Aidan Wasley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691136790
- eISBN:
- 9781400836352
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691136790.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter argues that Auden's extensive and largely unexplored impact on the post-war generation of American poets helped not only to define the terms by which these younger poets framed their own ...
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This chapter argues that Auden's extensive and largely unexplored impact on the post-war generation of American poets helped not only to define the terms by which these younger poets framed their own work and careers, but also offered a new and influential model for understanding what it meant to write poetry in America after World War II and after Modernism. In particular, Auden's redefinition of his own poetic identity following his emigration from England helped to shape American poetry in terms of what Auden called “the burden of choice”: How to select an inheritance from the myriad possibilities opened up in the wake of Modernism's shattering of notions of a unified native tradition. By framing his post-1939 poetry as “a way of happening,” Auden inaugurated a poetic vision of post-Modernist America as an open, inclusive text defined not in terms of shared ideals of national, ideological, or historical inheritance, but by the freedom, and necessity, to choose among the kaleidoscopic range of formal, cultural, or transnational poetic identities made available by the collapse of those earlier ideals.Less
This chapter argues that Auden's extensive and largely unexplored impact on the post-war generation of American poets helped not only to define the terms by which these younger poets framed their own work and careers, but also offered a new and influential model for understanding what it meant to write poetry in America after World War II and after Modernism. In particular, Auden's redefinition of his own poetic identity following his emigration from England helped to shape American poetry in terms of what Auden called “the burden of choice”: How to select an inheritance from the myriad possibilities opened up in the wake of Modernism's shattering of notions of a unified native tradition. By framing his post-1939 poetry as “a way of happening,” Auden inaugurated a poetic vision of post-Modernist America as an open, inclusive text defined not in terms of shared ideals of national, ideological, or historical inheritance, but by the freedom, and necessity, to choose among the kaleidoscopic range of formal, cultural, or transnational poetic identities made available by the collapse of those earlier ideals.
Aidan Wasley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691136790
- eISBN:
- 9781400836352
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691136790.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Auden's death on September 29, 1973 prompted an enormous range of poetic responses from younger American poets, many of them following Auden's example as Auden had followed Yeats, both in using the ...
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Auden's death on September 29, 1973 prompted an enormous range of poetic responses from younger American poets, many of them following Auden's example as Auden had followed Yeats, both in using the poet's own language in their memorials for him and in turning the moment, and their readings of the meaning of Auden's life and work, toward their own individual artistic arguments and purposes. Indeed, no twentieth-century poet has spawned as many elegies, eulogies, and remembrances from as wide a range of practicing poets as Auden. This chapter surveys a few of these poetic farewells to Auden, from across a broad spectrum of American verse, which provide a compelling testimonial to, and concluding perspective on, his impact on an entire generation—and beyond—of American poetry. These include the work of James Schuyler, John Hollander, Richard Howard, Louis Simpson, Irving Feldman, and Derek Walcott.Less
Auden's death on September 29, 1973 prompted an enormous range of poetic responses from younger American poets, many of them following Auden's example as Auden had followed Yeats, both in using the poet's own language in their memorials for him and in turning the moment, and their readings of the meaning of Auden's life and work, toward their own individual artistic arguments and purposes. Indeed, no twentieth-century poet has spawned as many elegies, eulogies, and remembrances from as wide a range of practicing poets as Auden. This chapter surveys a few of these poetic farewells to Auden, from across a broad spectrum of American verse, which provide a compelling testimonial to, and concluding perspective on, his impact on an entire generation—and beyond—of American poetry. These include the work of James Schuyler, John Hollander, Richard Howard, Louis Simpson, Irving Feldman, and Derek Walcott.
Aidan Wasley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691136790
- eISBN:
- 9781400836352
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691136790.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter first details W. H. Auden's arrival in New York in January 1939. His emigration from England, and his arrival in America marked a crucial moment in twentieth-century literary history, ...
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This chapter first details W. H. Auden's arrival in New York in January 1939. His emigration from England, and his arrival in America marked a crucial moment in twentieth-century literary history, when the heir apparent to T. S. Eliot as the dominant presence in British poetry abandoned his English career and retraced Eliot's own path back across the Atlantic to start anew. The impact of that moment, and Auden's subsequent American career, are still being felt in American poetry seven decades later. The chapter then discusses his poem “Atlantis,” where he invokes the myth of the lost utopia, to illustrate what he calls “a poetic vision” of art's capacity for moral instruction, even as it recognizes its limitations.Less
This chapter first details W. H. Auden's arrival in New York in January 1939. His emigration from England, and his arrival in America marked a crucial moment in twentieth-century literary history, when the heir apparent to T. S. Eliot as the dominant presence in British poetry abandoned his English career and retraced Eliot's own path back across the Atlantic to start anew. The impact of that moment, and Auden's subsequent American career, are still being felt in American poetry seven decades later. The chapter then discusses his poem “Atlantis,” where he invokes the myth of the lost utopia, to illustrate what he calls “a poetic vision” of art's capacity for moral instruction, even as it recognizes its limitations.
Aidan Wasley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691136790
- eISBN:
- 9781400836352
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691136790.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter discusses Auden's influence on James Merrill. It suggests that Merrill looked to Auden as the guide who could instruct him and encourage him to enjoy the feast of the full range of ...
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This chapter discusses Auden's influence on James Merrill. It suggests that Merrill looked to Auden as the guide who could instruct him and encourage him to enjoy the feast of the full range of poetic modes. Merrill would later begin that instruction, starting work on a new project that would aim to unite craft and sentiment, aesthetics and engagement, and whose vast ambition would more than encompass “what it all means, and what his neighbor feels.” That project was The Changing Light at Sandover, the poem that would rewrite Merrill's identity as a poet of epic scope and vision. The schoolmaster in Sandover's classroom and a central figure in the composition and narrative of the poem, was Auden.Less
This chapter discusses Auden's influence on James Merrill. It suggests that Merrill looked to Auden as the guide who could instruct him and encourage him to enjoy the feast of the full range of poetic modes. Merrill would later begin that instruction, starting work on a new project that would aim to unite craft and sentiment, aesthetics and engagement, and whose vast ambition would more than encompass “what it all means, and what his neighbor feels.” That project was The Changing Light at Sandover, the poem that would rewrite Merrill's identity as a poet of epic scope and vision. The schoolmaster in Sandover's classroom and a central figure in the composition and narrative of the poem, was Auden.
Aidan Wasley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691136790
- eISBN:
- 9781400836352
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691136790.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter discusses Auden's influence on Adrienne Rich. It argues that from her early emulation through her mature repudiation of his example, Auden's place in Rich's work and thought has ...
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This chapter discusses Auden's influence on Adrienne Rich. It argues that from her early emulation through her mature repudiation of his example, Auden's place in Rich's work and thought has persisted. As both an individual influence and as a representative of an entire range of poetic concerns which she has inherited and adapted, Auden comes to stand for poetic tradition itself—the tradition that gave her birth, and through and against which she has striven to define herself. For Rich, Auden sets the poetic terms—not always positively—out of which she constructs her own poetic identity. Like poetry itself, the figure of Auden and what he represents have been, throughout her career, ineluctable.Less
This chapter discusses Auden's influence on Adrienne Rich. It argues that from her early emulation through her mature repudiation of his example, Auden's place in Rich's work and thought has persisted. As both an individual influence and as a representative of an entire range of poetic concerns which she has inherited and adapted, Auden comes to stand for poetic tradition itself—the tradition that gave her birth, and through and against which she has striven to define herself. For Rich, Auden sets the poetic terms—not always positively—out of which she constructs her own poetic identity. Like poetry itself, the figure of Auden and what he represents have been, throughout her career, ineluctable.
SEAMUS PERRY
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264584
- eISBN:
- 9780191734069
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264584.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This lecture presents the text of the speech about English poet W.H. Auden delivered by the author at the 2008 Chatterton Lecture on Poetry held at the British Academy. It discusses criticism on ...
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This lecture presents the text of the speech about English poet W.H. Auden delivered by the author at the 2008 Chatterton Lecture on Poetry held at the British Academy. It discusses criticism on Auden as a poet who somehow lived beyond the early moment of his greatest and most amazing genius, and as one whose latest effort represented nothing less than the decline and fall of modernist poetry. The lecture also provides a critical analysis of some of Auden's most notable works.Less
This lecture presents the text of the speech about English poet W.H. Auden delivered by the author at the 2008 Chatterton Lecture on Poetry held at the British Academy. It discusses criticism on Auden as a poet who somehow lived beyond the early moment of his greatest and most amazing genius, and as one whose latest effort represented nothing less than the decline and fall of modernist poetry. The lecture also provides a critical analysis of some of Auden's most notable works.
Chris Jones
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199278329
- eISBN:
- 9780191707889
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278329.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This book provides the first full account of how major 20th-century poets studied, appropriated, and redeployed Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) poetry in their own work. The book concentrates on the ...
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This book provides the first full account of how major 20th-century poets studied, appropriated, and redeployed Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) poetry in their own work. The book concentrates on the stylistic debts that Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, Edwin Morgan, and Seamus Heaney owe to the language and prosody of Old English poetry — and to the prevailing scholarly attitudes towards Old English, which they encountered at university. Both Edwin Morgan, Scotland's First Makar, and Nobel-laureate Seamus Heaney continue to write under the influence of Old English forms, as their latest books bear witness. This book provides the first full account of how Heaney's translation of Beowulf relates to the rest of his oeuvre, and embeds Morgan's work within a wider tradition of Scots who translate and appropriate Old English. The book pays particular attention to ideas of linguistic primitivism, notions of ‘purity’ of the English language, the politics and ethics of translation, and the construction of ‘Englishness’ across a millennium of literary history. The book argues that for 20th-century poets, Old English simultaneously represents a possible origin for the English poetic tradition, and also a site of estrangement. It is this double nature of the material, of Old English as both ‘native’ and ‘other’, that makes it so attractive to a variety of important poets. The book argues that the 20th-century encounter with Old English constitutes ‘an enormous transfer of poetic energy’, one that has a marked and lasting effect on the evolution of poetry in English.Less
This book provides the first full account of how major 20th-century poets studied, appropriated, and redeployed Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) poetry in their own work. The book concentrates on the stylistic debts that Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, Edwin Morgan, and Seamus Heaney owe to the language and prosody of Old English poetry — and to the prevailing scholarly attitudes towards Old English, which they encountered at university. Both Edwin Morgan, Scotland's First Makar, and Nobel-laureate Seamus Heaney continue to write under the influence of Old English forms, as their latest books bear witness. This book provides the first full account of how Heaney's translation of Beowulf relates to the rest of his oeuvre, and embeds Morgan's work within a wider tradition of Scots who translate and appropriate Old English. The book pays particular attention to ideas of linguistic primitivism, notions of ‘purity’ of the English language, the politics and ethics of translation, and the construction of ‘Englishness’ across a millennium of literary history. The book argues that for 20th-century poets, Old English simultaneously represents a possible origin for the English poetic tradition, and also a site of estrangement. It is this double nature of the material, of Old English as both ‘native’ and ‘other’, that makes it so attractive to a variety of important poets. The book argues that the 20th-century encounter with Old English constitutes ‘an enormous transfer of poetic energy’, one that has a marked and lasting effect on the evolution of poetry in English.
Aidan Wasley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691136790
- eISBN:
- 9781400836352
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691136790.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter discusses Auden's influence on John Ashbery. By looking at the development of Ashbery's career through the prism of his early apprenticeship to Auden, and by taking Ashbery's claims ...
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This chapter discusses Auden's influence on John Ashbery. By looking at the development of Ashbery's career through the prism of his early apprenticeship to Auden, and by taking Ashbery's claims about his own poetics seriously, it challenges some familiar critical presumptions about Ashbery, prompted by a few basic questions: What are we to make of the disparity between how Ashbery sees himself and how he is seen? What is the responsibility of critics toward authorial claims of self-knowledge and intention? Is there something to be learned by listening to this poet and his poems, rather than reading through or against them? What does it mean to read Ashbery as a self-conscious inheritor of Auden's civic tradition, rather than heir to the various Romantic traditions with which he is customarily linked? In the end, the goal is less to reject prior understandings of Ashbery than to augment and complicate them, and suggest that in doing so, we discover a poet who is even richer—both more familiar and more strange, more conventional and more radical—than we may have seen.Less
This chapter discusses Auden's influence on John Ashbery. By looking at the development of Ashbery's career through the prism of his early apprenticeship to Auden, and by taking Ashbery's claims about his own poetics seriously, it challenges some familiar critical presumptions about Ashbery, prompted by a few basic questions: What are we to make of the disparity between how Ashbery sees himself and how he is seen? What is the responsibility of critics toward authorial claims of self-knowledge and intention? Is there something to be learned by listening to this poet and his poems, rather than reading through or against them? What does it mean to read Ashbery as a self-conscious inheritor of Auden's civic tradition, rather than heir to the various Romantic traditions with which he is customarily linked? In the end, the goal is less to reject prior understandings of Ashbery than to augment and complicate them, and suggest that in doing so, we discover a poet who is even richer—both more familiar and more strange, more conventional and more radical—than we may have seen.
David Rosen
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300100716
- eISBN:
- 9780300129489
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300100716.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter studies the works of T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden. It first looks at Auden's work “The Watershed” and its implications for the fate of plain English in the twentieth century. This chapter ...
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This chapter studies the works of T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden. It first looks at Auden's work “The Watershed” and its implications for the fate of plain English in the twentieth century. This chapter is thus an account of the first generation of modern poets. It attempts to establish the connection between the Romantics to the emergence of these modern poets, and how the low register played in to the passage of time and evolution of language. The low register had in it a twofold legacy: on the one hand it had a reputation for honesty and a sense of accuracy in portraying the real world; on the other hand, it was an elevated idiom, an expression of the mind's active role in reflecting on and shaping reality—or what Coleridge called the lingua communis. This chapter thus looks at the career and work of Eliot and Auden in an attempt to uncover what their legacies have contributed to the low register of English.Less
This chapter studies the works of T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden. It first looks at Auden's work “The Watershed” and its implications for the fate of plain English in the twentieth century. This chapter is thus an account of the first generation of modern poets. It attempts to establish the connection between the Romantics to the emergence of these modern poets, and how the low register played in to the passage of time and evolution of language. The low register had in it a twofold legacy: on the one hand it had a reputation for honesty and a sense of accuracy in portraying the real world; on the other hand, it was an elevated idiom, an expression of the mind's active role in reflecting on and shaping reality—or what Coleridge called the lingua communis. This chapter thus looks at the career and work of Eliot and Auden in an attempt to uncover what their legacies have contributed to the low register of English.
Tim Kendall
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199562022
- eISBN:
- 9780191707636
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199562022.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter explores the war poetry of W. H. Auden. Much of Auden's poetry of the late 1930s is defined by journeys to and from war. Although his decision to stay in New York after the outbreak of ...
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This chapter explores the war poetry of W. H. Auden. Much of Auden's poetry of the late 1930s is defined by journeys to and from war. Although his decision to stay in New York after the outbreak of the Second World War attracted imputations of cowardice and betrayal, until then Auden had actively sought war zones. Each of Auden's wars (including the Great War, which ended when he was 11) profoundly affected his poetry. But his treatment of them eschews specifics: the world, Auden argued in 1939, ‘has no localized events’, and all people ‘In all their living are profoundly implicated’.Less
This chapter explores the war poetry of W. H. Auden. Much of Auden's poetry of the late 1930s is defined by journeys to and from war. Although his decision to stay in New York after the outbreak of the Second World War attracted imputations of cowardice and betrayal, until then Auden had actively sought war zones. Each of Auden's wars (including the Great War, which ended when he was 11) profoundly affected his poetry. But his treatment of them eschews specifics: the world, Auden argued in 1939, ‘has no localized events’, and all people ‘In all their living are profoundly implicated’.
Thomas S. Davis
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231169424
- eISBN:
- 9780231537889
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231169424.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter turns to travel narratives from global hot zones where the examination of everyday life reveals the emergence of a new form of warfare shifting the balance of power in Europe and Asia.
This chapter turns to travel narratives from global hot zones where the examination of everyday life reveals the emergence of a new form of warfare shifting the balance of power in Europe and Asia.
Matthew Hart
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195390339
- eISBN:
- 9780199776191
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195390339.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
The chapter begins by questioning Philip Larkin's argument that W. H. Auden's early poems are “successful” because they assert a relationship of identity among dialect, audience, and social theme. ...
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The chapter begins by questioning Philip Larkin's argument that W. H. Auden's early poems are “successful” because they assert a relationship of identity among dialect, audience, and social theme. Identifying this as a “major” discourse of the vernacular, the chapter uses the work of Jean Bodin and Giorgio Agamben to explore the importance of “major” vernacular discourse to the hegemonic function of nation‐states. The chapter then identifies “synthetic vernacular” poetry as verse that reworks “minor” vernacular discourses, thereby opening a gap within the homology among languages, peoples, and states. The chapter finally illustrates the limits of the synthetic vernacular concept via Ezra Pound's translation of Sophocles' Women of Trachis (1957).Less
The chapter begins by questioning Philip Larkin's argument that W. H. Auden's early poems are “successful” because they assert a relationship of identity among dialect, audience, and social theme. Identifying this as a “major” discourse of the vernacular, the chapter uses the work of Jean Bodin and Giorgio Agamben to explore the importance of “major” vernacular discourse to the hegemonic function of nation‐states. The chapter then identifies “synthetic vernacular” poetry as verse that reworks “minor” vernacular discourses, thereby opening a gap within the homology among languages, peoples, and states. The chapter finally illustrates the limits of the synthetic vernacular concept via Ezra Pound's translation of Sophocles' Women of Trachis (1957).
Rachel Galvin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- November 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190623920
- eISBN:
- 9780190623951
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190623920.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter charts how Auden’s strategies for writing about war as a civilian changed during World War II, extending the previous chapter’s inquiry regarding the journalistic aspirations of his ...
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This chapter charts how Auden’s strategies for writing about war as a civilian changed during World War II, extending the previous chapter’s inquiry regarding the journalistic aspirations of his 1930s writing and his vision of the transformation of bodily experience into text. It contends that the poems of Another Time offer parables of wartime interrelation: models for imagining the relation between contemplation and action, civilian and soldier. Further, whereas The Double Man has been read as superannuated and excessively rhetorical, this chapter argues that it shrewdly showcases the resources of poetic language available to the noncombatant. A concluding section examines a surprising episode in 1945 when Auden donned a military uniform for the United States Strategic Bombing Survey and finally got the bird’s eye view of war he had imagined.Less
This chapter charts how Auden’s strategies for writing about war as a civilian changed during World War II, extending the previous chapter’s inquiry regarding the journalistic aspirations of his 1930s writing and his vision of the transformation of bodily experience into text. It contends that the poems of Another Time offer parables of wartime interrelation: models for imagining the relation between contemplation and action, civilian and soldier. Further, whereas The Double Man has been read as superannuated and excessively rhetorical, this chapter argues that it shrewdly showcases the resources of poetic language available to the noncombatant. A concluding section examines a surprising episode in 1945 when Auden donned a military uniform for the United States Strategic Bombing Survey and finally got the bird’s eye view of war he had imagined.
Aidan Wasley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691136790
- eISBN:
- 9781400836352
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691136790.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
W. H. Auden's emigration from England to the United States in 1939 marked more than a turning point in his own life and work—it changed the course of American poetry itself. This book takes, for the ...
More
W. H. Auden's emigration from England to the United States in 1939 marked more than a turning point in his own life and work—it changed the course of American poetry itself. This book takes, for the first time, the full measure of Auden's influence on American poetry. Combining a broad survey of Auden's midcentury U.S. cultural presence with an account of his dramatic impact on a wide range of younger American poets—from Allen Ginsberg to Sylvia Plath—the book offers a new history of postwar American poetry. For Auden, facing private crisis and global catastrophe, moving to the United States became, in the famous words of his first American poem, a new “way of happening.” But his redefinition of his work had a significance that was felt far beyond the pages of his own books. This book shows how Auden's signal role in the work and lives of an entire younger generation of American poets challenges conventional literary histories that place Auden outside the American poetic tradition. The book pays special attention to three of Auden's most distinguished American inheritors, presenting major new readings of James Merrill, John Ashbery, and Adrienne Rich. The result is a persuasive and compelling demonstration of a novel claim: In order to understand modern American poetry, we need to understand Auden's central place within it.Less
W. H. Auden's emigration from England to the United States in 1939 marked more than a turning point in his own life and work—it changed the course of American poetry itself. This book takes, for the first time, the full measure of Auden's influence on American poetry. Combining a broad survey of Auden's midcentury U.S. cultural presence with an account of his dramatic impact on a wide range of younger American poets—from Allen Ginsberg to Sylvia Plath—the book offers a new history of postwar American poetry. For Auden, facing private crisis and global catastrophe, moving to the United States became, in the famous words of his first American poem, a new “way of happening.” But his redefinition of his work had a significance that was felt far beyond the pages of his own books. This book shows how Auden's signal role in the work and lives of an entire younger generation of American poets challenges conventional literary histories that place Auden outside the American poetic tradition. The book pays special attention to three of Auden's most distinguished American inheritors, presenting major new readings of James Merrill, John Ashbery, and Adrienne Rich. The result is a persuasive and compelling demonstration of a novel claim: In order to understand modern American poetry, we need to understand Auden's central place within it.
Willard Spiegelman
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195368130
- eISBN:
- 9780199852192
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195368130.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter criticizes Anglo-American poet W. H. Auden's translation of the opera The Rake's Progress, Magic Flute, and Don Giovanni. It suggests that Auden's translation of the opera has given the ...
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This chapter criticizes Anglo-American poet W. H. Auden's translation of the opera The Rake's Progress, Magic Flute, and Don Giovanni. It suggests that Auden's translation of the opera has given the lie to his earlier pronouncements that the verses which the librettist writes are not addressed to the public but are really a private letter to the composer and that in opera the orchestra is addressed to the singers not to the audience. It contends that The Rake's Progress has overcome the label of being merely an exercise in imitation because its music, especially music wedded to words, offered a chance for something different.Less
This chapter criticizes Anglo-American poet W. H. Auden's translation of the opera The Rake's Progress, Magic Flute, and Don Giovanni. It suggests that Auden's translation of the opera has given the lie to his earlier pronouncements that the verses which the librettist writes are not addressed to the public but are really a private letter to the composer and that in opera the orchestra is addressed to the singers not to the audience. It contends that The Rake's Progress has overcome the label of being merely an exercise in imitation because its music, especially music wedded to words, offered a chance for something different.
Ron Johnston (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264584
- eISBN:
- 9780191734069
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264584.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This volume contains ten lectures in the humanities and social sciences delivered at the British Academy in 2008. The lectures cover topics ranging from an exploration of the relationship between ...
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This volume contains ten lectures in the humanities and social sciences delivered at the British Academy in 2008. The lectures cover topics ranging from an exploration of the relationship between reason and identity, to an examination of social integration as the world becomes a more diverse place, to a consideration of the works of four great literary figures: King Alfred, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and W. H. Auden.Less
This volume contains ten lectures in the humanities and social sciences delivered at the British Academy in 2008. The lectures cover topics ranging from an exploration of the relationship between reason and identity, to an examination of social integration as the world becomes a more diverse place, to a consideration of the works of four great literary figures: King Alfred, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and W. H. Auden.
Michael O'Neill
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198122852
- eISBN:
- 9780191671579
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198122852.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, Poetry
This chapter focuses on Auden who, at first sight, might appear to be steadfastly anti-Romantic in his refusal to make major claims for poetry, especially in his later work. Yet Auden's insistence on ...
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This chapter focuses on Auden who, at first sight, might appear to be steadfastly anti-Romantic in his refusal to make major claims for poetry, especially in his later work. Yet Auden's insistence on poetry as a game should not disguise the fact that it is a game that he plays very seriously indeed. As ‘A way of happening’, poetry, for Auden, matters as much for how it says what it says as for any extractable message. Poets may not be ‘the unacknowledged legislators of the World’ for Auden as they were for Shelley, but in their care over what they are doing with language they serve as valuably ‘Ironic points of light’.Less
This chapter focuses on Auden who, at first sight, might appear to be steadfastly anti-Romantic in his refusal to make major claims for poetry, especially in his later work. Yet Auden's insistence on poetry as a game should not disguise the fact that it is a game that he plays very seriously indeed. As ‘A way of happening’, poetry, for Auden, matters as much for how it says what it says as for any extractable message. Poets may not be ‘the unacknowledged legislators of the World’ for Auden as they were for Shelley, but in their care over what they are doing with language they serve as valuably ‘Ironic points of light’.
Rachel Galvin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- November 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190623920
- eISBN:
- 9780190623951
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190623920.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter argues that W. H. Auden developed meta-rhetoric in response to his guilt about being too young to fight in World War I and to his reservations concerning the ethics of making verse out ...
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This chapter argues that W. H. Auden developed meta-rhetoric in response to his guilt about being too young to fight in World War I and to his reservations concerning the ethics of making verse out of other people’s bodily experience. After demonstrating that Auden’s Spanish Civil War poetry and prose was shaped by his critique of how the press mediates and represents war, the chapter examines his mock reportage of the Sino–Japanese War, contending that ethically motivated self-scrutiny drives Auden’s use of rhetoric during this period and is an unmistakable hallmark of his wartime poetry.Less
This chapter argues that W. H. Auden developed meta-rhetoric in response to his guilt about being too young to fight in World War I and to his reservations concerning the ethics of making verse out of other people’s bodily experience. After demonstrating that Auden’s Spanish Civil War poetry and prose was shaped by his critique of how the press mediates and represents war, the chapter examines his mock reportage of the Sino–Japanese War, contending that ethically motivated self-scrutiny drives Auden’s use of rhetoric during this period and is an unmistakable hallmark of his wartime poetry.
Michael Piret
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- June 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780190214340
- eISBN:
- 9780190239756
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190214340.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Literature
Although one of W. H. Auden’s last poems formally records his indebtedness to ‘Williams and Lewis’ for guiding him back to Christianity, his affinities with the Inklings are easily overlooked. He and ...
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Although one of W. H. Auden’s last poems formally records his indebtedness to ‘Williams and Lewis’ for guiding him back to Christianity, his affinities with the Inklings are easily overlooked. He and Lewis were kindred spirits in several ways, including their liturgical conservatism, their shared affirmation of a moral law which all acknowledge and none obey, their belief in the relevance of traditional doctrine to the modern predicament, and in their great appreciation for the writings of George MacDonald, Charles Williams, and J. R. R. Tolkien. Auden’s enthusiastic reception of The Lord of the Rings, hardly the norm among 1950s literati, welcomed the books as a signal achievement in the Quest genre. While Tolkien rejected Auden’s characterization of the tale as a representation of subjective experience, he was nonetheless grateful for his support, and Auden’s distinctly personal approach shows how resonant the books were for him, as a man and as a poet.Less
Although one of W. H. Auden’s last poems formally records his indebtedness to ‘Williams and Lewis’ for guiding him back to Christianity, his affinities with the Inklings are easily overlooked. He and Lewis were kindred spirits in several ways, including their liturgical conservatism, their shared affirmation of a moral law which all acknowledge and none obey, their belief in the relevance of traditional doctrine to the modern predicament, and in their great appreciation for the writings of George MacDonald, Charles Williams, and J. R. R. Tolkien. Auden’s enthusiastic reception of The Lord of the Rings, hardly the norm among 1950s literati, welcomed the books as a signal achievement in the Quest genre. While Tolkien rejected Auden’s characterization of the tale as a representation of subjective experience, he was nonetheless grateful for his support, and Auden’s distinctly personal approach shows how resonant the books were for him, as a man and as a poet.
Genevieve Abravanel
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199754458
- eISBN:
- 9780199933143
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199754458.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, World Literature
When jazz arrived in England, the nation was on an imaginative precipice: both grasping after history and attempting to bury it, haunted by terrible loss and eager to forget it in a frenzy of music ...
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When jazz arrived in England, the nation was on an imaginative precipice: both grasping after history and attempting to bury it, haunted by terrible loss and eager to forget it in a frenzy of music and dance. As the contest over the jazz invasion raged in English newspapers and periodicals, in drawing rooms and public houses, the debate turned jazz into a metaphor for the modernization of England. This chapter demonstrates how a range of writers across the political spectrum, from Elizabeth Bowen and Virginia Woolf to Wyndham Lewis and W.H. Auden, each quite differently mobilized this metaphor. While it may seem surprising for writers to turn to American jazz music to explore the interwar crisis of Englishness, it was precisely because jazz invoked so many competing discourses—art and entertainment, whiteness and blackness, England and America—that it served this end so well.Less
When jazz arrived in England, the nation was on an imaginative precipice: both grasping after history and attempting to bury it, haunted by terrible loss and eager to forget it in a frenzy of music and dance. As the contest over the jazz invasion raged in English newspapers and periodicals, in drawing rooms and public houses, the debate turned jazz into a metaphor for the modernization of England. This chapter demonstrates how a range of writers across the political spectrum, from Elizabeth Bowen and Virginia Woolf to Wyndham Lewis and W.H. Auden, each quite differently mobilized this metaphor. While it may seem surprising for writers to turn to American jazz music to explore the interwar crisis of Englishness, it was precisely because jazz invoked so many competing discourses—art and entertainment, whiteness and blackness, England and America—that it served this end so well.
