Spooks, Phantoms, and Blossoming Corpses: Corporeality in the Early Combatant Poetry of the First World War

Abstract

This article traces different patterns within the early English combatant poetry of the First World war, specifically in the poems of Charles Sorley, Roland Leighton, Robert Graves, and Ivor Gurney. These poems strikingly often feature phantoms, spooks, and wraiths, suggesting a disconnect between body and spirit. At the same time, there is also a strong connection between corpses and flowers, the rotting of the human body and the regrowth and regenerative ability of the natural world. And as the human body is turned into a corpse, its spirit not only reappears in ghostly form but is also subsumed into material objects. The poets use these transformations to show the war’s physical and mental impact on the soldiers. As the analysis of patterns and parallels surrounding corporeality, spirituality, and materiality shows, the early combatant poetry of the war redistributes personhood across damaged bodies, spectral figures, and material objects.