“Dulce et Decorum Est” is one of the most admired, and now most frequently anthologised, of Wilfred Owen’s poems based upon his experiences as a junior officer on the Western Front in the First World War. Owen first drafted it in early October 1917 while he was recuperating from shell-shock at Craiglockhart War Hospital, Edinburgh, and during the period of Siegfried Sassoon’s decisive influence over him. Owen referred to it in a letter to his mother as a “gas poem” (Stallworthy, 117). He revised the poem at some time in the early months of 1918, either at his regimental base at Scarborough, or at another training camp to which he was posted at Ripon. It was not published until the posthumous appearance in December 1920 of Owen’s
Poems.
The Latin title is the first half of a
1896 words
Citation: Baldick, Chris. "Dulce et Decorum Est". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 January 2015 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=9860, accessed 24 April 2024.]
