A selective list of online literary criticism for British war poet Wilfred Owen, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the MLA Guidelines for Web Sites
main page | 20th-century poetry | 20th-century literature | poetry of WWI
Cyr, Marc D. "Formal subversion in Wilfred Owen's 'Hospital Barge.'" Essay uses Owen's best known poem, "Dulce et Decorum Est" as groundwork for discussing his lesser known "Hospital Barge." Style, Spring, 1994
Hodgkin, Marian. "The physical and mental scars of World War One as portrayed in poems by W. Owen and R. Graves." Robert Graves Archive
Najarian, James. "'Greater Love': Wilfred Owen, Keats, and a Tradition of Desire." On Owen's homosexuality and his relationship to John Keats, literary criticism. Twentieth Century Literature, Spring, 2001
Shumaker, Richard. "The Great War and Recent Writing." Short summaries and evaluations of critical studies on authors of the WWI period. Focus on Robert Graves and his Contemporaries, vol. II, 4
Sillars, Stuart. "British Poetry of World War I," at the Literary Encyclopedia, 2008.
Stallworthy, Jon. Wilfred Owen: A Biography (Oxford Univ. Press, 1988). Preview at Google Books.
The First World War Poetry Digital Archive, a repository of over 4000 items of text, images, audio, and video for teaching, learning, and research. Includes digital images of Owen's drafts for "Anthem for Doomed Youth," "Dulce et Decorum Est," "The Chances," "Strange Meeting," "Asleep," "Disabled," and much more.
Hibberd, Dominic. "Beauty blasted," On war poetry and Wilfred Owen as an anti-war poet, and a review of Dominic Hibberd's Wilfred Owen: A New Biography Review by Alexandra Mullen in The New Criterion, Feb. 2003 (removed)
Hibberd, Dominic. A review of Wilfred Owen: A New Biography by Dominic Hibberd. Reviewer Nigel Jones writes "Reading Owen -- his excellent letters and poems -- has contributed hugely to our contemporary picture of the Great War as a meaningless mass slaughter of innocent "lads" by the desiccated boys of the Old Brigade. If this is a distortion of history, as modern military historians complain, it is also the view of the war that has become our truth." In New Statesman, Sept 2, 2002 (removed)
Wilfred Owen: The pity of war. A 1920 review of Owen's poems, includes a brief discussion of "Strange Meeting." The review notes "The twenty-three poems of this collection are the fruit of not quite two years' active service, less than half of it in the field. But they are enough to rank him among the very few war poets whose work has more than a passing value." Published in the (UK) Guardian, by "C.P."
Wilfred Owen: The greatest ever war poet? Light reading from the BBC, 4/20/05
The Wilfred Owen Association presents an Owen timeline, photos of his home and of war locations, links to texts of the poems, and brief commentaries on several poems by Kenneth Simcox, including Anthem for Doomed Youth, Dulce et Decorum est, and others
A brief biography of Wilfred Owen and an analysis of "Disabled," part of the award winning online seminar on the poetry of World War I from Oxford University
(removed) "Can today's poets seize the moment as their great predecessors did during the First World War and the fighting in Vietnam?" New Statesman, Feb 17, 2003 by Jason Cowley
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