"What does Keats have to teach me of rifle and machine-gun drill?": Wilfred Owen and the Romantics

The article intends to analyse the complex and multifaceted relationship that the war poet Wilfred Owen established with the life and works of the Romantics, mainly P. B. Shelley and John Keats. Owen’s letters and his early poetic production testify to his idolatry for the two poets. This essay will try to demonstrate how the «pity of war» and the need to denounce the horrors of modern warfare in his later production never really resulted in a rejection of the Romantic legacy. In contrast with critical readings that understand Owen’s mature war poetry as a renunciation to his early Romantic ideals, the article shows how, even in later texts such as Strange Meeting, through an intricate web of intertextual references the poet pursues an uninterrupted dialogue with the great Romantics.