The Strategy of Indirect Approach: Centre and Periphery in Fiction about the First World War

• Main Author: Paweł Stachura
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Polish Association for the Study of English 2016-12-01
• Series: Polish Journal of English Studies
• Subjects: first world war; indirect approach; core and periphery
• Online Access: http://pjes.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/P.-Stachura-The-Strategy-of-Indirect-Approach-PJES-2.2-2016.pdf

The article discusses a number of World War novels written in countries or areas described as secondary theatres of war. Operations in those theatres were often mentioned as examples of the ‘strategy of indirect approach,’ that is as attempts to disrupt the enemy’s war effort by attacking in an unexpected, seemingly remote and unimportant place. During the First World War, the Gallipoli Campaign was the best-known example of this strategy, but indirect strategy propagated the war in many other countries, and affected a great variety of literary cultures. Therefore, the article is an attempt to compare the principles of indirect-approach strategy with the literary responses to war in those areas where the war was fought according to those principles. There seem to be some interesting parallels between military strategy and literary work created in the areas affected by it.