Kent Academic Repository Full text document (pdf) Citation for published version Walters, Rosemary Anne (2020) Zig Zag: Cultures in Common and the Poetry of Charles Causley. Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) thesis, University of Kent, University of Kent. DOI Link to record in KAR https://kar.kent.ac.uk/81342/ Document Version UNSPECIFIED Copyright & reuse Content in the Kent Academic Repository is made available for research purposes. Unless otherwise stated all content is protected by copyright and in the absence of an open licence (eg Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher, author or other copyright holder. Versions of research The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record. Enquiries For any further enquiries regarding the licence status of this document, please contact: [email protected] If you believe this document infringes copyright then please contact the KAR admin team with the take-down information provided at http://kar.kent.ac.uk/contact.html ZIG ZAG: ‘CULTURES IN COMMON’ AND THE POETRY OF CHARLES CAUSLEY Doctor of Philosophy: University of Kent Revised April 2020 Rosemary Anne Walters (Student ID: 15909337) Word Count: 82,402 1 Copyright Statement This thesis is © 2020 Dr Rosemary Walters and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International Licence “Quotations from the letters from Charles Causley © 2020 Bruce Hunter” Causley’s work is © of his literary estate. Anyone wishing to reproduce his work should contact David Higham Associates 6th Floor, Waverley House, 7-12 Noel St, London W1F 8GQ T +44 (0)20 7434 5900 www.davidhigham.co.uk This thesis contains quotations from poetry and other works included under the fair dealing provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended and revised). The author does not assert ownership of third party copyright, for which all rights are reserved by the copyright holder unless otherwise stated. 2 Contents Abstract: 6 Introduction: A Marginal Curiosity: Causley and His Critics 8 Choosing a Context: Williams and Cultural Theory 11 Mapping the Context: The Central Concepts 15 A New Approach: Causley and Cultural Studies 21 Chapter One: ‘Structures of Feeling’ in Childhood and Community 23 Place as Security, Place as Oppression 26 The Structures of Working-Class Life: Self-help and Collectivism 29 Education: Hymns, Prayers, Songs and a Love of Poetry 39 Adolescence: Left Wing Politics and the Premonition of War 52 Peace into War: The Expansion of Experience 59 Chapter Two: War, Peace and ‘Cultures in Common’ 62 The Coming of War: Boarding the Train 65 Returning Home: Communal Memory and ‘Common Culture’ in Education 80 Getting Published: The Small Press and Poetry Beyond the Private 95 ‘Cultures in Common’: The Context for the Future 109 3 Chapter Three: Culture and Modernity: Causley, Modernism and the Movement 110 Lyric, Modernity and Estrangement 117 Diction and Energy in Defamiliarization 121 Representation, Voice and Readership: Causley and the Movement 127 Steadily into the Sixties 140 Chapter Four: Equality, Popularity and the Traditional: Causley in the Sixties 144 Expanded Consciousness and Alternative Verse: Causley and the ‘Poetry Wars’ 150 Equality of Being: Aspects of Working-Class Life in Causley 158 The Traditional Popular in Causley’s Ballads 173 Independence, Equality and the Popular 182 Chapter Five: Into the Eighties: Conventions, Class and Culture 184 Destination and Vision 187 Pastoral and Proletarian 190 Working-Class Consciousness: Art and Experience 199 4 Residual and Emergent Pastoral 209 ‘A Thrilling Departure’: The End of the Eighties 217 Chapter Six: Missing the Point or Doing it Right?: Causley and Children’s Poetry 220 The Adult Poet: The Primal Insight 226 Innocence Enjoyed in Causley’s Construct of Childhood 230 Innocence Betrayed in Causley’s Construct of Childhood 237 The Child as Urchin in Causley’s Construct of Childhood 241 Expanding the ‘Common Culture’: The Child as Poet, The Child as Consumer 250 The Transparent Disguise: The Achievement of Causley’s Poetry for Children 25 Chapter Seven: Selecting from Tradition: Causley as Anthologist 260 Selection and Tradition 261 The Function of Poetry: Confronting the Darkness 267 The Composition of Art: Poetry and Motivation 275 The Aesthetic of Poetry and Causley’s ‘Poetic Truth’ 282 Influencing the Future and Continuing the Past 29 Conclusion: 295 Bibliography: 297 5 Abstract: In studying the work of the poet Charles Causley (1917-2003) and interpreting his poetics through Raymond Williams’s ideas of ‘cultures in common’, this thesis is an original perspective on Causley’s work. There is very little academic study of his poetry and none which views it specifically through the lens of Williams’s cultural theory. This thesis achieves both of these aims through a reading of Causley’s poetry as the product of his life in various cultures: childhood, adolescence, service in the Navy in World War Two and his employment as a primary school teacher in Launceston. It proposes an additional ‘culture in common’ of the community of his readers. In analysing these stages of Causley’s life and work, the thesis adds to the body of scholarship on Causley’s poetry, sadly neglected academically by those suspicious of his distinctive popular contribution to post-war poetics. 6 Unless otherwise stated all poems are taken from Charles Causley, Collected Poems (London: Picador, 2000) Other major works by Causley are referred to in the text thus FAW Farewell, Aggie Weston (Aldington: The Hand and Flower Press, 1951) SL Survivor’s Leave (Aldington: The Hand and Flower Press, 1953) US Union Street (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1960) JL Johnny Alleluia (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1961) UTW Underneath the Water (London: Macmillan, 1968) SD Secret Destinations (London, Macmillan, 1984) AFV A Field of Vision (London: Macmillan, 1988) CPC Collected Poems for Children London: Macmillan, 2000) 7 Introduction ‘A Marginal Curiosity’: Causley and his Critics This thesis is a comprehensive critical study which examines and analyses the poetry of Charles Causley (1917-2003). It claims that his poetry provides a convincing and significant example of the application of literary and cultural theory originating in Raymond Williams’s proposition that ‘culture is ordinary’.1 Williams critiqued the elitist and manipulative definition of culture which excluded the experiences and creativity of working class communities. Causley’s poetry constitutes an important example of the persistence of literary production foregrounding the life of such communities in the second half of the twentieth century. This persistence is evident in his inclusion on the school curriculum, the endorsement by a major publisher, Macmillan, and his popularity in literary magazines such as The Listener and arts programmes on the radio. It challenged the encroaching effects of mass media which, along with previous assumptions of the elitist concept of culture, neglected the inclusion of authentic expressions of everyday working-class life in cultural activity. Appreciative reviews of Causley’s work do exist, many of which were written towards the end of his life and in obituaries, when a more definitive conclusion could be reached 1 Raymond Williams, ‘Culture is Ordinary’ in Resources of Hope: Culture, Democracy, Socialism, ed. by Robin Gable (London: Verso, 1989), pp. 92-100. 8 reflecting his varied use of poetic form and the emphasis on everyday experience and relationships in much of his content. Sebastian Barker accounted for Causley’s persistent popular appeal by praising it in these terms: For poems about childhood, ordinary people, and one’s own family, he is the best of guides. In fact, his solidarity with the generality of persons is exemplary: he can show up Auden in this respect.’2 Nevertheless, Causley’s contemporary and posthumous reputation in academic contexts as predominantly a writer of ballads and lyric poetry, conventional in stanzaic formula and employing discernible patterns of rhyme and metre, remains a persistent judgement. Causley’s response to the post-war world and the legacy of modernism in poetry from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, appeared to academic and literary circles to be an attempt to revalidate past forms and ignore post-war disintegration in society and culture. The critic and poet R. S. Gwynn, writing a review of the American edition of Causley’s Selected Poems 1977-1988, remarked that reviewers in American magazines criticised Causley for writing as though Pound and Eliot had not existed.3 2 Sebastian Barker, ‘The Genuine Miracle of a Talismatic Celt: Charles Causley: Collected Poems 1951-2000’ Thumbscrew 17, Winter 2000/1 <poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/recorddd04.html?id=12133> [accessed 5 March 2020]. 3 R. S. Gwynn, ‘Secret Destinations: Selected Poems 1977-1988’ Eratosphere Blogg, 12 March 2003 <www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=474> [accessed 18 March 2020]. 9 Simon Rae felt that behind much of Causley’s adherence to traditional forms was the desire to escape, not confront, time.4 The critic Christopher Ricks was scathing regarding both the task of returning to previous poetic tradition and Causley’s ability to mould past conventions into any degree of meaning for the second half of the twentieth century. Such assessment