Auden context
- Created by: molliegeorgiou
- Created on: 13-04-15 12:37
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- Auden context
- Early life
- Father was a medical officer and a psychologist
- Mother was a devout Anglican (member of the Church of England)
- Disliked Romantic poetry
- Grew up in an industrial area
- Attended Oxford University
- Poetic themes and techniques
- Riddle-like and clinical
- Applied concepts and science to traditional verse forms and metrical patterns
- Symbols and reality
- World War II had soured him to politics and warmed him to morality and spirituality
- Religion
- Saw imposition of religion on children as absurd
- Abandoned Christianity for 7 years before returning
- Moral language of Christianity
- 'You shall love your crooked neighbour/with your crooked heart'
- Felt a lot of guilt for his homosexuality in the 1930's and growing up he thought homosexuality was an illness
- Tried to have a heterosexual relationship but saw it as a sin as it was inherently unequal
- Modernism
- Self-conscious
- Often political or social agendas behind the works
- Auden was one of the first poets to introduce scientific and psychological concepts/terminology into his poetry
- Love
- Married Erika Mann so she could flee Nazi Germany (not in love)
- 'The More Loving One' poem
- 'Let the more loving one be me'
- Kallman's betrayal of Auden
- 'Let the more loving one be me'
- Isherwood said they had a 'telepathic understanding' of each other
- With Chester Kallman for 35 years
- Early life
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