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Poetry of World War I:
The Horrors of Warfare and the End of Romanticism
Lecture by Sue Weaver Schopf
As part of the Salem Athenaeum’s participation in the international Centennial Commemoration of World War I (1914-1918), Dr. Sue Weaver Schopf returns to discuss the impact of the war on the poetry of the period. Most of that poetry was written by gallant young soldier-poets who wrote directly from the battlefield and who came to see the war as the greatest waste of life in human history. Their verses forever transformed the nature of war poetry and became part of the vocabulary of Modernist expression. Some of the poets to be considered are Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Rupert Brooke.
Sue Weaver Schopf, Ph.D. is Associate Dean of the Master of Liberal Arts Program, Research Advisor in the Humanities, and Lecturer at the Harvard Extension School. Dr. Schopf teaches a range of literature courses focused on 19th-and early 20th-century authors as well as popular culture topics such as “The Vampire in Literature and Film.” She has appeared in The Times of London, has been interviewed by the Boston Globe, has been a guest on national radio programs and her courses have been featured in articles in various publications including The Huffington Post and MTV.com.