Death So Noble : Memory, Meaning, and the First World War

This book examines Canada’s collective memory of the First World War through the 1920s and 1930s beginning with the Armistice in 1918.

This book deals with cultural history more than military history and looks at art, music and literature during World War I. Comparable to Modris Eskteins’ Rites of Spring and Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory, the author draws on a broad range of sources, published and unpublished, making this book an original contribution to the growing literature dealing with World War I. Thematically organized into such subjects as the symbolism of the soldier, the implications of war memory for Canadian nationalism and the idea of a just war, the book draws on military records, memoirs, war memorials, newspaper reports, fiction, popular songs, and films.

In each case Vance draws a distinction between the objective realities of the war and the way that contemporaries remember it. Death so Noble takes an unorthodox look at the Canadian war experience.

It views the Great War as a cultural and philosophical force rather than as a political and military event.

It will be of interest to specialists in First World War history and literature as well as a general audience.