Abstract
Hall and Plain explore the impact of the Second World War on constructions of masculinity and heroism in British literature. Focusing initially on the difficulty of articulating the heroic in a culture that valorises modesty and restraint, the chapter goes on to consider the mechanisms—euphemism, humour and banter—through which heroism was simultaneously voiced and silenced. The end of the war, however, revealed the cost of unspeakable heroism, both in terms of repression and of the emergence of a cultural disregard for the heroic. Using Patrick Hamilton’s Gorse trilogy as a case study, the chapter concludes by looking at the impossibility of traditional heroism in the postwar world which portrays a nihilistic society and embraces the villain as hero.
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Hall, L., Plain, G. (2017). Unspeakable Heroism: The Second World War and the End of the Hero. In: Korte, B., Lethbridge, S. (eds) Heroes and Heroism in British Fiction Since 1800. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33557-5_7
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