Dana Gioia, writing the wartime experience
War and military service have been major literary subjects as long as there has been literature. The earliest masterpiece of the Western tradition. Homer’s Iliad, portrays the heroism and human cost of the Trojan War, while its companion poem, The Odyssey recounts one veteran’s long and difficult homecoming. The great national epics, from the Aeneid of Imperial Rome to the Shahnameh of medieval Persia mostly commemorate the decisive military encounters that shaped each cultures history. Many great authors have also been soldiers. The Greek playwright Sophocles, creator of Oedipus Rex, served as an Athenian general in the Peloponnesian War. The Roman poet Horus fought at the Battle of Philippi. Shakespeare’s friend and fellow playwright Ben Jonson served in the infantry in the Flemish …