Abstract
Reading Barbusse, Under Fire, in 1917. At the time, Barbusse’s novel was widely considered to be primarily documentary masquerading as fiction. It became the most successful novel in the history of French literature and marked a dramatic turning point in the way in which the war was described, as it presents the war from the point of view of a squad of ordinary soldiers. It is politically ambiguous, despite its subsequent reputation as a pacifist document. Its reception was equivocal, as it was widely praised and admired, but hated by the nationalist and clerical right.
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References
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Palmer, J. (2018). Reading Barbusse, Le Feu (Under Fire), in 1916–1917. In: Memories from the Frontline. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78051-1_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78051-1_9
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