Machen, meat eating and the First World War: Arthur Machen’s vegetarian epiphany

This paper examines how Machen’s views on meat eating were developed during the First World War. It argues that Machen saw humanity as confronting a spiritual crisis in which representative forms of animal embodiment make visible the animal (the meat) that humans have become. Machen’s belief that meat eating represented a form of physical, rather than spiritual, nourishment was re-appraised during a period when models of spirituality were significantly under pressure. Machen’s views on spirituality, vegetarianism, and animals provide an ecologically inflected evaluation of the consequences of the war. Machen’s changing attitudes towards propaganda and media censorship are also explored as these influence his views on meat eating and the possibility of reaffirming a threatened spiritual identity