Criticism of Witness: Paul Fussell and the Rhetorical Irony of Modern Memory

Abstract

This article proposes that Paul Fussell's body of scholarship, while ostensibly anti-war, ironically romanticizes the experience of suffering in war. While many scholars have suggested that Fussell uses his own biography to explicate the First World War, this essay argues that Fussell's oeuvre creates a class system based on those who have suffered in battle and those left ignorant of the realities of battle to reclaim the social status he lost during his time in the army and at war. Ultimately, Fussell class system limits the voices capable of producing scholarship related to war and reduces the conceptual potential of war literature criticism.