Overview

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.

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9781350293854

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Reviews

A lucid, carefully argued and insightful reading of two of the towering figures of British poetic modernism that raises productive questions about issues rarely raised at all - most vitally about the relationship between poetics and the utopian impulse, as well as about the often conflicting and complex relationship between modernist disenchantment and utopian desire * Antonis Balasopoulos, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Cyprus *

A lucid, carefully argued and insightful reading of two of the towering figures of British poetic modernism that raises productive discussions about issues rarely raised at all - most vitally about the relationship between poetics and the utopian impulse, as well as about the often conflicting and complex relationship between modernist disenchantment and utopian desire. * Antonis Balasopoulos, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Cyprus *

Author Information

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.

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