembrance and war in the twentieth century. Jay Winter locates the fascination with the subject of memory within a long-term trajectory that focuses on the Great War. Images, languages, and practices that appeared during and after the two world wars focused on the need to acknowledge the victims of war and shaped the ways in which future conflicts were imagined and remembered. At the core of the "memory boom" is an array of collective meditations on war and the victims of war, Winter says. The book begins by tracing the origins of contemporary interest in memory, then describes practices of remembrance that have linked history and memory, particularly in the first half of the twentieth century. The author also considers "theaters of memory"film, television, museums, and war crimes trials in which the past is seen through public representations of memories. The book concludes with reflections on the significance of these practices for the cultural history of the twentieth century as a whole.

Author Biography

Jay Winter is Charles J. Stille Professor of History, Yale University.

Table of Contents

Introduction : war, memory, remembrance	p. 1
The setting : the Great War in the memory boom of the twentieth century	p. 17
Shell shock, memory, and identity	p. 52
All quiet on the eastern front : photography and remembrance	p. 79
War letters : cultural memory and the "soldiers' tale" of the Great War	p. 103
Ironies of war : intellectual styles and responses to the Great War in Britain and France	p. 118
War memorials : a social agency interpretation	p. 135
War, migration, and remembrance : Britain and her dominions	p. 154
Grand illusions : war, film, and collective memory	p. 183
Between history and memory : television, public history, and historical scholarship	p. 201
War museums : the Historial and historical scholarship	p. 222
"Witness to a time" : authority, experience, and the two World Wars	p. 238
Controversies and conclusions	p. 275
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