Explain the contemporary popularity of Rupert Brooke's sonnets.

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Natalie Laverick 13CB

Explain the contemporary popularity of Rupert Brooke’s sonnets.

Rupert Brooke’s five sonnets, “Peace”, “Safety”, “The Rich Dead”, “The Dead” and “The Soldier”, known collectively as “1914”, were immensely popular during the First World War, his poems were reprinted, on average, every eight weeks of its duration. Brooke also received great admiration and respect from his contemporaries both during his time as a pre-war poet and after his death. “The Soldier” was read by Dean Inge from the pulpit of St.Pauls on Easter Sunday 1915, D.H. Lawrence exclaimed: "he was slain by bright Pheobus' shaft . . . it was a real climax of his pose . . . O God, O God; it is all too much of a piece: it is like madness." and Winston Churchill wrote his obituary. Churchill described Brooke’s sonnets as “incomparable” and written with “genius”.

The popularity of Brooke’s sonnets was rooted in the patriotism and enthusiasm for war they expressed, he saw war as a “glorious game”, and adopted an attitude similar to that expressed by Henry Newbolt in his poem “Vitaii Lampada”. These are the reasons why his poems where chosen by national leaders and propagandists. Brooke’s poetry successfully summed up the national mood in the early war years and he acted as a spokesman for popular attitudes and beliefs about the war; the British people were optimistic it would be short-lived and the Allies victorious.

The sonnets were also popular as they offered comfort to those that suffered, or could expect, loss of loved ones or faced their own death. His poems glorified war, romanticised death as peaceful and safe and presented dying in battle as heroic and patriotic, which would bring great inspiration to soldiers and consolation to their families.

The first in the series of Brooke’s sonnets is “Peace”. The idea presented in this poem is a reversal of the conventional opinion that peace is good and war is bad. In this poem, Brooke suggests that peacetime is a time of decay and war provides opportunities for purification and “rebirth”.

In the first line the voice of the poem, presumably a soldier, thanks God for making he and his fellow men suitable or “matched” to take part in war, “Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with his Hour”. This suggests the war was seen as a thrilling opportunity. Brooke goes on to explain the thinking behind this excitement and willingness to fight; imagery is used to communicate the notion of war bringing these men a new life. The simile “To turn as swimmers into cleanness leaping” represents the men moving from their old lives into new. The water imagery gives the impression of cleansing, like that of a baptism, which reinforces the view of war as a chance for rebirth and new beginnings. It also suggests that there is a connection between war and religion, this idea of spiritual cleansing can also be found in “The Soldier” “Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home.”  Both images are highly patriotic and optimistic; the belief being that God is on the side of the British people.

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In stark contrast to the “cleanness” of war, Brooke describes the world during peacetime as “old and cold and weary” and the men that “honour could not move” (being those who were too cowardly to fight) as “half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary”. These comparisons would encourage soldiers to enlist, as war appears the more desirable option and offers escape or “release” from the emptiness of love, of which Brooke wrote from experience, and dreariness of everyday life at home. This idea of war as spiritually cleansing was one of the many common beliefs of the time Brooke picked up on ...

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