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J.R.R. Tolkien and the First World War

Dan Snow's History Hit

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The Discourse Language of Medievalism

The Great War was an encounter between Victorian medieval revivalism and the modern machines of war. C.S. Lewis said that when I heard the first bullet whistled by, I thought this is war, this is what Homer knew. That whole discourse language symbolism of medievalism did become deeply unfashionable because it had been used in propaganda. Modernists really can't be doing with people like Tolkien because they assume he uses that kind of language.

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