Lacking Words for War: Trauma and the 'Crisis of Language' in English and German Literature about World War I

Loschnigg investigates a widespread topos in literary representations of World War I, namely the idea that the 'true nature of the war experience could not be expressed and, above all, that it could not be communicated to civilians. Drawing on English and German examples especially works by poets Wilfred Owen and August Stramm and by novelist Edlef Koppen he analyses this topos in different genres. He also demonstrates how it reflects the representational impasse emphasized by trauma theory as well as the 'crisis of language' underlying (literary) modernity.