Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

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 | poets of WWI | War Poetry

Literary criticism

Cyr, Marc D. "Formal subversion in Wilfred Owen's 'Hospital Barge.'" Compares Owen's best known poem, "Dulce et Decorum Est" with his lesser known "Hospital Barge." Style (Spring 1994)

Najarian, James. "'Greater Love': Wilfred Owen, Keats, and a Tradition of Desire." Edmund Blunden's 1931 "Memoir," the figure of John Keats, and Owen's homosexuality. Twentieth Century Literature (Spring 2001)

Stallworthy, Jon. Wilfred Owen: A Biography. Oxford UP, 1988. Preview at Google Books.

"Wilfred Owen Collection." First World War Poetry Digital Archive, a repository of text, images, audio, and video for teaching, learning, and research. Includes images of Owen's drafts for "Anthem for Doomed Youth," "Dulce et Decorum Est," "The Chances," "Strange Meeting,""Asleep,""Disabled," and much more.

Sillars, Stuart. "British Poetry of World War I," at the Literary Encyclopedia, 2008.

"Wilfred Owen: The pity of war." (UK) Guardian, 29 Dec., 1920. An archived review of Owen's poems, includes a brief discussion of "Strange Meeting." The 1920 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."

Wilfred Owen: The greatest ever war poet? BBC, 20 April 2005.

Web sites

The Wilfred Owen Association. Pres. Peter Owen. News, a biography, bibliography, about the Association and its journal, photos of the Owen family, many critiques of the poems.

"The War Poets at Craiglockhart." Napier University, Edinburgh. On the facility, formerly a hospital, and the treatment there of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. The hospital and the meeting of Owen and Sassoon there are fictionalized in Pat Barker's Regeneration.

Le site de l'Association Wilfred Owen France. Le Conseil Général du Nord. Biography, about the Association, photos, news, Benjamin Britten's War Requiem.

Removed articles

"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. The New Criterion, Feb. 2003 (removed)

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." New Statesman, 2 Sept., 2002 (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 (removed)

main page | 20th-century poetry | 20th-century literature | poets of WWI | War Poetry

1998-2010 by Jan Pridmore