-TÂ/igSEOBSIAW p o e t s : A. CBIIXCÆJEaaMIBA!ElûIif--CÆJ^ POETRY '' ARD POETIC THEORY. “ KATHARIKE COOKE. M. P h i l . , SIBL. v^'- ' / ProQuest Number: 10096794 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest 10096794 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 SYNOPSIS. As the Introduction explains this thesis sets out to look at the Georgians* achievement in poetry in the light of their intentions as avowed in prose and their methods as exemplified hy their poems. This is chiefly a critical exercise hut history has heen used to clear away the inevitable distortion which results from looking at Georgian poetry after fifty years of Eliot- influenced hostility. The history of the movement is dealt with in Chapter 2. The next three chapters examine aspects of poetry which the Georgians themselves con­ sidered most interesting. Chapter 3 deals with form, Chapter 4 with diction and Chapter 5 with inspiration or attitude to subject matter. Chapter 6 looks at the aspect of Georgianism most commonly thought by later readers to define the movement, th a t is i t s subjects. Chapter 7 considers the Georgians* outward looking attitude and their concern to popularise poetry as well as looking at the effects on their poetry of their considerable success. In Chapter 8 I examine the Georgian attitude to tradition and the way in which individual poets were influenced by their predecessors. Finally Chapter 9 attempts to make some tentative critical judgments not entirely in line with the Georgians own view of themselves. Two appendices lis t the poems which are central to this study, those pub­ lished in the five volumes of Georgian Poetry and the poetry books from which Marsh drew for his anthology and on which I have relied for a more general field of study. CONTENTS. Synopsis 1. Contents 2. Chapter 1:Introduction 3. Chapter 2: Georgian Poetry: Historical Background 30. Chapter 3: Gravy versus Tapioca: The Georgian Form 68. Chapter 4: "Common Words": The Georgian language 107. Chapter 5; The Greatest Mystery comes hy the greatest definiteness. 149. Chapter 6: Georgian Subjects 194. Chapter 7s The Georgians and th e ir Audience 232. Chapter 8: The Georgians and T radition 272. Chapter 9s Conclusion 317. Appendix A 3 5^ Appendix B 37/)- Bibliography. 37S 3 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION. Who were the Georgians, and what did they stand for in poetry? These questions must he answered, as far as this is possible, before any criticism of their work is embarked on. Immediately, th is ra ise s fundamental problems, which even the briefest look at the small amount of c ritic ism about the Georgians confirms. Very often who the Georgians were is in itself a critical statement producing results as varied as the multitude of candidates for the title permits. What the poets stood for, seems, even more, to invite prejudging the poets; it is difficult, without criticism to arrive at any idea of a poet's aim, or a group of poets' aims. It is, however, necessary to have at least a well-formed idea that the Georgians did stand for something in particular where poetry was concerned. Too often readers of twentieth- century poetry have received the impression that the Georgians were merely second-rate, washed-up remnants of Romanticism, the producers of unconsidered rural idylls. Closer inspection soon shows that this is in no way tru e. Georgian writings, prose as well as verse, will be examined in this thesis in an attempt to discover the essential qualities of the poetry. At the same time the prose especially will be used to demonstrate that, for the original Georgians, at least, Georgian poetry was new and revolutionary. For this reason, it is, I think worthwhile to look first, however briefly, at the two questions set out above. In this way the movement and the poetry can be put in a true historical perspective. The history of the movement is of paramount import- 4 ance especially when, a s.in the case of the Georgians, a short period of time has eclipsed any sense that the poets were writing for today, much less for all time. At various points in the thesis the history will be used to illuminate the development of the poetic phenomenon, and fo r the fa c ts of the case I am much in the debt of Robert Ross whose The Georgian Revolt I have used extensively and of the late Christopher Hassall whose two biographies of Edward Marsh and Rupert Brooke, have filled out the details of the very personal nature of the founding of the volumes. However, th is is not primarily a historical work. In the end, the hope is that the description "Georgian poetry" will emerge as a useful critical term having a precise meaning, refer- ' ring to the work of specific poets, work, which, more­ over, has enough in common despite wide variety, to warrant its being described by a collective adjective. Who were these Georgians? The answer to this is frequently tied to prejudiced views of their poetry. As John Press remarked: "Some writers who dislike all the connotations of the word Georgian are at pains to deny this title to any poet of merit who flourished between 1912 and 1922, the years spanned by Edward Marsh's anthologies. Robert Graves, we are assured was not a Georgian, nor were D.H.Lawrence, Edward Thomas, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, and Edmund Blunden. Whether or not they appeared in Georgian Poetry is, according to such "suohc critics, totally irrelevant. -What matters is the quality of their work: if it is good it cannot be Georgian; if it is Georgian, it must, ipso facto, be feeble." (l) Conversely if the writer is working for the Georgian cause the popular names are emphasised and the rest forgotten, usually without any attempt to give reasons for the selection. James Reeves' intro­ duction to the Penguin anthology is a case in point. He writes throughout of "Georgianism" and “Georgian Poets'* as though he were quite clear in his mind what the description entailed but nowhere is there any more critical definition of the criteria adopted than th is : "My determining object has been to make a selection of Georgian poetry which will appeal to the unprejudiced modern reader a fte r a generation of neglect." (2) Accordingly he chooses poems by Housman, Davies, Brooke, Flecker, Thomas, Owen, M asefield and other equally well known names. The hundreds of minor obscure poets who flourished in the period are represented by one poem each of J.C.Squire and Victoria Sackville-West, two of Ivor Gurney and three of Charles Sorley. If the critical attitude is abandoned,the I, w answer to Who were the Georgians? must be a historical one. Frank Swinnerton in The Georgian Literary Scene considers all writers in whatever genre, who flourished in the reign of George V (1911-1935), though within this period some writers are seen to be more typically Georgian than others. For the average reader - if he considers the Georgians at all - the answer to who they were is found in a combination of this wide h is to r ic a l perspective and a vague and not very favourable definition of Georgian as rural in inspiration and conventional in form at a time when the fashionable poets were exclusively urban and almost outrageously original. Clearly for practical purposes a more precise definition has to be adopted. InthiSLthesis the Georgians will be defined as those poets who contributed to any of the five anthologies of Georgian Poetry edited by Edward Marsh and published between 1912 and 1922. A list of these poets is found in Appendix A together with details of their contributions to each volume. This answer to the question "Who were the Georgians?" has certain drawbacks. Firstly, several of the poets who did contribute to the anthologies have little bearing on the second question "What did the Georgians stand for?" One poem contributors like Edmund Beale Sargant, Robert Calverley Trevelyan, Maurice Baring and Herbert Asquith cannot be considered as playing as important a role in the defining of Georgianism as other fig u res. Another fac to r makes some poets unsuitable material for research into peculiarly Georgian poetics. As the editor admitted in the Prefatory. Note to the second anthology some poets were included in the first volume who were now seen to belong to: "an earlier poetic generation, and their inclusion must now be allowed to have been an anachronism." (3) Primarily Marsh is here referring to T. Sturge Moore and G.E.Chesterton whom he had included in^shrewd endeavour to help sales for the sake of lesser-known more genuinely Georgian poets. A.E. Housman, who was approached for a contribution, presumably with the same end in view, declined. These writers and some ~1 of the contributors to the fifth volume, Richard Hughes, William Kerr and J.D.C.Pellow, who seem to epitomise the development of what Graves called "Georgianismatism" receive scant attention in the following pages.