W. H. Auden and the Meaning of Lyric Poetry
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Date
2007Author
Quipp, Edward
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Abstract
My thesis proceeds from recent critical discussion about the status of
the aesthetic object after the decline of high theory of the 1980s and
1990s. The term “singularity”, articulated by critics working with the
ideas of Martin Heidegger, has been variously applied to the artwork
in the attempt to describe the generative power of art as separable
from any historical or political determinants that may shape it. What
makes the experience of art “singular”, that is, an experience
governed by the artwork itself, without the scaffolding of theory or
context?
Such a question, I argue, actually demands a return to the first
principles of close textual criticism, along with a rigorous approach to
genre. The lyric poetry of W. H. Auden provides the ideal material for
“singular” criticism. Unpacking the term lyric and redefining it
according to Auden’s particular poetics, I consider how Auden
inaugurated a new manner of experiencing modern poetry based on
the notion, implicit to the conventional understanding of lyric, of
vocality. After an account of Heidegger’s influence on contemporary
ideas on aesthetics, I consult the work of Theodor Adorno, and later
Hannah Arendt, in order to situate Auden’s early work in a European
context, opposing the Atlanticism which has governed the vast
majority of Auden criticism. Working to restore the power of the first
encounter with the poem to historically and philosophically nuanced
textual analysis, I present the key works of Auden’s early corpus in a
new light.