-
Nationalization of mourning, but also--and this is the second major cultural process
-
-a kind of spiritualization of mourning.
-
Well, I could give you many examples of
-
the spiritual flavor that characterized the 1920s and 1930s.
-
I could also discuss, as Jay Winter did remarkably in his book Sites of Memory, sites of Mourning,
-
whether the spirituality of the Great War and of the aftermath of the Great War
-
was something new or something rooted in the European religious traditions and rituals.
-
I will only give you one emblematic example,
-
and actually I will end my presentation with it.
-
This is the case of Maurice Gallais
-
that's the portrait here--a young officer cadet who died in Bouchavesne,
-
on the Somme, on September 25th, 1916, at the age of twenty-two.