DOCSLIB.ORG

W. H. Auden in Context Edited by Tony Sharpe Frontmatter More Information

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
W. H. Auden in Context Edited by Tony Sharpe Frontmatter More Information Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-19657-4 - W. H. Auden in Context Edited by Tony Sharpe Frontmatter More information W. H. AUDen IN COnteXT W. H. Auden is a giant of twentieth-century English poetry whose writings demonstrate a sustained engagement with the times in which he lived. But how did the century’s shifting cultural terrain affect him and his work? Written by distinguished poets and schol- ars, these brief but authoritative essays offer a varied set of coor- dinates by which to chart Auden’s continuously evolving career, examining key aspects of his environmental, cultural, political, and creative contexts. Reaching beyond mere biography, these essays present Auden as the product of ongoing negotiations between him- self, his time, and posterity, exploring the enduring power of his poetry to unsettle and provoke. The collection will prove valuable for scholars, researchers, and students of English literature, cultural studies, and creative writing. Tony Sharpe is Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Lancaster University. He is the author of critically acclaimed books on W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, Vladimir Nabokov, and Wallace Stevens. His essays on modernist writing and poetry have appeared in journals such as Critical Survey and Literature and Theology, as well as in various edited collections. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-19657-4 - W. H. Auden in Context Edited by Tony Sharpe Frontmatter More information © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-19657-4 - W. H. Auden in Context Edited by Tony Sharpe Frontmatter More information W. H. AUDen IN COnteXT edited by TONY SharPE Lancaster University © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-19657-4 - W. H. Auden in Context Edited by Tony Sharpe Frontmatter More information cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City Cambridge University Press 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521196574 © Cambridge University Press 2013 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2013 Printed in the United States of America A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data W. H. Auden in context / [edited by] Tony Sharpe, Lancaster University, England pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-521-19657-4 (hardback) 1. Auden, W. H. (Wystan Hugh), 1907–1973 – Criticism and interpretation. I. Sharpe, Tony, 1952– editor of compilation. PR6001.U4Z 8914 2012 811′.52–dc23 2012021040 ISBN 978-0-521-19657-4 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-19657-4 - W. H. Auden in Context Edited by Tony Sharpe Frontmatter More information In Memory of My Father L. W. Sharpe (1920–2010) © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-19657-4 - W. H. Auden in Context Edited by Tony Sharpe Frontmatter More information © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-19657-4 - W. H. Auden in Context Edited by Tony Sharpe Frontmatter More information Contents List of Contributors page xi Acknowledgements xvii A Note on Editions and Abbreviations xix Introduction 1 Tony Sharpe PART I CONTEXTS OF PLACE 1. Auden’s Northerliness 13 Tony Sharpe 2. Two Cities: Berlin and New York 24 Patrick Deer 3. Ideas about England 35 Stan Smith 4. Ideas of America 47 Aidan Wasley 5. At Home in Italy and Austria, 1948–1973 56 Justin Quinn PART II SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS 6. Auden and the Class System 69 Adrian Caesar 7. The Church of England: Auden’s Anglicanism 79 Tony Sharpe 8. British Homosexuality, 1920–1939 89 Gregory Woods vii © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-19657-4 - W. H. Auden in Context Edited by Tony Sharpe Frontmatter More information viii Contents 9. American Homosexuality, 1939–1972 99 Richard R. Bozorth 10. Auden among Women 107 Janet Montefiore 11. Auden and the American Literary World 118 Aidan Wasley 12. Atlantic Auden 128 Michael Wood PA RT III POLITICAL, HISTORICAL, AND THEORETICAL CONTEXTS 13. Communism and Fascism in 1920s and 1930s Britain 141 Matthew Worley 14. Auden and Wars 150 Patrick Deer 15. Auden and Freud: The Psychoanalytic Text 160 John R. Boly 16. Auden’s Theology 170 Alan Jacobs 17. Auden in History 181 Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb PART IV (i) CREATIVE CONTEXTS 18. The Body 195 Edward Mendelson 19. The Cinema 205 Keith Williams 20. 1930s British Drama 217 Steve Nicholson 21. The Documentary Moment 228 David Collard 22. Travel Writing 237 Tim Youngs © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-19657-4 - W. H. Auden in Context Edited by Tony Sharpe Frontmatter More information Contents ix 23. Auden and Post-war Opera 246 Michael Symmons Roberts Part IV (ii) Precursors and Contemporaries 24. Earlier English Influences 257 Chris Jones 25. Auden and Shakespeare 266 Stephen Regan 26. Yeats 276 Michael O’Neill 27. Eliot 286 Hugh Haughton 28. Some Modernists in Early Auden 297 Gareth Reeves 29. Auden in German 306 Rainer Emig 30. Auden and Isherwood 316 James J. Berg and Chris Freeman PART V THE ‘MOST PROFESSIONAL’ POET 31. Auden in Prose 329 Sean O’Brien 32. Auden and Little Magazines 337 Andrew Thacker 33. Double Take: Auden in Collaboration 347 Richard Badenhausen 34. Auden and Prosody 359 Sean O’Brien 35. Auden’s Forms 369 Seamus Perry Guide to Further Reading 381 Index 391 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-19657-4 - W. H. Auden in Context Edited by Tony Sharpe Frontmatter More information © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-19657-4 - W. H. Auden in Context Edited by Tony Sharpe Frontmatter More information Contributors Richard Badenhausen is Professor and Kim T. Adamson Chair at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, where he also directs the Honours program. He teaches classes in the humanities, war literature, theories of place, and trauma studies and is the author of T. S. Eliot and the Art of Collaboration (Cambridge University Press, 2005). James J. Berg is Dean of Arts and Sciences at the College of the Desert in California. He is co-editor, with Chris Freeman, of three books: the Lambda Literary Award–winning collection The Isherwood Century (University of Wisconsin Press, 2000), Conversations with Christopher Isherwood (University Press of Mississippi, 2001), and Love, West Hollywood (Alyson Books, 2008). He also edited and introduced Isherwood on Writing (University of Minnesota Press, 2007). John R. Boly teaches modern literature and theory at Marquette University. He is the author of Reading Auden: The Returns of Caliban (Cornell University Press, 1991). Richard R. Bozorth is Associate Professor of English at Southern Methodist University. He has written on modernism and LGBT lit- erature, and is author of Auden’s Games of Knowledge: Poetry and the Meanings of Homosexuality (Columbia University Press, 2001). Adrian Caesar was formerly Associate Professor of English at UNSW@ADFA, and is currently an Honorary Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University in Canberra. He is the author of three literary-critical studies, a prize-winning non-fiction novel, and four books of poetry. His latest book of poems is High Wire (Pandanus Press, ANU, 2006). David Collard is an independent scholar based in London. He is currently researching Auden on Film, a study of all the poet’s writings for and about the cinema. xi © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-19657-4 - W. H. Auden in Context Edited by Tony Sharpe Frontmatter More information xii Contributors Patrick Deer is Associate Professor of English at New York University, where he focuses on war literature and culture, modernism, and con- temporary British literature. He is the author of Culture in Camouflage: War, Empire and Modern British Literature (Oxford University Press, 2009) and was Guest Editor of The Ends of War, a special issue of Social Text 91 (Summer 2007). He is currently writing Deep England: Forging British Culture After Empire. Rainer Emig is Chair of English Literature and Culture at Leibniz University in Hanover, Germany. His publications include Modernism in Poetry (Pearson, 1995), W. H. Auden (Macmillan, 1999), and essays on Auden in Translation and Nation (Multilingual Matters, 2001), The Cambridge Companion to W. H. Auden (2004), and The Oxford Book of British and Irish War Poetry (2006). Chris Freeman is co-editor, with James J. Berg, of The Isherwood Century (University of Wisconsin Press, 2000); Conversations with Christopher Isherwood (University Press of Mississippi, 2001), and Love, West Hollywood (Alyson Books, 2008). He teaches English and Gender Studies at the University of Southern California. Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Northwestern University, where she is associate chair of the English Department and director of the Poetry and Poetics Colloquium and Workshop.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • An Unexplained Death TPB an Unexplained Death the True Story of a Body at the Belvedere MIKITA BROTTMAN
    An Unexplained Death TPB An Unexplained Death The True Story of a Body at the Belvedere MIKITA BROTTMAN The unnerving true story of an unexplained death in Baltimore’s historic Belvedere building When the body of a missing man is discovered in the Belvedere, an apparent suicide, resident Mikita Brottman becomes obsessed with the mysterious circumstances of his death. The Belvedere used to be a hotel dating back to Baltimore’s Golden Age but is now converted into flats, and as Brottman investigates the perplexing case of the dead man, she soon becomes caught up in the strange and violent secrets of the Belvedere’s past. Her compulsions drive her to an investigation lasting over a decade. Utterly absorbing and unnerving, An Unexplained Death will lead you down the dark and winding corridors of the Belvedere and into the deadly impulses and obsessions of the human heart. RELEASE DATE: 8 NOVEMBER 2018 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Export/Airside - Export/Airside/Ireland Mikita Brottman is a writer and a professor in the Department of PAPERBACK Humanistic Studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art in downtown 9781786892652 Baltimore. She is also a certified psychoanalyst and runs a true crime £ podcast called Forensic Transmissions. She lives in the old Belvedere Hotel in Mount Vernon, Baltimore, with her partner, David, and French bulldog, Oliver. @MikitaBrottman | mikitabrottman.com An Unexplained Death TPB 02 SALES & DISTRIBUTION CONTACTS TRADE ORDERS & AUTHORIZED REPRESENTATIVES RETURNS UK Sales Manager The Book Service Ltd (TBS) Sam Brown Frating Green, Colchester, 07980 712110 Essex CO7 7DW [email protected] Phone +44 (0)1206 256 060 Key Account Manager www.thebookservice.co.uk Kim Lund Grantham Book Services (GBS) 07980 712111 Trent Road [email protected] Grantham Scotland and North East England Lincolnshire John McColgan NG31 7XQ Tel.
    [Show full text]
  • Caryl Phillips
    Caryl Phillips born 1958, St. Kitts, West Indies website: www.carylphillips.com Education B.A. (Honours) The Queens College, Oxford University (1979) Honorary Degrees • Hon. D. Univ: Leeds Metropolitan University (1997) • Hon. D. Univ: University of York (2003) • Hon. D. Lett: University of Leeds (2003) • Hon. D. Lett: University of the West Indies (2010) • Hon. D. Lett: University of Edinburgh (2012) • Docteur Honoris Causa: University of Liege, Belgium (2015) Publications Fiction • A VIEW OF THE EMPIRE AT SUNSET (2018) • Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. USA • Random House/Vintage. UK • THE LOST CHILD (2015) • Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. USA • Oneworld. UK • IN THE FALLING SNOW (2009) • Harvill Secker. UK • Knopf. USA • DANCING IN THE DARK (2005) • Secker and Warburg. UK • Knopf. USA • A DISTANT SHORE (2003) • Secker and Warburg. UK • Knopf. USA • THE NATURE OF BLOOD (1997) • Faber and Faber. UK • Knopf. USA • CROSSING THE RIVER (1993) • Bloomsbury. UK • Knopf. USA (1994) • CAMBRIDGE (1991) • Bloomsbury. UK • Knopf. USA (1992) • HIGHER GROUND (1989) • Viking. UK • Viking. USA • A STATE OF INDEPENDENCE (1986) • Faber and Faber. UK • Farrar, Straus and Giroux. USA • THE FINAL PASSAGE (1985) • Faber and Faber. UK • Penguin. USA Non fiction • COLOUR ME ENGLISH (2011) • Harvill Secker. UK • The New Press. USA • FOREIGNERS (2007) • Harvill Secker. UK • Knopf. USA • A NEW WORLD ORDER (2001) • Secker and Warburg. UK • Vintage. USA • THE ATLANTIC SOUND (2000) • Faber and Faber. UK • Knopf. USA • THE EUROPEAN TRIBE (1987) • Faber and Faber. UK • Farrar, Straus and Giroux. USA Anthologies • THE RIGHT SET: A TENNIS ANTHOLOGY (1999) [Editor] • Faber and Faber. UK • Vintage. USA • EXTRAVAGANT STRANGERS: A LITERATURE OF BELONGING (1997) [Editor] • Faber and Faber.
    [Show full text]
  • Literary Scholars Association Critics
    The 14th Annual Conference of The Association of October 24-26, 2008 Literary Scholars Sheraton Society Hill Hotel Critics and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Literature Titles from Oxford Journals www.adaptation.oxfordjournals.org www.camqtly.oxfordjournals.org www.english.oxfordjournals.org www.alh.oxfordjournals.org www.cww.oxfordjournals.org ADAPTATION AMERICAN LITERARY THE CAMBRIDGE CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH Adaptation provides an HISTORY QUARTERLY WOMEN’S WRITING Published on behalf of international forum to Covering the study of US The Cambridge Quarterly CWW assesses writing The English Association, theorise and interrogate the literature from its origins was established on the by women authors from English contains essays phenomenon of literature through to the present, principle that literature is an 1970 to the present. It on major works of English on screen from both a American Literary History art, and that the purpose of reflects retrospectively on literature or on topics of literary and film studies provides a much-needed art is to give pleasure and developments throughout general literary interest, perspective. forum for the various, enlightenment. It devotes the period, to survey the aimed at readers within often competing voices itself to literary criticism variety of contemporary universities and colleges of contemporary literary and its fundamental aim work, and to anticipate and presented in a lively inquiry. is to take a critical look at the new and provocative and engaging style. accepted views. women’s writing. www.fmls.oxfordjournals.org
    [Show full text]
  • T. S. Eliot Collection
    T. S. Eliot Collection Books and Pamphlets (unless otherwise noted, the first listing after each Gallup number is a first edition) The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock in Poetry. A Magazine of Verse. Edited by Harriet Monroe. June 1915. Gallup C18. The first appearance of the poem. Near fine copy. A2 Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry, Alfred A. Knopf, 1917 [i.e. 1918]. Good copy, a bit worn and faded. A4 Ara Vus Prec, The Ovid Press, 1920. Very good copy, light wear. Poems, Alfred A. Knopf, 1920 (first American edition), Head of spine chipped, otherwise very good. A5 The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. Alfred A. Knopf, 1921 (American issue). Fine in chipped dust jacket. ----- Alfred A. Knopf, 1930 (American issue). Good, no dust jacket. The Waste Land in The Dial, Vol. LXXIII, Number 5, November 1922. Gallup C135. Published “almost simultaneously” in The Criterion. Extremities of spine chipped, otherwise a very good copy. A8 Poems: 1909-1925, Faber & Gwyer Ltd., 1925 (first edition, ordinary copies). Very good, no dust jacket. ----- Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1932 (first American edition). Good only, no dust jacket. Poems: 1909-1925. Faber & Faber, 1932. Reset edition. Fine in dust jacket. 1 T. S Eliot Collection A9 Journey of the Magi, Faber & Gwyer Ltd., 1927. Very good. ----- Faber & Gwyer Ltd., 1927 (limited copies). Fine copy. ----- William Edwin Rudge, 1927 (first American edition). Copyright issue, one of only 27 copies. Fine copy. A10 Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca, Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1927. Very good. A11 A Song for Simeon, Faber & Gwyer Ltd., 1928.
    [Show full text]
  • Sharpe, Tony, 1952– Editor of Compilation
    more information - www.cambridge.org/9780521196574 W. H. AUDen IN COnteXT W. H. Auden is a giant of twentieth-century English poetry whose writings demonstrate a sustained engagement with the times in which he lived. But how did the century’s shifting cultural terrain affect him and his work? Written by distinguished poets and schol- ars, these brief but authoritative essays offer a varied set of coor- dinates by which to chart Auden’s continuously evolving career, examining key aspects of his environmental, cultural, political, and creative contexts. Reaching beyond mere biography, these essays present Auden as the product of ongoing negotiations between him- self, his time, and posterity, exploring the enduring power of his poetry to unsettle and provoke. The collection will prove valuable for scholars, researchers, and students of English literature, cultural studies, and creative writing. Tony Sharpe is Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Lancaster University. He is the author of critically acclaimed books on W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, Vladimir Nabokov, and Wallace Stevens. His essays on modernist writing and poetry have appeared in journals such as Critical Survey and Literature and Theology, as well as in various edited collections. W. H. AUDen IN COnteXT edited by TONY SharPE Lancaster University cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City Cambridge University Press 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521196574 © Cambridge University Press 2013 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
    [Show full text]
  • First Name Initial Last Name
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Carolina Digital Repository Sarah E. Fass. An Analysis of the Holdings of W.H. Auden Monographs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Rare Book Collection. A Master’s Paper for the M.S. in L.S. degree. April, 2006. 56 pages. Advisor: Charles B. McNamara This paper is an analysis of the monographic works by noted twentieth-century poet W.H. Auden held by the Rare Book Collection (RBC) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It includes a biographical sketch as well as information about a substantial gift of Auden materials made to the RBC by Robert P. Rushmore in 1998. The bulk of the paper is a bibliographical list that has been annotated with in-depth condition reports for all Auden monographs held by the RBC. The paper concludes with a detailed desiderata list and recommendations for the future development of the RBC’s Auden collection. Headings: Auden, W. H. (Wystan Hugh), 1907-1973 – Bibliography Special collections – Collection development University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Rare Book Collection. AN ANALYSIS OF THE HOLDINGS OF W.H. AUDEN MONOGRAPHS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL’S RARE BOOK COLLECTION by Sarah E. Fass A Master’s paper submitted to the faculty of the School of Information and Library Science of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Library Science.
    [Show full text]
  • Auden and Religion.', in the Cambridge Companion to W
    Durham Research Online Deposited in DRO: 13 November 2008 Version of attached le: Accepted Version Peer-review status of attached le: Peer-reviewed Citation for published item: Reeves, G. (2004) 'Auden and religion.', in The Cambridge companion to W. H. Auden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 188-199. Cambridge companions to literature. Further information on publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.2277/0521829623 Publisher's copyright statement: c Cambridge University Press 2004. Additional information: Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Durham University Library, Stockton Road, Durham DH1 3LY, United Kingdom Tel : +44 (0)191 334 3042 | Fax : +44 (0)191 334 2971 https://dro.dur.ac.uk GARETH REEVES Auden and religion Auden liked systems. He liked to categorize and pigeon-hole, but invariably with the awareness that all systems and categories only work on their own terms, that the systematizer is implicated in his creations, that consciousness, while freeing us to explain ourselves to ourselves and to each other, also imprisons us in the explanations we have framed.
    [Show full text]
  • Pdf, (Consulted in June 2020)
    Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique French Journal of British Studies XXVI-1 | 2021 The BBC and Public Service Broadcasting in the Twentieth Century BBC Arabic (1938-1995): Soft Power or Reithian Practice Abroad? Le Service arabe de la BBC, 1938-1995 : Soft Power ou pratique reithienne à l’étranger ? Houcine Msaddek Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/7056 DOI: 10.4000/rfcb.7056 ISSN: 2429-4373 Publisher CRECIB - Centre de recherche et d'études en civilisation britannique Electronic reference Houcine Msaddek, “BBC Arabic (1938-1995): Soft Power or Reithian Practice Abroad?”, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique [Online], XXVI-1 | 2021, Online since 05 December 2020, connection on 05 January 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/7056 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/ rfcb.7056 This text was automatically generated on 5 January 2021. Revue française de civilisation britannique est mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International. BBC Arabic (1938-1995): Soft Power or Reithian Practice Abroad? 1 BBC Arabic (1938-1995): Soft Power or Reithian Practice Abroad? Le Service arabe de la BBC, 1938-1995 : Soft Power ou pratique reithienne à l’étranger ? Houcine Msaddek I dedicate this work in memory of my father who was a devoted listener of BBC Arabic in the nineteen-sixties and throughout the seventies. Introduction 1 BBC Arabic is both the largest and oldest of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s non- English language services. Launched in January 1938 in an almost direct response to Mussolini’s increasingly provocative anti-British Arabic language broadcasts aired from Bari, the Arabic Service of the BBC has constantly cultivated the loyalty of millions of listeners in the Middle East and North Africa ever since.
    [Show full text]
  • 'Doctrine' and 'Poetry' in TS Eliot Tony Sharpe
    Contribution to Religion and Myth in the Poetry of T.S. Eliot, eds. Michael Bell and Scott Freer (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2016) 1 Feb 2016. [Published July 2016, pp. 27-47] ‘Somehow Integrated’: ‘Doctrine’ and ‘Poetry’ in T.S. Eliot Tony Sharpe I write this as the semi-centenary occurs of Eliot’s death in January 1965; his wife Valerie’s name has now joined his on the oval tablet at St Michael’s, East Coker, which invokes our ‘charity’ to pray for the repose of their souls. In suddenly-accelerated publication, five volumes of his letters and two of his collected prose have appeared in recent years; a new biography is imminent and a scholarly edition of the complete poetry in prospect. All this offers opportunity to take stock: the time, as might be said, is now propitious. Yet as early as 1938, Wallace Stevens was describing Eliot’s ‘prodigious reputation’ as ‘a great difficulty’ for any reader wishing to approach him ‘out of the pew’.1 Whether this surge of scholarship will increase or abate charitable impulses toward the poet and his oeuvre remains to be seen: Eliot’s visible presence in St Michael’s (not the only church in which he is commemorated), together with the accumulating volumes of his writing, could be viewed as part of an official installation already problematical, as hinted in Stevens’s mischievous formulation. For it almost became a truth universally acknowledged, that Eliot’s poetry was damaged by his Christianity; his faith was travestied as part of an intellectual evasion through which he accepted answers rather than posed questions, and in so doing lost contact with the powerful uncertainties and radical sources of unknowingness that had generated his earlier verse.
    [Show full text]
  • ABSTRACT Augustinian Auden: the Influence of Augustine of Hippo on W. H. Auden Stephen J. Schuler, Ph.D. Mentor: Richard Rankin
    ABSTRACT Augustinian Auden: The Influence of Augustine of Hippo on W. H. Auden Stephen J. Schuler, Ph.D. Mentor: Richard Rankin Russell, Ph.D. It is widely acknowledged that W. H. Auden became a Christian in about 1940, but relatively little critical attention has been paid to Auden‟s theology, much less to the particular theological sources of Auden‟s faith. Auden read widely in theology, and one of his earliest and most important theological influences on his poetry and prose is Saint Augustine of Hippo. This dissertation explains the Augustinian origin of several crucial but often misunderstood features of Auden‟s work. They are, briefly, the nature of evil as privation of good; the affirmation of all existence, and especially the physical world and the human body, as intrinsically good; the difficult aspiration to the fusion of eros and agape in the concept of Christian charity; and the status of poetry as subject to both aesthetic and moral criteria. Auden had already been attracted to similar ideas in Lawrence, Blake, Freud, and Marx, but those thinkers‟ common insistence on the importance of physical existence took on new significance with Auden‟s acceptance of the Incarnation as an historical reality. For both Auden and Augustine, the Incarnation was proof that the physical world is redeemable. Auden recognized that if neither the physical world nor the human body are intrinsically evil, then the physical desires of the body, such as eros, the self-interested survival instinct, cannot in themselves be intrinsically evil. The conflict between eros and agape, or altruistic love, is not a Manichean struggle of darkness against light, but a struggle for appropriate placement in a hierarchy of values, and Auden derived several ideas about Christian charity from Augustine.
    [Show full text]
  • W. H.AUDEN the DYER's
    I I By W. H. Auden w. H.AUDEN ~ POEMS ANOTHER TIME THE DOUBLE MAN ON THIS ISLAND THE JOURNEY TO A WAR (with Christopher Isherwood) ASCENT OF F-6 (with Christopher Isherwood) DYER'S ON THE FRONTIER " (with Christopher Isherwood) LETTERS FROM ICELAND (with Louis MacNeice) HAND FOR THE TIME BEING THE SELECTED POETRY OF W. H. AUDEN (Modern Library) and other essays THE AGE OF ANXIETY NONES THE ENCHAFED FLOOD THE MAGIC FLUTE (with Chester Kallman) THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES HOMAGE TO CLIO THE DYER'S HAND Random House · New York ' I / ",/ \ I I" ; , ,/ !! , ./ < I The author wishes to thank the following for permission to reprint 1I1ateriar indilded in these essays: HARCOURT, BRACE & WORLD-and JONATHAN CAPE LTD. for selection from "Chard Whitlow" from A Map of Verona and Other Poems by Henry Reed. HARVARD UNIVERSITY PREss-and BASIL BLACKWELL & MOTT LTD. for selection from The Discovery of the Mind by Bruno SnelL HOLT, RINEHART AND WINSTON, INc.-for selections from Complete r Poems of Rohert Frost. Copyright 1916, 1921, 1923, 1928, 1930, 1939, 1947, 1949, by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. FIRST PRINTING Copyright, 1948, 1950, 1952, 1953, 1954, © 1956, 1957, 1958, 1960, 1962, ALFRED A. KNOPF, INc.-for selections from The Borzoi Book of by W. H. Auden French Folk Tales, edited by Paul Delarue. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright THE MACMILLAN COMPANy-for selections from Collected Poems of Conventions. Published in New York by Random House, Inc., and simul­ Marianr.e Moore. Copyright 1935, 1941, 1951 by Marianne Moore; taneously in Toronto, Canada, by Random House of Canada, Limited.
    [Show full text]
  • Auden's Revisions
    Auden’s Revisions By W. D. Quesenbery for Marilyn and in memoriam William York Tindall Grellet Collins Simpson © 2008, William D. Quesenbery Acknowledgments Were I to list everyone (and their affiliations) to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for their help in preparing this study, the list would be so long that no one would bother reading it. Literally, scores of reference librarians in the eastern United States and several dozen more in the United Kingdom stopped what they were doing, searched out a crumbling periodical from the stacks, made a Xerox copy and sent it along to me. I cannot thank them enough. Instead of that interminable list, I restrict myself to a handful of friends and colleagues who were instrumental in the publication of this book. First and foremost, Edward Mendelson, without whose encouragement this work would be moldering in Columbia University’s stacks; Gerald M. Pinciss, friend, colleague and cheer-leader of fifty-odd years standing, who gave up some of his own research time in England to seek out obscure citations; Robert Mohr, then a physics student at Swarthmore College, tracked down citations from 1966 forward when no English literature student stepped forward; Ken Prager and Whitney Quesenbery, computer experts who helped me with technical problems and many times saved this file from disappearing into cyberspace;. Emily Prager, who compiled the Index of First Lines and Titles. Table of Contents Acknowledgments 3 Table of Contents 4 General Introduction 7 Using the Appendices 14 PART I. PAID ON BOTH SIDES (1928) 17 Appendix 19 PART II.
    [Show full text]