Prose Responses to WW1

While poetry dominated the literary response to the First World War during the conflict itself, prose — novels, memoirs, and autobiographical fiction — became the dominant form in the decades that followed. Prose offered what poetry, by its nature, could not: sustained narrative, the development of character over time, the exploration of psychological complexity, and the capacity to represent the war's impact on entire lives, relationships, and societies. For AQA A-Level, understanding the prose tradition is essential, as your set texts for Paper 2 may include novels such as Pat Barker's Regeneration.

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The Timeline of WW1 Prose