The representation of victimhood, agape and eros in selected interwar and post-1990 First World War prose fiction

Harsch, Patrick (2024). The representation of victimhood, agape and eros in selected interwar and post-1990 First World War prose fiction. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

My thesis assesses the cross-cultural literary treatments of the trope of innocent victimhood that became apparent in commemorations between 2014 and 2018 of the centenary of the First World War in Germany, Turkey, Armenia, France and Britain. These literary treatments challenge the notion, promoted by national centenary commemorations, that participants in the conflict were innocent victims of tragic circumstances. Although these centenary commemorations were set in specific national contexts, their transnational common denominator is their silence concerning the predicaments of victims of state-induced injustices and on the question of human agency during the conflict. This thesis examines innocent victimhood in fictional First World War texts in which the victims of state-induced injustice take center stage. The four war-related injustices are anti-Semitic discrimination, ethnic cleansing, military injustice, and inhumane psychiatric treatment. The trope of innocent victimhood is examined in four separate chapters. In each case, one interwar novel is compared to thematically related post-1990 texts. The novels originate from a wide range of cultural backgrounds.

I argue that in First World War prose fiction dealing with state-induced injustice, the cross-cultural recurring pattern that emerges is the nexus between the fictional protagonists’ feelings of guilt and love, which are discussed in relation to the portrayal of victimhood in the texts. In each of the novels under examination, guilt and love complicate the trope of innocent victimhood that marks the official commemorative discourses. The presence of these two feelings allows these protagonists to retain a considerable amount of human agency despite being victims of injustices. The notion of guilt has not received sufficient attention by literary critics of First World War fiction so far. The thesis shows that two kinds of love, selfless agape, based on a sense of solidarity with other victims of injustice, and self-centred eros, based on romantic love and family relations, emerge in the texts. The thesis demonstrates that, in the world of First World War fictional prose, human agency is portrayed in all its complexity. Drawing on Primo Levi’s concept of ‘vast grey zones of conscience’, my thesis describes how the clear-cut distinction between victims and perpetrators is blurred by the portrayal of the protagonists’ guilt in the context of the state-induced crimes committed against them. I argue that by highlighting the issue of responsibility for actions and decisions taken by victims of injustice, literature can provide an important corrective to the over-simplified public perceptions that participants in the conflict were innocent victims.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):