The literary movements of the early 19th century were undeniably, at least to some extent, defined by a context of war. It was a period not only caught in the middle of the Napoleonic War, but also suffering from the consequences of the American Revolution. Some texts from the period offer relevant and explicit comments on the war; Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage[1] and Walter Scott's Waverley[2] are key examples. The first offers the story of a personal reflection on the war while the second focuses on a historical conflict from the mid-18th century. However, alongside these more obvious treatments of war, there are those which, although initially seeming largely uncolored by these conflicts, are in fact deeply imbued with war subtexts. Jane Austen's novels, namely Pride and Prejudice[3] and Mansfield Park[4], are key examples of these novels, as they focus on characters who stay away from disruption, but are at many times unable to escape the ever-present ripples of war around them. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay One of the most obvious depictions of war in early 19th-century literature appears in Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, written over a period that spans the latter part of the Napoleonic War as well as its aftermath . Byron's most apparent commentary on war throughout the poem is one that denounces the glorification of battle in favor of darker allusions to its horror. Agustin Coletes-Blanco aligns with this view by suggesting that "Child Harold was an openly anti-war poem that denounced the absurdity of all conflict, and in this sense it was revolutionary: creating an uncomfortable dissonance at odds with which was already a problem. vast body of poetry on the Spanish Civil War categorized according to the almost unanimous sharing and promotion of the position of the establishment”[5]. Indeed, Byron constantly alludes to the cost of victory, and each time seems to conclude that this cost is clearly greater than its value. The seventeenth stanza of the third canto opens with a line borrowed from Juvenal's tenth satire: “Stop – for you are walking on the dust of an Empire! »[6]. The "Empire" in question seems at first glance to allude to one of the great ancient empires of Rome or Greece, due to its current status as "dust". However, the "Empire" referenced is actually that of Napoleon Bonaparte, this "dust" having been created shortly before since this particular stanza was written just a year after the Napoleonic War finally ended at the Battle of Waterloo . In creating this confusion, Byron refuses to recognize any distinction between the conflicts of his current era and any other conflict in human history. The absurdity of which Coletes-Blanco speaks is particularly evident here, as the "step" of Britain's victorious march centers on the metaphorical "dust" alluding to the destruction of a once great empire, today destroyed. Byron uses the image of flowing blood; the first song refers to a "bleeding stream"[7] as the narrator moves from Portugal to Spain. The stream in question alludes to the Guadiana River, whose current connects the Iberian Peninsula to the Atlantic Ocean, which in turn opens connections with Great Britain, America and France. This is significant because Byron selects a body of water that is not only the site of a battlehistorical, but which also serves as a geographical link with the main belligerents of its present. The links woven by Byron go further than geography since the continuity and repetition of the movement of the stream allude to the passage of time, while the blood symbolizes the violence of armed conflicts. Subsequently, Byron suggests that "the Moor and the Knight"[8] who once marched on the Iberian Peninsula have much in common with Napoleonic and British soldiers.[9] The implication here is that technology in war may evolve, with the mounted "knight" giving way to the rifle-wielding soldier, but the universal spirit of conflict within humanity endures. In keeping with the anti-war sentiments prevalent throughout the poem, the "bleeding" nature of Byron's imagery ensures that his past and present connections are not read as glorious, but rather as tragic. Another of the most obvious treatments of war. and the conflict within early 19th century literature occurs in Walter Scott's Waverly[10]. On the surface, it is a historical novel centered on the Jacobite rising of 1745, a conflict that occurred more than half a decade before the publication of Scott's novel. Throughout Waverley, Scott offers commentary on this particular conflict using his eponymous hero, who serves as a vessel for his contemplations. Indeed, Waverley is a man who has direct experience of both groups of belligerents and who “hesitates” between their causes. His loyalty to his government and to his Whig father is countered by his sympathies for the Jacobite cause instilled in him by his uncle. Edward Waverley is therefore the ideal character to address themes such as conflict and tolerance in relation to the Jacobite rising. However, although Scott's novel directly depicts a conflict from the past, it can be argued that there is some degree of affiliation between the wars of Waverley's historical setting and the wars of Waverly today. Indeed, Scott's resolve to depict a conflict of the past during a conflict of the present is certainly significant; To examine the novel through this lens is to incorporate a much broader field of analysis. Read in light of this notion, Scott's commentary on the war at Waverley is imbued with much deeper suggestions regarding human conflicts in general, as opposed to a simple depiction of what happened between the Jacobites and the government Hanoverian. In this sense, Scott uses the past as a means of examining and commenting on the present. Crucially, at the time of Waverley's publication, Britain was not simply in a state of war, but rather was scarred by the effects of multiple conflicts, with the rise of Napoleon leaving little time to recover from the American Revolution of the late 18th century. The choice of the Jacobite rising as the focus of this critique is remarkable in itself. Appearing in the mid-18th century, it was old enough to be considered a subject for history, without being so old as to be incomprehensible to an early 19th-century audience. According to Georg Lukacs, "If experiences like this are linked to the knowledge that similar upheavals are happening all over the world, this must considerably strengthen the feeling that history exists, that it is an uninterrupted process of change and finally that it has a direct effect on the life of each individual”.[11] The implication of Lukac's suggestion is that the relatively short spacing between the Jacobite uprising described in the novel and the Napoleonic Wars of the current novels as well as the American Revolution, colors the period as one of multiple, interrelated conflicts which together , created adeep conflict. global change movement. The novel's alternate title, Tis Sixty Years Since, reinforces this notion, as it references the present in relation to this near past and suggests that the events set in motion sixty years previously are still in motion at the turn of the 19th century. Waverley is, at its most obvious, a novel that uses a war in its own recent history as a case study for all aspects of war in general. This is neither totally anti-war nor totally pro-war, but rather an exploration of both sides. The eventual pardon of Edward Waverley highlights the absurdity of organized conflict and puts Scott in some measure with Byron's negative attitude towards war; Mac-Ivor, as an "outsider", is sentenced to death while Waverley is fully pardoned despite continuing the same efforts. It could be argued that this is a comment intended to denounce the war, as inherent prejudice against foreigners masquerades as the genuine pursuit of ideological intentions. To this extent, Waverley can be read as a lesson in practicing tolerance as an alternative to conflict. However, this negativity is accompanied by a subtler but more pervasive sense of hope, which becomes evident during the aforementioned practice of using the setting's past as a means of examining the novel's present. Waverley depicts Britain as a divided nation, a depiction that accurately represents the nation's history. However, the conflicts across Britain appearing in Scott's novel had resolved by the time of its publication, with the country standing as a united nation against Napoleon's forces. Subsequently, it is suggested that the conflict can be overcome entirely, perhaps even leaving a stronger nation in its wake. The final defeat of the Jacobite cause, both in historical fact and in Scott's fiction, marks the reunification of Britain under Hanoverian rule; this unified Britain would eventually achieve victory in the Napoleonic Wars, an event that marked the start of the 19th century. Waverley's pardon, as well as his marriage to the peaceful and reserved Rose, as opposed to the passionate revolutionary Flora, hint at a new cooperation born from the shadow of war. Indeed, Rose has the capacity for compromise that Flora lacks so much. This notion contrasts with the absurd nature of war conveyed in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, as it is shown to have a more positive outcome than simply reducing everyone to "dust". Lukacs returns to the aforementioned idea of ​​a conflict transcending time and place in its embrace of the coherence of human nature, but in relation to Waverley as opposed to Childe Harold's pilgrimage. However, he suggests that history and humanity are fundamentally linked rather than one or the other factor dominating the other, as he argues that "it is not an otherworldly destiny separate from men ; it is the complex interaction of concrete historical circumstances in their process of transformation, in their interaction with concrete human beings, who grew up in these circumstances, were influenced in very diverse ways by them and who act individually according to them of their personal needs. passions”[12]. From this, we can deduce that for Lukacs, certain events in history, and more particularly war, are phenomena from which we cannot move away until humanity's responses to particular circumstances move away. not incitement to conflict. Among Scott's and Byron's comments on In the broader context of the war, both can be seen to adhere to whatconstitutes perhaps the most significant diversion of the early 19th century literary movement in its relationship to the theme of war: the growing tendency to describe the impact of wartime disruptions on the individual. Neil Ramsey comments on this transition by stating: "Combined with the emergence of sentimental literature in the late 18th century, with its interest in the inner experience of ordinary people, a new type of historical sensibility was taking shape. History was no longer seen simply as the exploits of great men, but was defined as something in which ordinary individuals could participate.[13] Adherence to this transition is more evident in Byron's text, right down to the title he chose. Indeed, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage implements the individual identification of the main character by name, while simultaneously referencing a physical journey of personal and spiritual development. Using a narrative that is not only first person, but delivered as a direct product of the narrator's own thoughts and feelings, Byron's poem appears as a kind of journalistic travelogue. Therefore, the entire text revolves around the toll of a national conflict on a single man, as he seeks to escape the shadow of war through the practice of travel. It is often suggested that the character of Childe Harold serves as a proxy for Byron himself; this notion intensifies the theme of war and the individual as he publicly expounds on his personal thoughts on war during a time of significant national conflict. Simon Bainbridge suggests that the transmission of the significant individual is achieved through Byron's use of an additional elegiac verse, added to the first canto during his revision, and dedicated to his late friend John Wingfield. According to Bainbridge, "In his elegy for Wingfield, Byron recovers the [elegiac] form from its uses for the 'boasted slain,' emphasizing the effect of individual loss and the act of remembrance on tributes anonymizers of official culture”[14]. . It is notable that John Wingfield was not a casualty of war, but rather succumbed to a fever shortly before Byron completed Childe Harold's pilgrimage. It is therefore tempting to argue that Byron's dedication to it might lose relevance in the treatment of the individual in relation to war. However, its relevance comes from thinking about personal loss and its juxtaposition to mass casualties in war. The latter can, in accordance with Bainbridge's view, become anonymized by its scale. By implying his elegy for Wingfield, Byron effectively reminds the reader of the importance of each of these human losses, and their importance equal to those occurring outside of a war context. This sense of movement towards the individual at war can also be seen in Waverley. The focus here is certainly more subtle, but this less obviousness in no way makes it absent. George Lukacs, in his remarkable critique of Walter Scott's interpretation of the historical novel, argues that "what counts in the historical novel is not the recounting of great historical events, but the poetic awakening of the people who figured in it." these events. What matters is that we can relive the social and human motivations that led men to think, feel and act as they did in historical reality”[15]. Indeed, Scott's attention to the individual figure in the context of war implies moral ramifications. In Scott's vision, it presents a kind of war horror that, although on a smaller scale, is perhaps deeper than a depiction of mass horror; the impactpsychological on the individual. Kathryn Sutherland adheres to this notion as she insists that “After all the excuses and justifications, Waverley has blood on her hands. Among the novel's most powerful scenes are those that confront the moral enormity of civil conflict on an individual level.[16] Scott further explores these individual moral implications of war by considering soldiers' struggle to reconcile their personal beliefs with the necessities of duty. The eponymous protagonist's surname Waverley alludes to his reorientation of loyalties. Indeed, as mentioned previously, there is an internal conflict between his loyalty to his government and his sympathy for the Jacobite cause. Having been raised under the influence of his uncle's Jacobean loyalty, his reluctance to help put down their uprising seems inevitable. His decision to abandon his assignment in the Hanoverian army and defer to the opposition raises important questions about the motivations and beliefs of each soldier. Scott seems to suggest that the collective ambitions of a warring nation do not necessarily match those of each enlisted man, and highlights the difficulties this poses for an individual who must betray one or another facet of his identity. As Scott traces Waverley's journey, the emphasis is on his emotional motivations as opposed to his ideological motivations, which reflect the personal "pilgrimage" on which Childe Harold embarks in Byron's poem. Certainly, Waverley goes on her own journey in which her beliefs are explored and her loyalties are tested. As he becomes more familiar with the ways of the Jacobites and the wild beauty of the Highlands, his own belief system adapts in ways that go beyond the official view of his nation. It is tempting to assert that beyond the scope of works such as Byron and Scott, situating their literary worlds in the context of national unrest, much of the literature of the early 19th century was far more concerned with the island life of civilians than with the subject of war. Jane Austen's works may seem to firmly encapsulate this notion, as her novels have been widely accused of lacking awareness of the detrimental domestic effects of the period's consecutive wars. Indeed, the settings of his novels revolve around the landed nobility, romance and preserved rural communities; it is an imagination that can be considered somewhat disconnected from reality. However, it is precisely this absence of “reality” that alludes to the period of conflict from which Austen’s novels emerge; it can be argued that they offer a form of literary escape in response to traumatic events. Indeed, juxtaposed with the disillusionment and uncertainty of the American Revolution, the settings of Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park offer a refreshing image, removed from the difficulties of early 19th century society. This is not to say that military affairs are completely ignored, but they are often presented in an idealistic and romantic manner. Pride and Prejudice embodies this kind of representation, as the female characters Lydia, Mrs. Bennett, and Kitty all display an open attraction to soldiers; in this sense, the soldier appears largely as a romantic figure and an object of desire. This is evident when the Austen describes Lydia's imagination of a military camp: "she saw all the glories of the camp - its tents spread in beautiful uniformity of lines, filled with young and gay, and dazzling with scarlet”[17]. Here, the figure of the soldier is undeniably passed over in silence, because all the signs of weariness and combat traumaare swallowed up by his vision of a perfectly romantic and regimental “hero”. However, although Austen's texts exhibit a significant degree of this literary whitewashing, more negative treatments of themes of war and conflict also manage to penetrate her insular context. They do this in a multitude of subtle and obvious ways, as the repercussions of the conflict reach even the most disconnected rural communities. Robert Morrison challenges the notion of what Kaelyn Caldwell calls a "pastoral peace context"[18], as he argues that "Austen is an author of remarkable stature and strength who confronted some of the central conflicts of her era and who in Pride and Prejudice combines provincial concerns and courtly intricacies with an incisive and probing response to a series of revolutionary anxieties and pressure points.[19] In considering the more indirect shockwaves of war, Austen pays subtle but careful attention to the individual; in this sense, it aligns with the works of Byron and Scott. Roberts highlights the individual impact of the Napoleonic War on Fanny Price, the heroine of Mansfield Park, stating that "this background of sadness is the condition which led to Fanny's departure for Mansfield Park, and it helps to explain the character pale, shy, timid and sad girl who appeared in her aunt's property”[20]. Indeed, the serious injury suffered by Fanny's father during his military service is at the origin of the Price family's difficulties; This, in turn, is the main contributor to Fanny's mother's decision to send her to grow up with her wealthier relatives in Mansfield Park. This decision radically alters the course of Fanny's future and, subsequently, it is suggested that the war has a significant impact on each individual, whether they experience it directly or not, while recalling Ramsey's comment on "the interest in the inner experience of ordinary people"[21] which helped shape the literature of the early 19th century. Fanny's brother William, as the most important character who actively participated in the battle, constitutes the main source of warlike influence in the novel. However, the novel only discloses what William offers in his interpretations of his experiences, and these are largely glorified as they are delivered in the form of adventure stories. It is only by connecting the dots of Fanny's story that the impact of the war on her own situation becomes clear. Interestingly, his individual war story is much more grounded in reality than William's, and yet it is never explicitly described. This may suggest that the "anonymizing homages of official culture"[22] that Bainbridge speaks of, such as William's glorified war stories, need to be circumvented in order to recognize each individual's often overlooked participation in the war. Although the theme of war is certainly predominant in Austen's work, her primary focus is on an alternative form of conflict: personal conflict. This is primarily conveyed through the characters of Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy who find themselves entangled in their own war due to their conflicting personalities. When read in light of the novel's wartime context, this depiction of personal conflict takes on greater significance as it appears to interact with Austen's commentary on war. Indeed, Darcy and Elizabeth possess opposing values ​​and, much like belligerent nations in any war, this becomes a source of active conflict. Perhaps Austen is trying to give the impression that the predisposition to conflict is ingrained in human nature and, from this point of view,Viewed, war bears little distinction from any other occurrence of conflict, except in its scale. The eventual union of the rival protagonists can be seen as holding a subtle message regarding war: differences, when complemented by tolerance, can result in something greater than war. We can consider that Darcy and Elizabeth do not overcome their conflict and then fall in love, but rather fall in love as a result of this conflict. Jibesh Bhattacharyya underpins this sense of unifying conflict when he states: "Interestingly, Darcy and Elizabeth are attracted to each other almost as soon as the conflict between pride and prejudice begins...it is this conflict or that psychological tension that opens the way. until their definitive union” [23]. For Bhattacharyya, Austen's conflict is more than just a source of attraction, it also serves as a means of character refinement, complementing character deficiencies and counterbalancing unfavorable traits. Indeed, he suggests that “Darcy's gentlemanly qualities, civil manners, and warmth of love overcome Elizabeth's prejudices against him. And Darcy's pride is also humbled by Elizabeth's strength of character, intelligence and personality. Therefore, parallels can be drawn with Waverley and the aforementioned suggestion of the unifying nature of conflict and together Austen and Scott discuss this notion in relation to two different conflicts on two opposing scales: national and personal. A persistent theme throughout the story. works of Austen, Byron and Scott is the importance of art and the creative spirit in response to personal conflict and in times of war. Warren Roberts solidifies the aforementioned ideas about individuality in wartime within Mansfield Park, with the idea that the creative mind can serve as a means to express that which cannot be expressed directly: the reality of war. He states that "when William returned to England on leave, he brought war stories to the insular world of Mansfield Park. In developing this part of the novel, Austen focused her attention not on the war, but on the responses of various characters in William’s stories”[25]. Indeed, it is interesting to note that William's stories are an example of fiction within fiction, with both layers having the backdrop of the real Napoleonic War. In many ways, they are a continuation of Austen's tendency to whitewash the realities of this war and, in a broader context, of war in general. William's stories of his time in the Navy are adventurous and arouse a reaction of jealousy in Henry, who did not experience the war first-hand. Consistent with Roberts' suggestion, such reactions are at odds with the more expected responses of pity or horror. Although William's stories recall the romantic vision of Lydia's army in Pride and Prejudice, the former can be attributed to simple naivety, while William, as a direct participant in the war effort, appears to rewrite his own experiences. Therefore, creative fiction emerges as a sort of healing mechanism, with William managing to communicate his wartime experiences without having to relive their harsh truths. The importance of creativity as a means of healing and expression can also be seen in Waverley. Sutherland embodies this notion when she states that “for those who survive the battle, art can be part of the cure”[26]. The "cure" for Waverley comes in the form of a "spirited painting"[27] that appears in his house near the end of the novel. It is a means of creativity different from tales ofWar of William Price, but their natures are aligned. Indeed, Fergus McIvor and Waverley appear side by side, facing the wild natural beauty of the Highlands; it may not be complete fiction, but it is certainly selective fiction. With McIvor's execution and the crushing of the Jacobite Rebellion shortly before the painting's unveiling, Waverley's selection of these whitewashed mementos is particularly notable. Unlike William, he has more to repress than the memory of the battle, for he must bear the burden of his own forgiveness where his former allies have enjoyed no such indulgence. Sutherland supports this use of art as a means of "bridging the terrible divide between soldier and civilian",[28] as both Waverley and William use creative depictions, rather than concrete facts, to communicate their experiences. However, she also recognizes that Waverley's painting can bridge the gap, but it does so in a misleading, even immoral way. According to Bainbridge, the relevance of art in war is also emphasized by Byron in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, as he suggests that the elegiac final stanzas of the first canto "anticipate Byron's later emphasis on elegy as a mode which can give meaning to war; also reveal an awareness of the role that poetry and creative powers could play in response to the loss of war”[29]. Indeed, Byron does not attempt to hide the brutality of war; as stated before, he emphasizes it everywhere. However, the “useless misfortune”[30] is accompanied and contrasted by the “fantasy”[31] of the poetic imagination, as a means of expressing and giving meaning to loss. In conclusion, the themes of war and conflict are so crucial in early 19th century literature that their treatment can be observed even in texts that refrain from dealing with them directly. War forms the central backdrop to Waverley and Childe Harold's pilgrimage; the first traces the assimilation of a character to the armed conflict while the second recounts the narrator's attempts to escape its shock waves. In this sense, they are the obvious product of a period marked by the turmoil of war and are examples of the most obvious manifestations of these turmoil within the literary movements of that period. However, reading Jane Austen's texts provides a case study of early 19th-century literary works that do not offer explicit commentary on the issue of war, as its settings initially seem particularly untouched by the effects of the events wider currents. On the contrary, from this reading one can actually deduce that, in a way that reflects the current reality of the novels, war and national conflicts saturate much more than a nation's army; they manifest themselves in the ordinary lives of its inhabitants and in the arts produced by them. These reflections are subtle, but not absent, as the war affects the characters in indirect but fundamental ways, and comments about the war appear as allusions and subtext. Notably, conflict is directly depicted in Austen's works on a personal scale rather than a national scale. Viewed in light of Lukacs's emphasis on the importance of human nature in shaping history and, more specifically, its wars, the treatment of "ordinary conflict" appears to convey ideas about war in generalizing the human disposition to belligerence.BibliographyAusten, Jane. Pride and prejudice. New York: Enhanced Media Publishing, 2016. Kindle edition. Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Kindle edition. Bainbridge, Simon. Poetry. [11]