WH AUDEN

(1907-1973)

BIO

  • father =

    • physician (York, Birmingham)

  •  stable childhood, interests in science

  • Oxford: 

    • friends = Stephen Spender, Louis MacNiece, C. Day Lewis

    • -->

    • new poetic techniques

    • to express social consciousness & political reform

  • "liberal" years: 

    • political reform of Oxford

    • Marxism of BB

    • Spanish liberals       

  • 1928-29: 

    • year in Berlin

    • after graduation

    • --> influence of German literature

    • (esp. Marxist poet & dramatist Bertolt Brecht) ·       

  • 1930-37: 

    • taught school in England & Scotland (EVW)

BIO

  • 1937: 

    • Spanish Civil War

    • drove ambulance for Republicans

      • (loyal to Spain's leftist government)

    • --> disillusionment with the left, return to Christianity        

  • 1939: 

    • moved to USA (citizen in 1946) ·       

  • opera liberati: 

    • edited, collaborated with American poet friend Chester Kallman ·       

  • 1956: 

    • Professor of Poetry at Oxford ·       

  • 1972:

    • moved back to Oxford (winter home) ·       

  • 1973:

    • died in Vienna

STYLE

  • WW II poets

  • political left

    •  liberal

    • political criticism

    • to expose social & political problems

  • influence of earlier writers

  • (Hopkins, Yeats, Eliot)

    • à plain  speech

    • ironic understatement

    • precise & suggestive images

    • (HARDY)

     

  • playing with words

  • variety of rhythms

  • creating striking literary effects

  • *moral function of poetry

  • à

    • dispel hate, promote love

    •  foster "rational moral choice"

    • (see political left, above)

 

STYLE

 

*POETRY:

  • captured the horrors, anxieties, hopes of his times            

  • post-WWI era = "The Age of Anxiety" (volume of poetry)

  • 3 phases:

    1) confused, precocious

    2) political (1930s, '40s)

    3) religious

"The Unknown Citizen"

  • (1940)

  • dehumanization

    • (DH Lawrence)

    • reduced to statistics

    •  bar codes

    •  # of the beast

  • exposing social problem (left)

"Who's Who"

  • (1936)

  • sonnet

  • cheap biographies

  • wish for simple life/envied one who had

  • #2 not impressed with #1's fame

  • no sentimentality

 

LINKS LINKS