Book contents
- War and American Literature
- Cambridge Themes in American Literature and Culture
- War and American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Aspects of War in American Literature
- Chapter 1 War and Morality
- Chapter 2 Propaganda for War from the Revolution to the Vietnam War
- Chapter 3 Representing Soldiers
- Chapter 4 Bodies, Injury, Medicine
- Chapter 5 Veterans, Trauma, Afterwar
- Chapter 6 Mourning, Elegy, Memorialization from the Civil War to Vietnam
- Chapter 7 On Antiwar Literature
- Part II Cultural Moments and the American Literary Imagination
- Part III New Lines of Inquiry
- Further Reading
- Index
Chapter 2 - Propaganda for War from the Revolution to the Vietnam War
from Part I - Aspects of War in American Literature
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2021
- War and American Literature
- Cambridge Themes in American Literature and Culture
- War and American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Aspects of War in American Literature
- Chapter 1 War and Morality
- Chapter 2 Propaganda for War from the Revolution to the Vietnam War
- Chapter 3 Representing Soldiers
- Chapter 4 Bodies, Injury, Medicine
- Chapter 5 Veterans, Trauma, Afterwar
- Chapter 6 Mourning, Elegy, Memorialization from the Civil War to Vietnam
- Chapter 7 On Antiwar Literature
- Part II Cultural Moments and the American Literary Imagination
- Part III New Lines of Inquiry
- Further Reading
- Index
Summary
Only rarely since the Civil War has the United States been attacked at home, so propaganda has often been deployed to motivate Americans to commit its people and resources to armed conflict. This essay examines print and visual media that have shaped American attitudes toward war from as early as the Revolutionary War, with a primary emphasis on propaganda for twentieth- and twenty-first-century wars. In addition to parsing the rhetoric and imagery of propaganda campaigns, the essay also examines the postwar consequences of propaganda, including how the rhetoric of one war shapes the terms of the next. Propaganda is not a moment in the history of culture; it is an element in the structure of culture.
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- War and American Literature , pp. 27 - 41Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021