(Dis)figuring Rebellion: Wilfred Owen and the Legacy of Outrage

Abstract

World War One was an age of Outrage for writers confronted with slaughter on an absurd scale. Using Owen’s manuscripts and trauma theory, this paper shows how Wilfred Owen, through his encounters with more outrageous figures like Tailhade and Sassoon, learned to voice his anger, first in an ironic editorial published in Craiglockhart’s journal The Hydra, then in powerful poems like Dulce et Decorum Est and Exposure, two poems which engage with official discourse to achieve counter-interpellation, discarding the lies of propaganda and calling for an ethics of care, either through graphic portrayal of technological warfare, or through the evocation of enforced passivity, enacting the frozen time of trauma.

Keywords

• Craiglockhart
• hydra
• interpellation
• oxymoron
• Wilfrid Owen
• poetry