The Mourner's Song: War and Remembrance from the Illiad to Vietnam

No matter when or where they are fought, all wars have one thing in common: an aftermath marked by monuments and memorials for the dead. In turn, mourning and remembrance are fundamental to wartime art. In The Mourner's Song, James Tatum offers incisive discussions of physical and literary memorials constructed in the wake of war, from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to the writings of Stephen Crane, Edmund Wilson, Tim O'Brien, and Robert Lowell. Reading the Iliad alongside such works, Tatum reveals how the forms and processes of art memorialize the grief, loss, and hunger for remembrance that war inspires. Photographs of war memorials in the United States, Europe, and Vietnam elegantly augment his testimonials. Book jacket.

James Tatum is the Aaron Lawrence Professor of Classics at Dartmouth College. He is the author of several books, most recently Xenophon's Imperial Fiction: On the Education of Cyrus, and the editor of The Search for the Ancient Novel.