Description
Book SynopsisFeaturing contributions from some of the major critics of contemporary poetry, Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry offers an accessible, imaginative, and highly stimulating body of critical work on the evolution of British and Irish poetry in the twentieth-century.
Trade Review“The editors have admirably carried out their self-imposed tasks ... The somewhat complicated arrangement is amply justified if one considers the work as a classroom tool, aimed primarily at giving a student audience food for thought, Helen Goethals.” (Cercles, 2012)
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
1 Modern Poetry: Transition and Trauma 11
Thomas Hardy, Edward Thomas and Wilfred Owen
Thomas Hardy 11
Extract from British Poetry in the Age of Modernism 17
Peter Howarth
Edward Thomas 30
Extract from The Poetry of Edward Thomas 33
Andrew Motion
Wilfred Owen 37
Extract from Poetry of Mourning 41
Jahan Ramazani
2 Forms of Modernism: Things Fall Apart 57
W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence
W. B. Yeats 57
Extract from Our Secret Discipline 63
Helen Vendler
T. S. Eliot 71
Extract from He Do the Police in Different Voices 77
Calvin Bedient
D. H. Lawrence 83
Extract from ‘Hibiscus and Salvia Flowers’ 87
Tom Paulin
3 Poetry of the Thirties: Between Two Fires 94
W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice and Stephen Spender
W. H. Auden 94
Extract from ‘The 1930s Poetry of W. H. Auden’ 98
Michael O’Neill
Louis MacNeice 108
Extract from Louis MacNeice 112
Peter McDonald
Stephen Spender 120
Extracts from The Ironic Harvest 123
Geoffrey Thurley
4 Poetry of the Forties: Realism and Rhetoric 129
Keith Douglas and Dylan Thomas
Keith Douglas 130
Extract from ‘I in Another Place’ 133
Geoffrey Hill
Dylan Thomas 141
Extract from The Romantic Survival 144
John Bayley
5 Post-War Poetry: Featureless Morning, Featureless Night 149
Philip Larkin and the Movement
Philip Larkin 149
Extract from Out of Reach 154
Andrew Swarbrick
The Movement 162
Extract from The Movement 166
Blake Morrison
6 Beyond the Movement: No Bloodless Myth 178
Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and Geoffrey Hill
Ted Hughes 179
Extract from ‘Ted Hughes: The Double Voice’ 182
Margaret Dickie
Sylvia Plath 187
Extract from Sylvia Plath and the Theatre of Mourning 191
Christina Britzolakis
Geoffrey Hill 200
Extract from ‘History to the Defeated’ 203
Alan Robinson
7 Situated Sequences and Marginal Voices 214
Basil Bunting, Hugh MacDiarmid, Thomas Kinsella, Stevie Smith and Tony Harrison
Hugh MacDiarmid, Thomas Kinsella, and Basil Bunting 214
Extracts from The Modern Poetic Sequence 218
M. L. Rosenthal and Sally M. Gall
Stevie Smith 230
Extract from A History of Twentieth-Century British Women’s Poetry 232
Jane Dowson and Alice Entwistle
Tony Harrison 234
Extract from The Poetry of Tony Harrison 237
Luke Spencer
8 Northern Irish Poetry: The Poles of Our Condition 245
Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon
Seamus Heaney 245
Extracts from The Poetry of Seamus Heaney 250
Neil Corcoran
Derek Mahon 259
Extract from Poetry in the Wars 263
Edna Longley
Afterword 267
Recommended Reading 272
Index 290
