The “Grace of the Absurd”; Form and Concept in W. H. Auden's For the Time Being
In the world of English Christian poetry the co-ordinates by which we usually map our position are Dante and Milton. Any serious, inclusive religious poem, that is, one in which the Christian matter is presented in devotional mode with prophetic intent, will, ultimately, exhibit a more significant i...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1974
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| In: |
Harvard theological review
Year: 1974, Volume: 67, Issue: 3, Pages: 275-288 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | In the world of English Christian poetry the co-ordinates by which we usually map our position are Dante and Milton. Any serious, inclusive religious poem, that is, one in which the Christian matter is presented in devotional mode with prophetic intent, will, ultimately, exhibit a more significant inherent relationship either to the Divine Comedy or to Paradise Lost. T. S. Eliot, clearly, was Dantesque, and though the story of his ambivalent Miltonism is no longer even a smouldering issue, it still speaks cogently to the point of his anti-Miltonic sensibility. Auden, however, was atypical in that though he talked much about Dante, when it came down to cases he wrote more like Milton. And in For the Time Being he faced a problem very similar to the one Milton faced in Paradise Lost. What Puritanism was to Paradise Lost, Existentialism was to For the Time Being, enormously complicating the devotionalism, but simultaneously dramatizing and humanizing it. |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4517 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0017816000016825 |