“The Bleak Philosophy of Northern Ridges”: Examining the Early Landscapes of W. H. Auden, 1922–1928. Hannah Elizabeth Smith A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2018 1 Statement of Originality I, Hannah Elizabeth Smith, confirm that the research included within this thesis is my own work or that where it has been carried out in collaboration with, or supported by others, that this is duly acknowledged below, and my contribution indicated. Previously published material is also acknowledged below. I attest that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge break any UK law, infringe any third party’s copyright or other Intellectual Property Right, or contain any confidential material. I accept that the College has the right to use plagiarism detection software to check the electronic version of the thesis. I confirm that this thesis has not been previously submitted for the award of a degree by this or any other university. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. Signature: H. Smith Date: 13th September 2018 2 Abstract The juvenilia of the poet W. H. Auden has largely been subject to a climate of critical neglect. Despite representing an innovative and influential period of the poet’s career in which the nucleic form of the poet’s unique ways of addressing notions of landscape and locality might be discerned, there has been little scholarly analysis of these early poems and their place within the poet’s literary canon. The same may be said for the poet’s landscape works: in a critical field where the modern, cosmopolitan Auden tends to predominate, there has been little recent scholarly consideration of Auden as a ‘landscape’ poet. This thesis seeks to supplement and develop the critical literatures relevant to the poet’s earliest works, arguing that it is only via the analysis of landscape and locality in Auden’s earliest poetry that much later landscape works can be fully understood. Drawing on the work of Auden scholars Katharine Bucknell, John Fuller and Tony Sharpe, alongside key concepts in the study of literary landscapes such as Pierre Nora’s Lieux de Memoire, this thesis will consider the four dominant themes present in the poet’s juvenilia: mortality, northernness, nation and the journey. In doing so, it will trace the development of the poet’s own influences, the manner in which they alter and augment to become the trademark Audenesque, and what these focal points mean in terms of contextualising Auden’s developing sense of landscape. The fundamental aim of this study is to make an original and innovative contribution to the scholarship of the poet W. H. Auden, the study of Modernist literatures and further consideration of Auden as a ‘landscape poet’. Furthermore, and what is perhaps most applicable about this research, is that it provides a framework for effecting a more comprehensive analysis of any literary text by utilising authorial juvenilia. 3 Acknowledgments There are several individuals whom I would like to thank for their assistance, both personal and professional, in the completion of this project. Firstly I would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK for their continued financial support of this research. I am also indebted to the Doctoral College and the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London for adopting this research in its infancy, and supporting it as it came to fruition. Particular gratitude is due to my supervisor Professor Scott McCracken at Queen Mary University of London whose knowledge, confidence and guidance have been vital in the completion of this project: I would like to take this opportunity to apologise for any personal grief that my punctuation and sentence structure has caused over the past four years. I would also like to thank Dr. Peter Howarth at Queen Mary University of London, whose input on the third chapter of this thesis has proved particularly significant and has furthered my own understanding of W. H. Auden as a landscape poet, and Dr. Howard Booth at the University of Manchester for his invaluable early input. My personal thanks go to Mr. Gerard Moran at Saint Joseph’s College for introducing me to the works of Ted Hughes and W. H. Auden in the Autumn of 2008. Similarly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to David A. Curley and Camille Ralphs for their endless creativity, patience and percipience. Finally I would like to thank my cat, Salem, for her role as a constant font of innovative discourse. This research was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. [Grant Number: AH/L503903/1] 4 Contents Statement of Originality 2 Abstract 3 Acknowledgments 4 Introduction “When I was a child, I loved a pumping-engine”: Mining Auden’s Juvenilia 0.1 Introduction and Structure 9 0.2 Toward a Theory of Juvenilia 10 0.3 A Model for Reading Auden’s Earliest Works 13 0.4 Modernity, Landscape and Anxiety 17 0.5 Auden Scholarship and the Juvenilia Period 19 0.6 The ‘Landscape Auden’ 22 0.7 Metallurgy as Methodology 23 0.8 The Shade of a Pumping-Engine 26 0.9 Thematology and Thesis Structure 29 Chapter I “The Earth took back the Dust she Gave”: Interrogating Death and Narratives of Resurrection in Auden’s Earliest Landscapes 1.0 Introduction: Auden’s Many Deathbeds 34 1.1 A New Attitude Toward Death 36 1.2 Haptic Ghosts: Heath Wood, Wuthering Heights and Katabasis 39 1.3 A Quest for Permanence 63 1.4 Auden’s Chatterton 81 1.5 Conclusion: The Little Creature Frightened of the Dark 92 Chapter II “This Land, Cut Off, Will Not Communicate”: Exploring the Hero, Hodge, and the Notion of North 2.0 Introduction: Identity, Paracosm and Resistance 97 2.1 Saga Literature and the Pastoral Hero 104 2.2 The Infernal North 126 2.3: Hodge and the Industrial Hero 136 2.4 Nenthead Revisited: Finding Killhope Cross 160 2.5 Conclusion: A Pennine Athens 169 Chapter III “Art Thou Richer, Humble Tree / Than Fifty Thousand Oaks or Elms”: Old English Mythologies, the Bucolic Idyll and the Construction of Nation in Auden’s Arboreal Juvenilia 3.0 Introduction: Auden’s Green Modernism 173 3.1 The Fallen Elm: Tree Symbolism and Edward Thomas 177 3.2 Nation and the Tree as Man 182 3.3: Early Arboreal Responses to War — Reconciliation and Loss 193 5 3.4 Auden and Industrial Scepticism 200 3.5 Later Arboreal Responses to War — Ritual and Mythology 214 3.6 The Flora of Folk Nationalism 223 3.7 Conclusion: An English World-Tree 238 Chapter IV “Under the Hundred Lamps Whose Flare Turns Night to Day”: The Journey, Industrial Modernity and Landscape Exile in Early Auden 4.0 Introduction: Auden’s Spatial Identities 243 4.1 The Liminal Railway 249 4.2 The Railway and the Life Course 262 4.3 Ancient Landscape and Industrial Modernity 269 4.4 Surveillance Spaces and Moral Panic 281 4.5 The Wanderer on the Road 290 4.6 Conclusion: Wræclastas 300 Conclusion 5.0 Methodology 305 5.1 Auden and Mortality 306 5.2 Auden and Northerliness 307 5.3 Auden and Nation 309 5.4 Auden and the Journey 310 5.5 Future Research Pathways 312 Bibliography 315 6 Introduction “When I was a child, I loved a pumping-engine” — Mining Auden’s Juvenilia [...]Strange are love's mutations: Thus, the early poem Of the flesh sub rosa Has been known to grow Now and then into the Amor intellectu- -alis of Spinoza; How we do not know. Slowly we are learning, We at least know this much, That we have to unlearn Much that we were taught, And are growing chary Of emphatic dogmas; Love like Matter is much Odder than we thought. Love requires an Object, But this varies so much, Almost, I imagine, Anything will do. When I was a child, I Loved a pumping-engine, Thought it every bit as Beautiful as you. “Heavy Date”.1 1 W. H. Auden, Collected Poems, ed. by Edward Mendelson, (New York: Vintage, 1991) p. 257-260 7 It is fifty years now Since the old days when It first pumped water here; Steam drove it then Till the workings were stopped For the vein pinched out; When it lay underground Twelve years about. Then they raised it again Had it cleaned a bit So it pumps still, though now The beck drives it As it groans at each strike Like a heart in trouble, It seems to me something In toil most noble. “The Pumping-Engine, Cashwell”.2 2 W. H. Auden, Juvenilia: Poems 1922–1928, ed. by Katharine Bucknell, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003) p. 74-5 8 0.1: Introduction and Structure In this introduction I am going to address the core motivations, critical literatures and methodologies that have influenced this investigation of the early landscape poetry of W. H. Auden and contextualise the works central to this thesis and its analyses. First, I am going to examine the modern scholarly study of literary juvenilia and the ways in which the consideration of these early manuscripts have effected a critical reappraisal of the works of several nineteenth-century writers. This is done with the intention of considering the study of juvenilia as able to generate a reading strategy for developing more comprehensive understandings of much later and more practised texts, using works of a less polished and often less ambiguous quality to better understand phraseologies and imagery as they appear in the works of the mature writer.