The Gallant Knight

In The Great War and Modern Memory , Paul Fussell discusses the major tropes that governed the perception of British culture about the forthcoming war in 1914 and during its early years. ‘Everyone knew what Glory was, and what Honor meant’ (21) he notes, and he observes: The tutors in this special diction had been the boys’ books of George Alfred Henty; the male-romances of Rider Haggard; the poems of Robert Bridges; and especially the Arthurian poems of Tennyson and the pseudo-medieval romances of William Morris. (21)