War, Heroism, and Narrative

This book maps the effect of war and warfare upon the hero and stories of heroism. The three storytellers chosen, Hemingway, Tolkien, and le Carré, are very different yet share a common problem. How, in the face of the chaos and ambiguity of both war and modernity, can we still tell stories of heroism? The work begins with Hemingway\'s In Our Time (1925) with its origins in the 1914-1918 Great War and concludes with le Carré\'s Absolute Friends (2003) with its background in the Iraq War. Chapters One and Two spell out the development of a heroism of the ordinary and chart the period from Great War to Cold War, placing Hemingway, Tolkien and le Carré in their historical contexts amid the ironies of modernity and modernism. Chapters Three, Four, and Five examine selected works of Hemingway, Tolkien, and le Carré that explore their complex relationship to war. Chapter Six portrays the three writers as storytellers to the modern world. This work will prove useful to those studying twentieth-century literature who wish to better understand the impact of war on narrative, recent history, and contemporary issues.