Writing about war: Jung, Much Ado About Nothing, and the Troy novels of Lindsay Clarke

Arguably, in a time of war literature, and indeed all writing, is saturated with deep psychic responses to conflict. So that not only in literary genres such as epic and tragedy, but also in the novel and comedy, can writing about war be discerned. C.G. Jung, Shakespeare and Lindsay Clarke are fundamentally writers of war who share allied literary strategies. Moreover, they diagnose similar origins to the malaise of a culture tending to war in the neglect of aspects of the feminine that patriarchy prefers to ignore. In repressing or evading the dark feminine, cultures as dissimilar as ancient Greece, the 21st century, Shakespeare's England and Jung's Europe prevent the healing energies of the conjunctio of masculine and feminine from stabilising an increasingly fragile consciousness. In the Troy novels of Clarke, Answer to Job by Jung and Much Ado About Nothing by Shakespeare, some attempt at spiritual nourishment is made through the writing. [From the Publisher]

A small screen alternative to stone and bronze: The Great War series and British television

This article examines the first major British television series about the First World War, The Great War (BBC, 1964), in terms of its cultural, historical and aesthetic significance. As a central component of the BBC`s 50th anniversary commemorative programme to mark the outbreak of war, the series was a major media event -a small-screen memorial cast in sounds and images instead of stone and bronze. This article looks at how the British television audience responded to this form of on-screen commemoration. Material for this article was derived from the series' extensive production records housed in the BBC Written Archives Centre at Caversham, Berkshire. This was supplemented by, among other sources, material from interviews and correspondence with several surviving members of the production team. This allows a broader understanding of the motivations of those involved in the production of a groundbreaking historical series, while acknowledging the wide-ranging nature of its audience. [From the Publisher]