Collected Poems (Modern Library) by W.H. Auden  (17)
$26.40
|
The Cambridge Companion to W. H. Auden (Cambridge Companions to Literature) by Stan Smith
$28.99
|
Auden and Christianity by Arthur Kirsch
$25.60
|
Later Auden by Edward Mendelson  (2)
|
Selected Poems by W.H. Auden (1)
$10.85
|
This item is not eligible for Amazon Prime, but millions of other items are. Join Amazon Prime today. Already a member? Sign in.
|
|||||||||||||
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
This mammoth, accessible study ties the life of major English poet W.H. Auden to his ideas, and both to his poetry. MendelsonAa Columbia University professor who is also Auden's literary executorApicks up where his Early Auden left off, in 1939, when Auden emigrated to the United States. He sees in Auden two kinds of poetry, which he calls "myth" and "parable." The first stresses the impersonal and the aesthetic; the second, the voluntary and the ethical. Auden's best poems represent or acknowlege both; his weaker work adheres to one or the other. This intriguing interpretive scheme gets necessarily submerged as Mendelson tracks Auden's voluminous output, his life and his rapidly-shifting ideas. Throughout his writing life Auden's deepest beliefs changed frequently, sometimes faster than he could finish the poems he meant to embody them. (Some beliefs were strange indeed: in 1940 Auden thought that he had been granted true loveAin the form of longtime companion Chester KallmanAas a reward for his childhood attachment to lead-mining machinery.) Most usefully, Mendelson has read what Auden read, finding in now-neglected thinkers (Charles Williams, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, R.G. Collingwood, F.J.E. Raby and Owen Barfield) the seeds of this omnivorous and idiosyncratic poet's changes. Auden's successive reversals and self-repudiations can be dizzying; Mendelson's clear prose and copious citations do their best to help readers hang on. His focus on Auden's long poems and his defense of Auden's very late "domestic" poems will send many readers back to them. And the poet's own amply quoted manuscripts will give most readers one more source of pleasure: "You're so good," he tells one intimate, "and I'm a neurotic middle-aged butterball." (Apr.) FYI: John Fuller's W.H. Auden: A Commentary, published last year, is an exhaustive reader's companion to Auden's work. (Princeton Univ. $35 640p ISBN 0-691-00419-6)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
When British poet Fuller published his Reader's Guide to W.H. Auden (LJ 5/15/70), it was widely praised for its scholarship, organization, and completeness. Fuller, a professor of English at Oxford, knew then that further Auden discoveries were yet to be made; hence this masterfly latest work. Like the earlier book, this is an essential source for understanding so much that is Auden: Anglo-Saxon and Old English influences, allusions, form, and interpretation. An invaluable update, it includes not only Auden's collected and some uncollected poetry beginning in the late 1920s but also his plays, libretti, and (of substantial interest to Auden aficionados) some unused draft material. Fuller's commentary is erudite but also practical in revealing Auden as a complex, demanding poet and human being. Recommended for public and academic libraries.?Robert Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., IN
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
This mammoth, accessible study ties the life of major English poet W.H. Auden to his ideas, and both to his poetry. MendelsonAa Columbia University professor who is also Auden's literary executorApicks up where his Early Auden left off, in 1939, when Auden emigrated to the United States. He sees in Auden two kinds of poetry, which he calls "myth" and "parable." The first stresses the impersonal and the aesthetic; the second, the voluntary and the ethical. Auden's best poems represent or acknowlege both; his weaker work adheres to one or the other. This intriguing interpretive scheme gets necessarily submerged as Mendelson tracks Auden's voluminous output, his life and his rapidly-shifting ideas. Throughout his writing life Auden's deepest beliefs changed frequently, sometimes faster than he could finish the poems he meant to embody them. (Some beliefs were strange indeed: in 1940 Auden thought that he had been granted true loveAin the form of longtime companion Chester KallmanAas a reward for his childhood attachment to lead-mining machinery.) Most usefully, Mendelson has read what Auden read, finding in now-neglected thinkers (Charles Williams, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, R.G. Collingwood, F.J.E. Raby and Owen Barfield) the seeds of this omnivorous and idiosyncratic poet's changes. Auden's successive reversals and self-repudiations can be dizzying; Mendelson's clear prose and copious citations do their best to help readers hang on. His focus on Auden's long poems and his defense of Auden's very late "domestic" poems will send many readers back to them. And the poet's own amply quoted manuscripts will give most readers one more source of pleasure: "You're so good," he tells one intimate, "and I'm a neurotic middle-aged butterball." (Apr.) FYI: John Fuller's W.H. Auden: A Commentary, published last year, is an exhaustive reader's companion to Auden's work. (Princeton Univ. $35 640p ISBN 0-691-00419-6)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
When British poet Fuller published his Reader's Guide to W.H. Auden (LJ 5/15/70), it was widely praised for its scholarship, organization, and completeness. Fuller, a professor of English at Oxford, knew then that further Auden discoveries were yet to be made; hence this masterfly latest work. Like the earlier book, this is an essential source for understanding so much that is Auden: Anglo-Saxon and Old English influences, allusions, form, and interpretation. An invaluable update, it includes not only Auden's collected and some uncollected poetry beginning in the late 1920s but also his plays, libretti, and (of substantial interest to Auden aficionados) some unused draft material. Fuller's commentary is erudite but also practical in revealing Auden as a complex, demanding poet and human being. Recommended for public and academic libraries.?Robert Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., IN
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
Product Details
|