Cirrus@Austlit

'I would like to ground it historically by examining the ways that these characters construct their gendered identities as negotiations between the official British discourse of gender during World War I (which can be examined in propaganda and the popular press) and their own lived experience. Although these texts draw directly from diaries written during the First World War, we must also recognize that they were published in the 1930s; therefore, I will also explore the ways they negotiate with the official discourse of gender in postwar Britain (which draws from postwar social policy and the canonization of the soldier poets' work). In doing so, I will be looking both at the moments of gender confusion, as well as the arguments these moments are making. To this end, I will draw upon the theories of Michel de Certeau to argue that these writers include such moments in their texts in order to challenge the intersecting rhetorics of war and gender.'

Source: p.272.