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- Publisher
- University of North Carolina Press
- Copyright
- Copyright © 2006 by the Southern Comparative Literature Association.
- ISSN
- 1559-0887
- Publisher site
- See Article on Publisher Site
Abstract
brian martin From Balzac to Iraq Soldiers, Veterans, and Military Adaptation introduction After his tour of duty on the battlefields of a distant land, a wounded soldier returns home from the horrors of war to discover that the very nation which sent him off to battle with parades and cheers is uninterested in his suffering or his welfare. The familiarity of this scene underscores its endless and tragic adaptability to millennia of imperial conquest, human suffering, and cultural production. One could as easily be speaking of ancient warriors returning from the Trojan War or of recent recruits returning from the war in Iraq. In his Napoleonic novella, Le Colonel Chabert (1832), Honoré de Balzac investigates the trauma of imperial warfare, military invasion, and veteran return in terms that echo the soldierly suffering of ancient texts and that presage future military misery in later wars, and in the texts and films they inspire. From Troy and Waterloo to Verdun and Normandy, from Saigon and Algiers to Fallujah and Baghdad, literary and cinematic representations provide a horrifying record of violent adaptation. Military technologies and instruments of violence change, but the narratives of bodily mutilation, military carnage, and veteran rejection remain
Journal
The Comparatist – University of North Carolina Press
Published: Apr 26, 2006