Stripped Bodies and Looted Goods: Keith Douglas's "Iliad"

Reading the Iliad in World War Two, Keith Douglas takes up Homer's theme of the stripping of corpses on the battlefield and sees such moments as reminders of the fine line that separates the living from the dead. Furthermore, he understands that the victors of one day may easily be the stripped corpses of the next. Recognising much of his own experience in such situations, Douglas finds in Homer's harder, more clinical writing something of his own poetic. The tank battles of the North African desert may seem a long way from Troy, but Douglas's poetry asks that we ponder whether that distance is as great as it first appears.