Troops Versus Tropes: War and Literature

Susan Minsos is a sessional instructor of English at the University of
Alberta.

Too broad in scope to reduce by definitive description, the essays in
Troops and Tropes cover both traditional and nontraditional subjects as
writers investigate war writing’s themes and structures. Topics vary
from the expected—“A Poetics of War: Militarist Discourse in the
British Empire, 1880-1918”—to the informative— “Women and War: A
Selected Bibliography,” and “Sexism and Racism in Vietnam War
Fiction.” Forms vary too. In this collection of 11 essays, researchers
analyze the works of wartime and postwar writers who have expressed
themselves through diaries, novels, stories, articles, and even
painting.

The contents of this text spark the imagination, even if some of the
editor’s expressions (such as “facticity” and “narrativity”)
veil meaning. From their studies of war literature, the editor and
contributors ponder how and why nations go to war: What strategies do
rivals invoke during war? How does the public fare under war conditions?
Through whose perspectives are war’s events recorded?