From Landscape to Language: TRAUMA in Trench Poetry
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.28925/2412-2491.2025.254Keywords:
trench poetry, World War I, ecopoetics, trauma studies, ecological metaphor, cultural memory, cognitive linguisticsAbstract
This article explores the ecopoetics of trauma in World War I trench poetry. The analysis demonstrates how references to destroyed landscapes, fields, trees, and weather phenomena function not only as descriptive background but as linguistic vehicles for articulating psychological devastation. Particular attention is given to semantic shifts in traditional natural symbols (sun, rain, river, earth), which acquire connotations of death, sterility, and despair. Drawing on works by Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg, and others, the study shows that metaphor, syntactic fragmentation, and disrupted temporal structures serve as cognitive mechanisms of trauma verbalisation. The findings suggest that trench poetry constitutes a linguistic archive of trauma, in which nature itself is reconfigured as a medium of memory and collective mourning
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