View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by K-State Research Exchange This is the author’s final, peer-reviewed manuscript as accepted for publication. The publisher-formatted version may be available through the publisher’s web site or your institution’s library. Alan Seeger: medievalism as an alternative ideology Tim Dayton How to cite this manuscript If you make reference to this version of the manuscript, use the following information: Dayton, T. (2012). Alan Seeger: Medievalism as an alternative ideology. Retrieved from http://krex.ksu.edu Published Version Information Citation: Dayton, T. (2012). Alan Seeger: Medievalism as an alternative ideology. First World War Studies, 3(2), 125-144. Copyright: © 2012 Taylor & Francis Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi:10.1080/19475020.2012.728698 Publisher’s Link: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19475020.2012.728698 This item was retrieved from the K-State Research Exchange (K-REx), the institutional repository of Kansas State University. K-REx is available at http://krex.ksu.edu 0 Alan Seeger: Medievalism as an Alternative Ideology Tim Dayton* Department of English Kansas State University Manhattan, KS USA 66502 * E-mail:
[email protected]; Tel. 785-532-2155 1 Alan Seeger: Medievalism as an Alternative Ideology Abstract The American poet Alan Seeger imagined the First World War as an opportunity to realize medieval values, which were embodied for him in Sir Philip Sidney. Sidney epitomized Seeger’s three ideals: “Love and Arms and Song,” which contrasted with the materialism and sophistication of modernity. His embrace of “Arms” and the desire for intense, authentic experience led Seeger, who was living in Paris in August 1914, to enlist in the French Foreign Legion, in which he served until his death in combat in July 1916.