Description
Product ID: | 9781503633926 |
Product Form: | Paperback / softback |
Country of Manufacture: | GB |
Title: | Auden and the Muse of History |
Authors: | Author: Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb |
Page Count: | 312 |
Subjects: | Literature: history and criticism, Literature: history & criticism, Literary theory, Literary studies: poetry and poets, Literary theory, Literary studies: poetry & poets, USA |
Description: | Select Guide Rating Concentrating on W. H. Auden's work from the late 1930s, when he seeks to understand the poet's responsibility in the face of a triumphant fascism, to the late 1950s, when he discerns an irreconcilable "divorce" between poetry and history in light of industrialized murder, this startling new study reveals the intensity of the poet's struggles with the meanings of history. Through meticulous readings, significant archival findings, and critical reflection, Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb presents a new image and understanding of Auden's achievement and reveals how his version of modernism illuminates urgent contemporary issues and theoretical paradigms: from the meaning of marriage equality to the persistence of fascism; from critical theory to psychoanalysis; from precarity to postcolonial studies. "The muse does not like being forced to choose between Agit-prop and Mallarme," Auden writes with characteristic lucidity, and this study elucidates the probity, humor, and technical skill with which his responses to historical reality in the mid-twentieth century illuminate our world today. Concentrating on W. H. Auden''s work from the late 1930s, when he seeks to understand the poet''s responsibility in the face of a triumphant fascism, to the late 1950s, when he discerns an irreconcilable "divorce" between poetry and history in light of industrialized murder, this startling new study reveals the intensity of the poet''s struggles with the meanings of history. Through meticulous readings, significant archival findings, and critical reflection, Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb presents a new image and understanding of Auden''s achievement and reveals how his version of modernism illuminates urgent contemporary issues and theoretical paradigms: from the meaning of marriage equality to the persistence of fascism; from critical theory to psychoanalysis; from precarity to postcolonial studies. "The muse does not like being forced to choose between Agit-prop and Mallarmé," Auden writes with characteristic lucidity, and this study elucidates the probity, humor, and technical skill with which his responses to historical reality in the mid-twentieth century illuminate our world today. |
Imprint Name: | Stanford University Press |
Publisher Name: | Stanford University Press |
Country of Publication: | GB |
Publishing Date: | 2022-12-13 |