The Body Besieged

The Body Besieged
Author: Helen Vassallo
Publisher: After the Empire: The Francophone World and Postcolonial France
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780739171424

The Body Beseiged: The Embodiment of Historical Memory in Nina Bouraoui and Le la Sebbar by Helen Vassallo brings together the work of two important contemporary writers, Nina Bouraoui and Le la Sebbar. Both authors embody a significant historical divide (they are half French and half Algerian), and each author's work returns unfailingly to the legacy of opposition engendered by the colonial past that France and Algeria share: neither Bouraoui nor Sebbar claims any intention to write about the Algerian War of Independence, and yet its impact is felt throughout all of the texts chosen for discussion. This inescapable omnipresence of the Algerian War is conceptualized here as "embodied memory," a corporeal impulse to write about a war whose legacy is transmitted to these "second-generation" writers rather than a conscious decision to engage with the historical aspect of their personal heritage. Both authors suffer a culturally imposed "de-territorialization" in their life and their early autobiographical narratives, and both subsequently undergo a voluntary "displacement," undertaking literal and psychological journeys to map out routes towards a sense of self, of belonging, and ultimately of "re-territorialization." However, the analysis reveals how this move from de-territorialization to re-territorialization is accompanied by a shift from internalization (through memory and silence) to externalization (via articulation and community): rather than using the individual as symbolic of the universal, Bouraoui's and Sebbar's life writing acknowledges that their experience begins with a universal, historical, or social context, and represents a personal act of remembrance which is key to the recovery of historical memory, and to the negotiation of an appropriate space for this memory. At a time of "reconciliation" and remembrance, the analysis exposes and probes open wounds in the Franco-Algerian relationship through a close focus on the autobiographical writings of two authors who embody both (hi)stories, and whose texts represent a site of this "embodied memory."

The Besieged

The Besieged
Author: Caroline Walton
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2011-09-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1849542449

The Besieged is a beautifully observed account of one of the defining moments of twentieth-century history: the Siege of Leningrad. The Siege began in September 1941, when German forces severed the last connection to the city, and was to last for 872 days, during which the dying population suffered horrors almost beyond the powers of description.

Besieged

Besieged
Author: Sharon Alker
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages:
Release: 2021-01-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0228005914

Siege literature has existed since antiquity but has not always been understood as a crucial element of culture. Focusing on its magnetic force, Besieged brings to light its popularity and potency between the British Civil War and the Great Northern War in Europe, a period in which literary texts reflected an urgent interest in siege mentality and tactics. Exploring the siege as represented in canonical works by Milton, Dryden, Defoe, Davenant, Cowley, Cavendish, and Bunyan, alongside a wide array of little-known memoirs, plays, poems, and works of prose fiction on military and civilian experiences of siege warfare, Besieged breaks new ground in the field of early modern war literature. Sharon Alker and Holly Faith Nelson draw on theories of space and place to show how early modern Britons feverishly worked to make sense of the immediacy, horror, and trauma of urban warfare, offering a valuable perspective on the literature that captured the cultural imagination during and after the traumatic civil wars of the 1640s. Alker and Nelson demonstrate how the narratives of besieged cities became a compelling way to engage with the fragility of urban space, unstable social structures, developing technologies, and the inadequacy of old heroic martial models. Given the reality of urban warfare in our own age, Besieged provides a timely foundation for understanding the history of such spaces and their cultural representation.

The City Besieged

The City Besieged
Author: Israel Eph'al
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2009-03-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 9047427564

Exploring the military, legal, social and literary aspects of ancient warfare, this study examines the multifaceted nature of the siege phenomenon in the Ancient Near East. The book is based on Akkadian and biblical (and, to lesser degree, Greek, Aramaic, Egyptian, Hittite and Ugaritic) sources as well as on the depictions on reliefs from Assyrian palaces and Egyptian temples. The analysis incorporates lexical study and military thinking and focuses on the technology of warfare and human behavior in a state of emergency. This volume is a co-publication between Brill and The Hebrew University Magnes Press. "...this book serves as an excellent overview of siege practices and their result as seen from the biblical and Mesopotamian perspective." Michael G. Hasel, Institute of Archaeology–Southern Adventist University

Besieged Leningrad

Besieged Leningrad
Author: Polina Barskova
Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2017-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501756818

During the 872 days of the Siege of Leningrad (September 1941 to January 1944), the city's inhabitants were surrounded by the military forces of Nazi Germany. They suffered famine, cold, and darkness, and a million people lost their lives, making the siege one of the most destructive in history. Confinement in the besieged city was a traumatic experience. Unlike the victims of the Auschwitz concentration camp, for example, who were brought from afar and robbed of their cultural roots, the victims of the Siege of Leningrad were trapped in the city as it underwent a slow, horrific transformation. They lost everything except their physical location, which was layered with historical, cultural, and personal memory. In Besieged Leningrad, Polina Barskova examines how the city's inhabitants adjusted to their new urban reality, focusing on the emergence of new spatial perceptions that fostered the production of diverse textual and visual representations. The myriad texts that emerged during the siege were varied and exciting, engendered by sometimes sharply conflicting ideological urges and aesthetic sensibilities. In this first study of the cultural and literary representations of spatiality in besieged Leningrad, Barskova examines a wide range of authors with competing views of their difficult relationship with the city, filling a gap in Western knowledge of the culture of the siege. It will appeal to Russian studies specialists as well as those interested in war testimonies and the representation of trauma.

Life and Death in Besieged Leningrad, 1941-1944

Life and Death in Besieged Leningrad, 1941-1944
Author: J. Barber
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2004-11-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1403938822

From 1941-1944 Leningrad saw by far the largest-scale famine ever to occur in a developed society. This book examines the nature and consequences of the extreme conditions created by the German blockade of Leningrad between September 1941 and January 1944. Using declassified documents from Party and State archives in Moscow and St Petersburg and interviews with survivors, the authors have produced the most informed and detailed analysis to date of the impact of the siege on the lives and health of the people of Leningrad.

Besieged

Besieged
Author: J. Bowyer Bell
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2017-09-29
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1351314106

J. Bowyer Bell's Beseiged is built on the premise that as long as men have constructed walls, other men have tried to scale them. From ancient Jericho and Joshua's trumpet to London and the onslaught of the Luftwaffe, people have always devised cunning weapons, with all the skills at their command, to breach such barriers and invade the camps and fortified places of their enemies. Beseiged is the story of seven great modern sieges: Madrid in the Spanish Civil War; London, Warsaw, Singapore and Stalingrad in World War II; Berlin during the Post World War II Airlift; and Jerusalem under Arab attack from four sides in 1947. Bell, a veteran historian, describes in detail the actual battles involved, clearly demonstrating the universality of sieges and siegecraft and showing that all these beleaguered places have things in common and obey certain basic laws or principles. Bell points out commonalities showing, for example, though no bullets were fired during the Berlin Airlift, the city itself was as much under siege as was Warsaw, where the Polish Underground fought a fierce but hopeless battle against Hitler's Wehrmacht. By the same token, Bell shows though no German infantry ever came close to London, it was nonetheless besieged by aerial squadrons just as surely as Stalingrad was by both German and Russian ground forces. The histories of these sieges are ones of heroism and cowardice, meticulous planning and incredible blunders, all of which can be studied and used even currently in similar situations in either defending, or piercing the defenses of, a location in times of unrest or war. Beseiged is a must-read for those interested in modern conflict pondering the enigma of human endeavor in wall building and breaking involved in siegecraft. A must-read for everyone from military strategist aficionados and historians to science and technology buffs. If it is to be believed the danger of not knowing history is the possibility of unknowingly repeating it, then Beseiged should appear on all required reading lists.

Besieged by the Boers

Besieged by the Boers
Author: Evelyn Oliver Ashe
Publisher: London : Hutchinson
Total Pages: 262
Release: 1900
Genre: Kimberley (South Africa)
ISBN:

Vicksburg Besieged

Vicksburg Besieged
Author: Steven E. Woodworth
Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2020-06-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0809337835

A detailed analysis of the end of the Vicksburg Campaign and the forty-day siege Vicksburg, Mississippi, held strong through a bitter, hard-fought, months-long Civil War campaign, but General Ulysses S. Grant’s forty-day siege ended the stalemate and, on July 4, 1863, destroyed Confederate control of the Mississippi River. In the first anthology to examine the Vicksburg Campaign’s final phase, nine prominent historians and emerging scholars provide in-depth analysis of previously unexamined aspects of the historic siege. Ranging in scope from military to social history, the contributors’ invitingly written essays examine the role of Grant’s staff, the critical contributions of African American troops to the Union Army of the Tennessee, both sides’ use of sharpshooters and soldiers’ opinions about them, unusual nighttime activities between the Union siege lines and Confederate defensive positions, the use of West Point siege theory and the ingenuity of Midwestern soldiers in mining tunnels under the city’s defenses, the horrific experiences of civilians trapped in Vicksburg, the failure of Louisiana soldiers’ defense at the subsequent siege of Jackson, and the effect of the campaign on Confederate soldiers from the Trans-Mississippi region. The contributors explore how the Confederate Army of Mississippi and residents of Vicksburg faced food and supply shortages as well as constant danger from Union cannons and sharpshooters. Rebel troops under the leadership of General John C. Pemberton sought to stave off the Union soldiers, and though their morale plummeted, the besieged soldiers held their ground until starvation set in. Their surrender meant that Grant’s forces succeeded in splitting in half the Confederate States of America. Editors Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear, along with their contributors—Andrew S. Bledsoe, John J. Gaines, Martin J. Hershock, Richard H. Holloway, Justin S. Solonick, Scott L. Stabler, and Jonathan M. Steplyk—give a rare glimpse into the often overlooked operations at the end of the most important campaign of the Civil War.