S6: War Poetry And Post 1945 Poetry Flashcards
Wirtschaftliche Einschränkungen
Austerity
Britain after 1945
• Austerity despite victory in WW II
• Welfare state under Labour
• National insurance + NHS
• Implementation of Education Act
• Decolonialization
• UK turns from global power to insular European nation state
- joins EU in 1973
• Social and political changes and social unrest under Margaret Thatcher
Decolonialisation
• Colonies gain independence (India 1947, Rhodesia 1980)
• New definition of Commonwealth
How was Poetry since 1945?
- reaction to classical modernism
- new topics
- new voices (women, working class, postcolonial writers, celtic fringe)
Whats the Movement?
• Starting in the 1950s; anxieties of the post-war era
• Rejection of Modernism and the romantic elements of some of 1940s poetry
• Argued for a limited, rationalist, polished poetics
• Clarity (both in language and content) rather than obscurity and mystification
• Verbal restraint over stylistic excess, avoidance of rhetoric, austerity in tone
• Colloquial idiom and themes
Who are Movement Poets?
• Philip Larkin (1922-1985)
• Kingsley Amis (1922-1995)
• Donald Davie (1922-1995)
• D. J. Enright (1920-2002)
• John Wain (1925-1994)
• Elizabeth Jennings (1926-2001)
• Thom Gunn (1929-2004)
• Robert Conquest (1917-2015)
Who was Philipp Larkin? + 3 main works
• Worked as a librarian at the University of Hull
• Many accolades (Auszeichnungen); refused to become Poet Laureate
Main works:
• The Less Deceived
• The Whitsun Weddings
• High Windows
What are characteristics of Philipp Larkin‘s „High Windows“?
• Very direct language
• Modern times –> change in (sexual) attitudes; new sense of freedom
• Melancholy
• Sense of having missed out (not young enough for sexual revolution)
What were reactions against The Movement?
= British Poetry Revival
• Loose group of poets in the tradition of (American) modernists (Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams)
• Avant-garde movement influenced by ‘New American Poetry’
• J. H. Prynne, Sean Bonney, Denise Riley, Peter Manson
• Interest in theoretical discourses and performance
By whom is the poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”?
Dylan Thomas
„Do not go Gentle into that good night“ characteristics
• Form: villanelle
• Spanish / Italian origin; Renaissance dance-songs
• 19 lines, two repeating rhymes, two refrains
• 5 tercets, one quatrain
• A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2
(capital letters = the refrains; lowercase letters = rhymes)
Poetry since WWII
• Since the 1980s, spectrum of Britain’s poets more diverse in class, ethnicity, gender, and region
• Shift also to new literatures in English (Commonwealth, former colonies)
• Shift also towards poetry and the academy, in particular in the US (Strong correlation between poets and creative writing classes, Also in the US, splintering into distinct factions)
• Confessional free verse (‘postconfessional’; ‘neoconfessional’)
• New Formalism
• ‘Formal’ poets in the UK and Ireland: Carol Ann Duffy, Derek Walcott
• The Lyrical Mainstream (Charles Bernstein); against the ‘oppression’ of form
• Latino, Native American, Asian American poetries
• Transnational and cross-ethnic poetry
Who was the first poet laureate?
John Dryden
Poet Laureats in the UK
• Annual salary; barrel of sherry
• Requirements: no longer obligation to write for certain occasion; when and where can be chosen freely
• Public duties; educational and cultural influence
Who‘s the current Poet Laureat in the UK?
Simon Armitage (since 2019)
