C. J. Brennan’s A Chant of Doom: Australia’s Medieval War
Abstract
CHRISTOPHER Brennan's propagandist A Chant ofDoom (1918) has very little value as poetry, and what critics have said about it is adequately damning. Judith Wright's comment is the best known: 'some of the most unpleasant and inflated verse produced by any war' (Wright 205); James McAuley found 'an embarrassing brassy rhetoric' (McAuley 35). Nevertheless, the poems collected in A Chant of Doom were disseminated and read widely, especially by Brennan's standards, in their original newspaper and magazine print contexts. The Sydney Morning Herald and Daily Telegraph published most of them; others appeared in Anzac Memorial and The Lone Hand.
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Published 1 May 2007 in Volume 23 No. 1. Subjects: Australian war literature, Literary influences, Medievalism, Nationalist & patriotic poetry, Reading, Christopher Brennan.
Cite as: Lynch, Andrew. ‘C. J. Brennan’s A Chant of Doom: Australia’s Medieval War.’ Australian Literary Studies, vol. 23, no. 1, 2007, doi: 10.20314/als.25b90ab4e3.