War occupies an uneasy place in literature and in the study of literature. Raymond Williams’s well-known observation about Jane Austen captures something of this dynamic: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen chose to ignore the decisive historical events of her time. Where […] are the Napoleonic wars: the real current of history?” (113). In posing this question, Williams makes war both central to, and beside the point of, the novel form. Today, the relationship between war and
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