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. 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 Memory of My Father L. W. Sharpe (1920–2010) 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 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 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 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 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. She is the author of Regions of Sorrow: Anxiety and Messianism in Hannah Arendt and W. H. Auden (Stanford University Press, 2003) and the editor of Hannah Arendt: Reflections on Literature and Culture (Stanford University Press, 2007). Her current book project is entitled The Importance of Metaphysics: The Intellectual Heresies of W. H. Auden. Hugh Haughton is Professor of English and Related Literature at the University of York. He is the editor (with Valerie Eliot) of The Letters of T. S. Eliot, volumes 1 and 2 (Faber, 2009). Other recent publications include The Poetry of Derek Mahon (Oxford University Press, 2007), an edition of Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny (Penguin, 2003), and Second World War Poems (Faber, 2004). Alan Jacobs is the Clyde S. Kilby Professor of English at Wheaton College in Illinois. He has published a critical edition of Auden’s The Age of Anxiety (Princeton University Press, 2011) and is currently working on an edition of For the Time Being. His most recent book Contributors xiii is The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (Oxford University Press, 2011). Chris Jones is the author of Strange Likeness: The Use of Old English in Twentieth-Century Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2006). He teaches English at the University of St Andrews. Edward Mendelson teaches English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and is the literary executor of the Estate of W. H. Auden. Janet Montefiore is Professor of Twentieth Century English Literature at the University of Kent, where she has taught since 1978. Her books include Feminism and Poetry (Pandora, 1987, 1993, 2004), Men and Women Writers of the 1930s (Routledge, 1996), and Rudyard Kipling (British Council/Northcote House, 2007). Steve Nicholson is Professor of Twentieth Century Theatre and Performance and Director of Theatre in the School of English at the University of Sheffield. He has written extensively about aspects of the- atre and politics in the inter-war period and also about contemporary playwrights. He is currently completing the fourth and final volume of a study of theatre censorship in Britain between 1900 and 1968, as well as a book about British theatre in the 1960s for Methuen’s new Modern British Playwriting series.