Rupert Brooke 1887 - 1915

Rupert Brooke 1887 - 1915

Rupert Brooke, born in a high-class family, was educated at Rugby school and then at King's College, Cambridge. He became Officer in the Royal Navy and then wrote the 'war sonnets' that made his fame: The Soldier was even read by the Dean of St Paul's from the pulpit.

He represented the patriotic side of the war poetry: he saw the importance of the ht for a good cause.

He died of an infection in Greece.

Texts:

● The Soldier

This is Brooke's most famous poem, it was written during the first phase of the war, when patriotism and old heroic ideals had not yet died. It does not describe anything precise, but only presents a vague generalization of the "war, self - sacrifice, glory" equation, which so deeply affected the young people of those first years.

The form itself (classical Petrarcan sonnet with a regular rhyme pattern) reflects an abstract view of the war, with no hint at actual horrors or at death, except for the death of the poet himself who, in his romantic idealization, pretends that the earth of the "foreign field" where he lies will be "for ever England".