Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, and Charles Sorley all died in WWI. They came from diverse social, educational, and cultural backgrounds, but engagement with Greek and Roman antiquity was decisive in shaping their war poetry. This volume explores how, when, and why classical materials were so influential in these poets' work.

Lorna Hardwick: Introduction 1: Stephen Harrison: Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) 2: Stephen Harrison: Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895-1915) 3: Lorna Hardwick: Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918) 4: Elizabeth Vandiver: Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

Lorna Hardwick is Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at the Open University and Honorary Research Associate at the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, Oxford. She is the Director of the Open University Classical Receptions in Drama and Poetry in English 1970-2005 digital project and the joint Series Editor of the OUP series Classical Presences and Classical Interventions. She convenes the international research network Classics and Poetry Now (CAPN) and was a founding convener of the Classical Reception Studies Network (CRSN). Hardwick was the founding editor of the Classical Receptions journal and the Practitioners' Voices in Classical Reception Studies. Stephen Harrison is Professor of Latin Literature at the University of Oxford, Senior Research Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford and Extraordinary Professor at the University of Stellenbosch. He has written extensively on Latin literature and its reception, including neo-Latin poetry, and has been a visiting professor in France, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Israel, the US and New Zealand. Elizabeth Vandiver is the Clement Biddle Penrose Professor of Latin and Classics, Emerita, at Whitman College. She also held visiting professorships at Northwestern University and at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome. She has published widely on classical receptions in English literature of the 1910s and 1920s, especially in First World War poetry and in early Modernism.

Places focus on four major poets of the First World War DL Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, and Charles Sorley Offers a detailed commentary on these poets' use of Greek and Roman material Provides a discussion of historical and literary contexts Analyses the many ways in which classical texts are used in WWI poetry and how readers may access and interpret these Discusses how WWI poetry relates to ecological themes and to human and environmental trauma