Pastoral Quietude for Shell-Shock and National Recovery

For British soldiers, their families and even for military doctors, the catastrophe of the First World War seemed to demand a sense of the pastoral as its antithesis. Most important for the recuperation from psychological and physical wounds was the quiet rest that could be had in the atmosphere of green places, ideally in the British countryside itself. During and after the conflict, the quietude associated with gardens, parks and the rural was used as a therapeutic milieu for damaged soldiers, and then for the nation in recovery after war. The paper will draw on medical and military thinking, as well as wider cultural practices, to assess the significance of sonic environments in healing the shock of war. 

This session is a hybrid session and in-person tickets are limited.