Rebel Poetry
Rebel Poetry
Colonialism and the Poetry of Rebellion, 1914–1920
This chapter uses the concept of rebel poetry to illustrate the utility of anticolonial poetry as a method of public protest and public communication in the aftermath of World War I and the British occupation of Iraq. The chapter shows how Iraqi poets navigated divided political loyalties to rally popular support for the Ottoman Empire or the nascent Arab nationalist movement during the war and how poets accepted or rejected colonial patronage to support the British occupation. Most important, the chapter shows how prominent rebel poets challenged colonial rule and how the colonial state responded by regulating both public space and culture discourse. It also examines how Iraqi poets employed the new secular vocabulary of nationalism to challenge sectarianism and articulate their own vision of anticolonial modernity.
Keywords: poetry, colonialism, nationalism, Iraqi politics, intellectual life, World War I, politics and literature, politics and culture, modernism, secularism
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