ABSTRACT
This essay explores how war memorials, even memorials from long-ago wars that no longer concern contemporary viewers, can be astonishingly moving. It focuses on two widely studied cases: the memorials to the dead of the First World War and of recent American wars. The paper argues that one way in which memorials can move viewers is by exemplifying the scale of the human cost of war. Affecting memorials are often particular in that they indicate that a tragedy of great magnitude is a composite of smaller tragedies by recording the names of the dead.
