The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Modern Mourning, and the Reinvention of the Mystical Body / / Laura Wittman.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter UTP eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2015
• VerfasserIn: Wittman, Laura,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2019]; ©2011
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

At the end of the First World War, countries across Europe participated in an unprecedented ritual in which a single, anonymous body was buried to symbolize the overwhelming trauma of the battlefields. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier explores the creation and reception of this symbolic national burial as an emblem for modern mourning.Bringing together literature, newspaper accounts, wartime correspondence, and popular culture, The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier examines how the Unknown Soldier was imagined in diverse national contexts and used by radically opposed political parties. Laura Wittman argues that this monument established a connection between the wounded body vulnerable to the war machine and a modern identity defined by common mortality and social alienation. Highly original and interdisciplinary, The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier powerfully links the symbolic language and ethics of mourning to a fascinating national ritual.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I. Anonymity and Sacrifice -- Introduction to Part I: The Return of the Dead -- 1. A Unanimous Idea -- 2. Identification and Chorality -- 3. Sacrifice and the Non finito -- Part II: Embodiment and Spectacle -- Introduction to Part II: The Undead Body, the Photographic Image, and the Religious Icon -- 4. Embodiment and Imbestiamento -- 5. Mutilation and Spectacle -- 6. Mourning Transcendence and Re-enchanting the Flesh -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index