Literature and the Munich Crisis. Issue 2 (November 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ellis, Steve
• Is Part Of: Literature & history. Volume 22:Issue 2(2013)
• Page Start: 36
• Page End: 52
• Publication Date: 2013-11
• Subjects: Munich Crisis -- novels -- 1938–39; English literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Literature and history -- Periodicals; Literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Ideology and literature -- Periodicals; Politics and literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals; 820.9
• DOI: 10.7227/LH.22.2.3
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0306-1973

Abstract

The upheaval, moral self-questioning and uncertainty into which the Munich negotiations and settlement of September 1938 threw the British nation are examined in a series of now almost totally forgotten works which constitute the genre of the 'Munich Crisis novel'. These are then related to better known post-Munich writings by, among others, Forster, Woolf, Orwell, MacNeice and Patrick Hamilton. A range of reactions to the crisis – pro- and anti-appeasement, pacifism, anxiety over air bombardment, paralysis, dilemma – thus emerge as components of what Forster analysed as 'the 1939 State', and which this article substantiates in greater detail.