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kelly_xiao

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Dulce et Decorum est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
TIll on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to teh hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues-----
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
(Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori: It is sweet and meet (fitting) to die for one's country)
 

kelly_xiao

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The above poem was written by Wilfred Owen who served in France from Jan 1916 until his death on 4 November 1918. Clearly owen is deeply emotionally invovled in what he is descrbing and let's say if you were to analyse the above source for its reliability, would you say that his lack of emotional detachment dimishes the source's reliability or whether his strong feelings, aroused by the horror of what he is witnessing, actually increase the source's reliability?
 

nwatts

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Isn't this a Wilfred Owen poem? Shouldn't this be in the standard english forums? hehe :p

Poems always give an interesting take on wartime experience. Always have to remember it's a subjective, poetic take on an event and has little to no historical credibility. It can only be used in conjunction with more reliable sources to form a historical position.
 

kelly_xiao

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hehe, yea it is Wilfred Owen's poem. So the subjectivity of the poem diminishes it's reliability? So you would say this poem is unreliable? Cos i was just thinking that his witness of the situation might increase the truthfulness... amm soooo confused
 

nwatts

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It depends on your personal historical position, really.

We're assessing the reliability of the poem as a historical document. So (according to Ranke) we're finding what actually happened. The medium of a poem itself decreases the reliability of a source, because it is not concerned with conveying accurate experience, rather dramatising and injecting emotion into a situation - then recording it as poetry. So immediately we know that what Owen is conveying will be concerned with drama and emotion, rather than historical accuracy.

However different questions will ask different things, from different historical positions. For example, if a question asked how reliable this source was as to convey the emotions of WWI trench soldiers, you could answer that his first-hand experience, as well as emotional attachment to the poetry, increases the reliability of the source. But you'd have to remember this is one person's account, and may not mirror all those around him.

Reliability is then subject to historical position. If you're going down the Ranke line of finding what actually happened, a poem is crap all. You need a number of very well referenced and documented sources (written hopefully in historical terms rather than narrative prose) to then form an idea of exactly what trench warfare was like. But then if you're looking from a different perspective you'll want to find whether or not this articulates the proper emotion and disposition of a solider.

So what I’ve very verbosely said is that you need to define what you consider reliable.
 

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