LYRIC TRAGEDY
By the same author D. H. LAWRENCE D. H. LAWRENCE: THE CRITICAL HERITAGE (editor) HARDY: THE TRAGIC NOVELS (Casebook) (editor) GEORGE ELIOT: THE MILL ON THE FLOSS AND SILAS MARNER (Casebook) (editor) TRAGEDY: DEVELOPMENTS IN CRITICISM (editor)
LYRIC TRAGEDY R. P. Draper M MACMILLAN
R. P. Draper 1985 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1 st edition 1985 978-0-333-32514-8 Excerpts from High Windon's 1974 by Philip Larkin. reprinted bv permission of Faber & Faber Publishers and Farrar, Straus and Giroux Inc. All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1985 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Draper, R. P. Lyric Tragedy I. English poetry - History and criticism I. Title 821'.04 PR509.L8 ISBN 978-1-349-17918-3 ISBN 978-1-349-17916-9 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-17916-9
Contents Acknowledgements Vi Introduction 2 Milton: Lycidas and the Christianised Pastoral Elegy 35 3 Shelley, Tennyson and Arnold: the Pastoral Elegy and Doubt 54 4 Wordsworth: 'The still, sad music of humanity' 89 5 Hardy: Illusion and Reality III 6 Edward Thomas: the Unreasonable Grief 131 7 D. H. Lawrence: Tragedy as Creative Crisis 144 8 Wilfred Owen: Distance and Immediacy 162 9 Sylvia Plath: Death and the Self 178 10 Philip Larkin: 'the bone's truth' 201 Notes 215 Bibliography 223 Index 227
Acknowledgements The author and publishers wish to thank the following, who have kindly given permission to quote from copyright material: excerpt from 'Musee des Beaux Arts' by W. H. Auden, in W. H. Auden: Collected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson (1966), by permission of Faber & Faber Publishers and Random House Inc.; excerpts from 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' and The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, in Collected Poems 1909-1962, copyright 1936 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc., copyright 1963, reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber Publishers and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc.; excerpts from 'Aubade' by Philip Larkin, by permission of the author, and from 'Next, Please', 'Church Going' and 'Maiden N arne' by Philip Larkin, in The Less Deceived (1955), by permission of The Marvell Press; excerpts from 'The Old Fools', 'The Building' and 'The Explosion' by Philip Larkin, in High Windows (1974), by permission of Faber & Faber Publishers and Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc.; excerpts from 'Nothing To Be Said' by Philip Larkin, in The Whitsun Weddings (1964), and from The North Ship (1945, 1966) by Philip Larkin, by permission of Faber & Faber Publishers; excerpts from The Complete Poems oj D. H. Lawrence, ed. V. de S. Pinto and Warren Roberts (1964), Phoenix II (1968), The Letters oj D. H. Lawrence, 1901-13, ed. James T. Boulton (1978) and The Letters oj D. H. Lawrence, 1913-16, ed. George J. Zytaruck and James T. Boulton (1981), by permission of Laurence Pollinger Ltd, on behalf of the Estate of Mrs Frieda Lawrence Ravagli; excerpts from Wilfred Owen: War Poems and Others, ed. with Notes and Commentary by Dominic Hibberd (1973), by permission of Chatto & Wind us; VI
Acknowledgements Vll excerpts from The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath, ed. Ted Hughes (1981), poems copyright 1960, 1965, 1971, 1981 by the Estate of Sylvia Plath, editorial material copyright 1981 by Ted Hughes, and excerpts fromjohnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams and Other Prose Writings, copyright 1952, 1953, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1960, 1961, 1962 by Sylvia Plath, copyright 1977, 1979 by Ted Hughes, reprinted by permission of Olwyn Hughes, on behalf of Ted Hughes, and Harper & Row Publishers Inc.; excerpt from 'Dead Man's Dump' by Isaac Rosenberg, in The Collected Works of Isaac Rosenberg, ed. Ian Parsons (1979), by permission of the author's Literary Estate and Chatto & Windus; excerpt from 'The Rear Guard' by Siegfried Sassoon, in Collected Poems, copyright 1918, 1920 by E. P. Dutton & Co., copyright 1936, 1946, 1947, 1948 by Siegfried Sassoon, reprinted by permission of George Sassoon and Viking Penguin Inc.; excerpts from The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas, ed. R. George Thomas (1978), by permission of Oxford University Press; excerpts from 'Lapis Lazuli' by W. B. Yeats, in The Collected Poems ofw. B. Yeats (1950), from 'Deirdre' by W. B. Yeats, in The Variorum Edition of the-plays ofw. B. Yeats, ed. Russell K. Alspach and Catharine C. Alspach (1966), and from 'The Tragic Theatre' by W. B. Yeats, in Essays and Introductions (1961), by permission of A. P. Watt Ltd, on behalf of Michael B. Yeats and Miss Anne Yeats.