Vimy, Gallipoli, trauma, and the poetics of grief : re-reading the myths of the First World War in Jane Urquhart's The Stone Carvers and Brenda Walker's The Wing of Night

Abstract

The article is a comparative analysis of The Stone Carvers (2001) by Canadian author Jane Urquhart and The Wing of Night (2005) by Australian writer Brenda Walker, which explore the First World War and its aftermath. My purpose is to demonstrate how the two novels engage with the foundational myths of Vimy and Gallipoli by representing the two battles from unusual perspectives. Instead of celebrating the violent crisis seen as the birthplace of their respective nations, Urquhart and Walker foreground violence as the foundation of the nation-state. Using trauma theories, I explore Urquhart’s and Walker’s representation of war injuries, as well as the traumatic impact of national ideologies on personal and collective identities. While both texts offer an insightful re-reading of the myths of the Great War, Urquhart creates a vision of harmony resulting from the tragedy of the past, whereas Walker’s gesture of revision is more radical, as she insists on the impossibility of post-war reconstruction.