The Poetics of Utopia: Shadows of Futurity in Yeats and Auden
BY STEWART COLE
Bloomsbury, 2023
ISBN: 9781350293861
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/poetics-of-utopia-9781350293861/
Focusing on the work of two of the twentieth-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.
BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.
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.
"A ludic, carefully argue and insightful reading of two of the towering figures of British poetic modernism that raises productive questions about issues rarely raise at all--most vitally about the relationship between poetics and the untopian impulse, as well as the often conflicting and complex relationship between modernist disenchantment and utopian desire." --Antonis Balasopoulos, University of Cypress
Stewart Cole is associate professor of English and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, where he teaches courses in modern British and Irish literature, literary criticism, and the environmental humanities. He is also the author of two poetry collections, Questions in Bed and Soft Power.
