Popular Music and the Myth of Englishness in British Poetry by Brian Allen East A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Auburn University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Auburn, Alabama May 9, 2011 Keywords: Englishness, popular music, British poetry, poetics, national identity Copyright 2011 by Brian Allen East Approved by Jeremy Downes, Chair, Professor of English Jonathan Bolton, Professor of English Virginia M. Kouidis, Associate Professor Ruth C. Crocker, Professor of History Abstract This dissertation deconstructs the myth of Englishness through a comparative analysis of intersections between popular music and the poetry of the British Isles. In particular, my project explores intersections where popular music and poetry critics attempt to define Englishness, intersections where poetry and music combine to perform Englishness, and intersections where poetry and music combine to resist Englishness. In the wake of centuries of colonialism, British cultural expressions comprise a hybrid discourse that reflects global influences. I argue that attempts by critics to preserve the myth of Englishness result in the exclusion of a diversity of voices. Such exclusionary tactics potentially promote the alienation of future readers from British poetry. A comparative analysis of intersections between poetry and popular music expands the current critical discourse on British poetry to incorporate the hybridity of British popular music. Although for comparative purposes I consider music as a literature, I do not focus on song lyrics as the exclusive, or primary “text” of popular music. Instead, I am much more interested in the social forces that transform popular music into an expression of Englishness. Often this expression is different from the type of Englishness found in British poetry. However, at other times, British music’s expression of Englishness directly intersects with British poetry. Many of the poets in my discussion, despite their canonical status within British poetry, have ambivalent or outright resistant attitudes towards Englishness. The myth of Englishness is a social construction, and I feel that the deconstruction of that myth may be found at the cultural intersections of British poetry and popular music. ii Table of Contents Abstract.........................................................................................................................................ii Introduction: Englishness, Poet Laureates, and Pop Songs .......................................................... 1 Part 1: Defining Englishness...................................................................................................... 1 Part 2: Poet Laureates .............................................................................................................. 11 Part 3: Pop Songs..................................................................................................................... 14 Chapter One: The Ballads of an Expanding Empire................................................................... 23 Part 1: Poetry, Popular Music, and National Identity (1728-1740) ......................................... 23 Part 2: The Beggar’s Opera ..................................................................................................... 39 Part 3: “Rule, Britannia!”......................................................................................................... 65 Part 4: The Poetic Legacy of The Beggar’s Opera and “Rule, Britannia!” ............................. 81 Chapter Two: Yeats and the Anglo-Irish Ballad......................................................................... 90 Part 1: Yeats’s Nonmusical Background ................................................................................. 90 Part 2: Yeats’s Early Interest in Irish Folk Traditions (1889-1904) ........................................ 93 Part 3: Labouring Without Music (1904-1932) ..................................................................... 110 Part 4: Yeats’s Later Folk Songs (1932-1939) ...................................................................... 125 Part 5: Yeats’s Legacy of Englishness/Irishness ................................................................... 144 Chapter Three: Music and National (Female) Identity in Edith Sitwell and Stevie Smith’s Poetry........................................................................................................................ 149 Part 1: Persons From Porlock ................................................................................................ 149 Part 2: “Sheer nonsense through megaphones”: Edith Sitwell’s Façade .............................. 165 iii Part 3: Stevie Smith’s Playground Songs .............................................................................. 186 Chapter Four: The Place of Popular Music in John Betjeman and Philip Larkin’s Poetry ...... 214 Part 1: The English Odeon..................................................................................................... 214 Part 2: John Betjeman’s Hymns of England.......................................................................... 221 Part 3: Philip Larkin’s Private Music Collection................................................................... 250 Chapter Five: Derek Walcott and Grace Nichols—The Politics and Poetics of Dub............... 285 Part 1: Popular Music, Poetry, and Postcolonial Identity in Britain (1976-1985)................. 285 Part 2: Music as Improvisation in Derek Walcott’s Poetry ................................................... 305 Part 3: Grace Nichols—Defying Silence with Song.............................................................. 337 Epilogue: Members of the Village Green Preservation Society ............................................... 367 Works Cited .............................................................................................................................. 371 iv Introduction: Englishness, Poet Laureates, and Pop Songs If identity is conferred in and by discourse and since discourse is by nature differential, dispersed and plural, it would follow that, no matter what national identity claims for itself, it can never be more than one among many. Empirically it seems obviously the case that each of us performs a number of identities. (23) The fabric of English society has also radically changed. We aspire to be a multi-racial, multi-cultural society, for whom the concept of ‘Englishness’ is at best an empty myth, the invention of an imaginary past; at worst an occasion for prejudice and political reaction. It has become a potential embarrassment, almost a dirty word. (Briggs 190) Poetry more than any other genres has tended to be discussed in the light of Englishness. English critics are prone to look for candidates for the post of Poet Laureate, whether official or not—and whether to praise or attack him/her. English poets themselves are certainly not always loath to contend for the title. (Ingelbien 7) Part 1: Defining Englishness In Why Poetry Matters, Jay Parini states that “A common assumption is that poetry reflects the voice of a nation. This is nonsense, as poets rarely speak for anyone but themselves” (117). In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, musician and philanthropist Bob Geldof flatly states that “pop music changes nothing” (Tannenbaum 80). Auden proclaims in “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” that “poetry makes nothing happen” (129). At first glance, these statements prove quite challenging for my thesis that numerous British poets tapped into the cultural fondness for popular music to express their national identities. Although some of the poets I discuss are noted for their Englishness, I will argue that each poet had political and aesthetic goals that were at odds with current definitions of Englishness. 1 What is Englishness? There is no cultural fingerprint of Englishness, no clearly definable identity that has a precise origin or present-day manifestation. Englishness cannot be measured by numbers of double-decker buses, pillar postboxes, British invasion bands, a wall of Cotswold stone or poems composed in iambic pentameter. Although the Englishness of those icons still resonates with some, Englishness is also an exclusionary force to those unfamiliar with the linguistic codes of the tribe. In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson presents nationality as a “cultural artifact of a particular kind,” which means that it is produced under the influence of particular historical and social contexts but “capable of being transplanted” into a variety of modern contexts (4). In the following pages, Englishness should be read as the artifact of an “imagined community” in Benedict Anderson’s sense of the term (4). This “artifact” is a series of nostalgic connections to an idealized past that centers on England itself and ignores its role as a subsumed entity of Great Britain and a historical center for colonial expansion. The origins of Englishness as an expression of national identity originate during the late eighteenth century. 1 The dissertation begins with the poetry of the period that immediately preceded this time; it ends with the period when national identity was emerging as a more hybrid conception (Anderson 4). In the wake of centuries of colonialism, twentieth-century British cultural expressions comprise a hybrid discourse that contains global influences.2 During the 1950s, immigrants from Asia and the Caribbean settled