Military literature was one of the most prevalent forms of writing to
appear during the Romantic era, yet its genesis in this period is often
overlooked. Ranging from histories to military policy, manuals, and a
new kind of imaginative war literature in military memoirs and novels,
modern war writing became a highly influential body of professional
writing. Drawing on recent research into the entanglements of
Romanticism with its wartime trauma and revisiting Michel Foucault's
ground-breaking work on military discipline and the biopolitics of
modern war, this book argues that military literature was deeply reliant
upon Romantic cultural and literary thought and the era's preoccupations
with the body, life, and writing. Simultaneously, it shows how military
literature runs parallel to other strands of Romantic writing, forming a
sombre shadow against which Romanticism took shape and offering its own
exhortations for how to manage the life and vitality of the nation.