Barbarian Masquerade a Reading of the Poetry of Tony Harrison And

1 Barbarian Masquerade A Reading of the Poetry of Tony Harrison and Simon Armitage Christian James Taylor Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of English August 2015 2 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation fro m the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement The right of Christian James Taylor to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2015 The University of Leeds and Christian James Taylor 3 Acknowledgements The author hereby acknowledges the support and guidance of Dr Fiona Becket and Professor John Whale, without whose candour, humour and patience this thesis would not have been possible. This thesis is d edicat ed to my wife, Emma Louise, and to my child ren, James Byron and Amy Sophia . Additional thanks for a lifetime of love and encouragement go to my mother, Muriel – ‘ never indifferent ’. 4 Abstract This thesis investigates Simon Armitage ’ s claim that his poetry inherits from Tony Harrison ’ s work an interest in the politics o f form and language, and argues that both poets , although rarely compared, produce work which is conceptually and ideologically interrelated : principally by their adoption of a n ‘ un - poetic ’ , deli berately antagonistic language which is used to invade historically validated and culturally prestigious lyric forms as part of a critique of canons of taste and normative concepts of poetic register which I call barbarian masquerade . H arrison ’ s first collection The Loiners is analysed alongside Armitage ’ s debut Zoom! in order to demonstrate a shared antipathy towards traditional form and language, and this poetics of dissent is traced across a range of collections, showing that although Harrison ’ s writing is more obviously class - conscious or Marxist than Armitage ’ s ludic and ironic output, both poets ’ deployment of masquerade reveals a range of shared aesthetic, poetic and political concerns . The final chapters of the thesis demonstrate the complexity of the two poets ’ barbarian poetics by analysing Harrison ’ s militant secularism and Armitage ’ s denunciations of state violence, hate crime and social exclusion, and by showing that their masquerade writing transcends simple renegotiations o f language, structure and style in its search for a public poetry defined by its engagement with, rather than withdrawal from, social , moral and political debate. 5 The thesis ends by suggesting that Harrison ’ s influence on Armitage might apply to other New Generation poets and to more recent writers, whose work is invoked in order to suggest a continuity o f politicised, barbaric writing. 6 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 3 Abstract 4 Table of Contents 6 List of abbreviations 9 Chapter One Critical Contexts 10 Barbarian Language 38 Harrison’s Barbaric Language 47 Armitage ’ s Barbaric Language 81 Masquerade 113 Chapter Two Masquerade in The Loiners and Zoom! 123 Chapter Three 7 Barbarian Poetics and Literary Fo rm: Renegotiating The Sonnet 151 Masquerade as Thematic Subversion: The Barbarian Sonnet ’ s Themes and Structure 178 A rmitage and Shakespeare 186 American Influenc es on the Barbaric Sonnet 195 Barbarian S onnets: A Conclusion? 206 Chapter Four Comedy and Masqu erade: God, Violence, Play 214 Satanic ‘ Versus ’ 237 Playful Violence : Armitage 252 God and Play: A Conclusion 281 Chapter Five Unacknowledged Legislation: Politicising Masquerade 292 Armitage ’ s Film - Poems: Beyond Play 321 8 Conclusion: Harrison, Armitage, an d a Future Barbarian Poetics 372 Bibliography 390 9 List of abbreviations used in this thesis Tyrannosaurus Rex - Simon Armitage, Tyrannosaurus Rex versus The Corduroy Kid (London: Faber, 2006) Matches – Simon Armitage, Book of Matches (London: Faber, 1993) Roses - Simon Armitage, Black Roses: The Killing of Sophie Lancaster (Pomona: 2012) Gawain – Simon Armitage, Sir Gawain and t he Green Knight (London: Faber, 2007) SP – Selected Poems (Tony Harrison) Bloodaxe I - Bloodaxe Critical Anthologies I: Tony Harrison , ed. by Neil Astley (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1991) Gorgon - Tony Harrison, The Gaze of the Gorgon , in Collected Film Poetry (London: Faber, 2007) Shadow - Tony Harrison, The Shadow of Hiroshima in Collected Film Poetry Banquet – Tony Harrison, The Blasphemers ’ Banquet , in Bloodaxe I , pp. 395 - 406 10 ‘ Barbarian Masquerade: A Reading of the Poetry of Tony Harrison and Simon Armitage ’ ‘There are words that give power, others that make us all the more derelict, and to this latter category belong the v ulgar words of the simple, to whom the Lord has not granted the boon of self - expression in the universal tongue of knowledge and power’ – Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose Chapter One Critical Contexts This thesis aims to demonstrate the existence of an inherited tradition of subversive, anti - authoritarian writing which links the work of Ton y Harrison and Simon Armitage, and proposes an interrelatedness of purpose in the two poets’ wor k : driven primarily by a ‘barbaric’ , sub - literary idiom which is used to invade culturally sanctified lyric forms , and which results in a hybridised poetic style which I call masquerade - defined by its adherence to basic principles of poetic form and language on the one hand, and by a simultaneous drive to subvert lyri c proprieties and use them as the basis for a politicised, antagonistic form of poetic composition on the other . Arguing from the outset that traditional conceptions of poetic influence, such as those of Bloom and Eliot, are not 11 acceptable models for anal ysis of Harrison and Armitage’s problematic poetics, I propose a model based on inheritance and trans - generational dialogue, with Armitage’s work looking back to Harrison’s and extending its debate with literary tradition, traditional conceptions of lyric or poetic speech, and its preoccupation with the public role of poetry: poetry envisioned as public utterance and moral intervention , rather than as a page - bound medium or the site of literary Oedipal contests between poets and precursors, individual talen ts and literary tradition. I begin by considering Armitage’s own definition of the commerce between his work and Harrison’s. In a 2010 Leeds Guide interview, Armitage discusses those poets whose influence has been central to his development as a writer. His comments are revealing: Tony Harrison and Ted Hughes, they ’ re huge figures. They kind of made it possible for me to be a poet. Tony Harrison took on a lot of political arguments in his work about if and how it ’ s possible to write in a native tongue or dialect. Hughes as well, digging in to the geology and archaeology of the region, trying to define what these atmospheres are. I see myself absolutely as an inheritor of those traditions, even if my work might not be like theirs necessarily. 1 1 Simon Armitage in Paul Whitehead interview, Leeds Guide, Wednesday 12th May 2010, http://www.leedsguide.co.uk/review/interview/simon - armitage/14700 [accessed May 2010]. 12 Sh owing a particular sensitivity to the concept of ‘ inheritance ’ , Armitage claims that Tony Harrison and Ted Hughes ’ poetry has enabled or facilitated his own work by virtue of its engagement with a range of linguistic, political, and environmental concerns. He also posits the existence of a definable tradition of socio - political verse to which Harrison and Hughes have contributed, and suggests that his own work intersects with this tradition and extends it. There is no mention here of influence, either in the sense of conscious modelling, homage, parody, or in the Bloomian sense of the ‘ shadow cast by the precursor ’ ; rather, the emphasis is placed upon individual voice and expression, the use of setting or geographical space, and a pronounced interest in th e integration of the ‘ non - standard ’ or demotic tongue within mainstream poetry. 2 Despite his claim of an inherited tradition, however, few critics place Armitage and Harrison within the same conceptual, thematic or linguistic territory. C ritical opinion tends to dismiss efforts to compare them, seeing them as belonging to two separate strands of post - War British poetry and, despite Armitage ’ s claim that Harrison has provided a powerful model for his poetry, few contemporary critics see any correlation of style or thematic concern in their work. Ian Gregson questions the idea that Armitage ’ s ‘ New Generation ’ poetry and its various socio - literary concerns (depthlessness and ‘ the loss of historical consciousness ’ ) could interact meaningfully with the poetry produced by Harrison, and suggests that ‘ all of the New Generation poets are more in sympathy with television and cinema and contemporary music than older 2 Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence (New York: OUP, 1997), p. 11. 13 contemporaries such as Seamus Heaney [and] Tony Harrison ’ . 3 This view seems warranted given the unique stylistic approaches and thematic concerns which animate Armitage ’ s work and is also convincing insofar as Harrison ’ s poetry seems more combative and pragmatic than Armitage ’ s frequently playful compositions. Both poets are very different, operating within differing social and literary environments and representing, to a degree, two very different

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