Love versus Eros A Kristevean Study of Wilfred Owen’s To Eros

Wilfred Owen was one of the greatest poets of Great War who had experienced a number of mental issues during his short lifetime, varying from parental problems to religious and war crises. This paper aims to study one of his psychologically revealing poems, To Eros , with a background of an investigation of Owen’s life events. This purpose is carried out through an approach, a medium connecting the life to the poetry of Owen. Julia Kristeva’s psycholinguistics narrowed down mainly to the concept of ‘Love’ along with minor glimpses at her other psycholinguistic concepts ‘Semiotic/Symbolic’, ‘Abjection’, and ‘Loss’, was selected to perform the task. These four concepts, oscillating between psychoanalytical issues of biographical accounts and linguistic expressions the best form of which is poetry, are the most suitable for the performance of this study. To Eros was studied as a signifier of Owen’s mental state with regard to the past happenings, specifically his relation to father and Christianity. It was read with regard to the concept ‘Love’; the result was the proposition of a new perception of Owen’s suggested homoeroticism as a matter not simply caused by his physical inclination, but more importantly a result of his mental psycho-linguistic backgrounds.

Keywords:

Julia Kristeva , Wilfred Owen , Love , Primary Identification , Poetry , Psychoanalysis