What Attitudes to War are Evident in Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade and Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est and how are they Conveyed?

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Lauren Clift                                                                                                12 – 3 – 02

                           What Attitudes to War are Evident in Tennyson’s

                           Charge of the Light Brigade and Owen’s Dulce et

                                Decorum Est and how are they Conveyed?

Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade and Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est. are both alike in that they deal with the subject of war. However, the two styles of writing differ significantly, as do the tone and purpose of the poem.

    Tennyson’s poem was written about a fateful battle in the Crimean War, which took place between 1854 – 6. He was poet laureate at the time, and so his poems so his poems were to be read by the queen and the British Empire, also influenced the style and content of his poem. Tennyson never fought in the Charge of the Light Brigade, he wrote his poem in response to a newspaper article in ‘The Times’, written by W.H.Russell. This helps to explain why he depicts war as a heroic and noble act and seems to brush over the subject in his poem. Having never seen the deaths for himself, Tennyson fails to convey the real horrors of combat.

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    In contrast, Owen was a soldier poet who based his poems on his own experience of war. Owen fought in the trenches in France in the First World War, which took place between 1914 – 1918. He was sent to France in 1916 and was sent to hospital in Scotland after a shell burst near him in the trenches and he had to be treated for shell shock. He wrote his poems whilst in Craiglockhart Hospital, although Dulce et Decorum Est. is perhaps his most famous. As Owen experienced war for himself, it is reflected in his style ...

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