Fighting fictions : war, narrative, and national identity

Kevin Foster
Published by Pluto Press (1999)

ISBN: 0745309550 (pbk) : 0745309569

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Book description
his text applies theories of contemporary cultural studies to the analysis of wars. The central proposition is that, just as wars produce fictions, so the apprehension and experience of wars themselves - in the real world - are substantially the products of fictions of nationhood, history, race, gender and class. The book offers an analysis of a broad range of war fictions - popular fiction, journals, memoirs, contemporary press coverage, histories and official government reports, as well as photographic, graphic and cinematic treatments - drawn from or reflecting on the conflicts in Vietnam, the two world wars, the Spanish Civil War and the conflicts in the Gulf and the Falklands. It sets out the relations between fiction, myth and ideology in the construction and deconstruction of war.

About the author
Dr. Kevin Foster is a lecturer in English in the School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies at Monash University. His major research interests are in narrative configurations of regional and national identity and in representations of war and conflict.

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