The Poetics of Utopia

Focusing on the work of two of the 20th-century''s most politically engaged poets - W. B. Yeats and W. H. Auden - this book unpacks how they directly confront the concept of "utopia," how they engage with utopia as a literary genre, and how their work conceives of poetry as a utopian artform capable of uniquely embodying our social aspirations.Despite consistently projecting visions of more ideal futures through both its subject matter and its form, poetry is not often counted among the annals of utopian literature. Through an examination of these two great writers'' poems, essays, reviews, and other writings, with a focus on many of their best-known poems, this book highlights both the pervasive presence of a utopian impulse in their work and the importance of their contributions to discussions of utopia''s meaning and relevance in both their own politically fraught era and ours.>

Préface
Taking renowned poets Yeats and Auden as its foci, this book examines the relations between poetry and utopia in early to mid 20th-century literature in English.

Auteur

Stewart Cole is Associate Professor of English and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, USA, where he teaches courses in modern British and Irish literature, literary criticism, and the environmental humanities. He is also the author of 2 poetry collections, Questions in Bed and Soft Power.

Texte du rabat

Focusing on the work of two of the 20th-century's most politically engaged poets - W. B. Yeats and W. H. Auden - this book unpacks how they directly confront the concept of "utopia," how they engage with utopia as a literary genre, and how their work conceives of poetry as a utopian artform capable of uniquely embodying our social aspirations.

Despite consistently projecting visions of more ideal futures through both its subject matter and its form, poetry is not often counted among the annals of utopian literature. Through an examination of these two great writers' poems, essays, reviews, and other writings, with a focus on many of their best-known poems, this book highlights both the pervasive presence of a utopian impulse in their work and the importance of their contributions to discussions of utopia's meaning and relevance in both their own politically fraught era and ours.

Contenu

Introduction: Shadows of Futurity
Chapter One: "Ever new and ever ancient": The Pastoral Utopias of Early Yeats
Chapter Two: "History is very simple": Desire and the Meanings of Utopia in Later Yeats
Chapter Three: "The Good Place has not yet been": The Pursuit of Unity in Early Auden
Chapter Four: "The ungarnished offended gap": Utopia and Negative Poetics in Later Auden
Chapter Five: Draped in Black: Ekphrasis and the Ends of Utopia