“War song of America”: The Vigilantes and American Propagandistic Poetry of the First World War

• Authors: Prieto Sara

Abstracts

When the United States entered the First World War in April 1917, the Committee of Public Information (CPI) organised several branches of propaganda to advertise and promote the war in hundreds of magazines and newspapers nationwide. One of these organisations was the group of writers known as “the Vigilantes.” This essay examines Fifes and Drums: A Collection of Poems of America at War (1917), published by the Vigilantes a few months after the American declaration of war. The discussion frames the context under which the Vigilantes conceived their poems as well as the main strategies that they employed to poetically portray the role that the United States was to play in the conflict.

Keywords

EN

The Great War; the Vigilantes; the (US) Committee of Public Information (CIP); wartime propaganda; Fifes and Drums; American poetry

• Publisher: Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw
• Journal: Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies
• Year: 2018
• Issue: 27/3
• Pages: 33-49

Contributors

author

Prieto Sara

• University of Alicante

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