Özet:

The 19th century was an age of prosperity with developments in every sphere of British life – made up of social reforms, economic growth, technological and scientific innovations, cultural evolution, industrialisation, etc. Yet, the British people were waiting for a turbulent destiny for their country with the death of Queen Victoria at the beginning of the 20th century, and war was the single most important fact of their life. Many poets dealt with honour, glory, patriotism, and heroism in the early years of the war which is completely at odds with the poetry that emerged from the later years of the war that spoke of the cruelty, brutality, and sorrow, and addressed the futility of war. Future poets were skeptical about the eternal values such as heroism, patriotism, and sacrifice, and they also criticized generals, politicians, and churchmen for their blind support of the war. The poetry was reshaped due to the ever increasing horrors, unspeakable suffering of soldiers and civilians, and mass murders in the muddy trenches. The war did not merely kill millions of people; it also killed off the form of poetry which could once urge millions of people to die for their country – which was contemptuously satirized for sentimentality and jingoism. This paper aims at analyzing Rosenberg’s Break of Day in the Trenches to provide deeper argumentative insights into one of the most read British war poetry.

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