In search of the uncanny in the narratives of the Great War

Savaş şiiri, genellikle şiddet, kan dökme ve ölüm gibi temaları dile getirdiğinden karanlık ve kasvetli bir tona sahiptir. Bu durum özellikle kanlı çatışmaların yaşandığı siperlerde yazılan şiirlerde daha yoğun hissedilir. Dehşet verici siper deneyimi nedeniyle ruhsal yıkıma uğramış olan savaş şairi yaşam ve ölüm arasındaki eşikte konumlanmıştır. Kimi zaman kendini ölü olarak tasavvur eder, kimi zamansa ölülerle konuşur veya ölüler, rüyalar ya da karanlık hayaller aracılığıyla onunla konuşurlar. Ölmüş askerler, parçalanmış bedenler, tanınmaz haldeki cesetler gibi süreklilik gösteren imgeler ve travma geçirmiş zihnin ürettiği korkutucu düşler bu dünyaya ait olmayan bir atmosfer yaratarak, savaş şiirini genellikle gotik ve fantastik edebiyatla ilişkilendirilen “tekinsizlik” kuramının konusu haline getirir. Bu çalışmada, tekinsizlik kuramının Birinci Dünya Savaşı şiirlerinde işlenen travmatik savaş deneyiminin ve milliyetçilik fikrinin incelenmesinde sunacağı yorumsal olanaklar ele alınmıştır. Birinci Dünya Savaşı sırasında yazılan şiirler çalışmanın odak noktasında yer almaktadır. Ancak, savaş etrafında şekillenen farklı söylemlerin karşılaştırmalı olarak incelenmesi amacıyla savaş hatıraları, anıtlar ve cehpheden yazılan mektuplar gibi diğer savaş anlatıları da çalışma kapsamına dâhil edilmiştir.

Birinci Dünya Savaşı anlatılarında tekinsizliğin izinde

War poetry, particularly the poems scribed in the trenches - the burning centre of the combat, generally has a dark and sombre tone as it speaks of violence, bloodshed and death. Psychologically devastated by the appalling experience of the trench warfare, the war poet occupies the liminal space between life and death. He sometimes imagines himself dead; sometimes he converses with the dead, or conversely the dead communicate with him through dreams or phantasms. The recurrent images of dead soldiers, detached body parts, unrecognisable corpses, and ghostly imaginings of traumatised mind create an otherworldly atmosphere, drawing the genre into the terrain of the uncanny, which has been conventionally associated with gothic and fantastic literature. The present study explores the interpretive possibilities that the theory of the uncanny may offer in analysing the traumatic war experience and the presentation of the idea of nationalism in the poetry of the First World War. The present study, as indicated in the title, is a search for the uncanny presented in the poetry of the Great War; however, it also includes other forms of war narratives, such as memorial monuments, memoirs and letters in order to compare different discourses that came together around the war and its rhetoric.

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