The Treatment of Shell-Shock in First World War Literary Texts

This thesis deals with the image and life of the returning British soldier combating shell-shock during and after the Great War. To investigate into the nature and discourse of such phenomena, I analyze historical novels such as Pat Barker's Regeneration, Robert Edric's In Zodiac Light and In Desolate Heaven, as well as Richard Burns's A Dance for the Moon which novels are set in military hospitals and other state-run institutions treating such service-men. These literary texts have the peculiar and revealing point of view of the late 20th and early 21st centuries as far as medical and psychological achievements are concerned, and due to their historical distance from the First World War, they make the reader quite conscious of military, medical and political processes and considerations that defined and re-defined the way shell-shock was perceived during and after the war. These novels provide an insight into how the mental condition is perceived by not only politics, the military power, and civilians, but also by the soldiers themselves. A great emphasis is put also on the figure, task, and limitations of the military doctor who functions as the most important non-combatant in the discourse and treatment of the men suffering from shell-shock.BSc/BAAnglisztikaB