September 1, 1939 - W. H. Auden and the Afterlife of a Poem

This is a book about a poet - W. H. Auden, a wunderkind, a victim-beneficiary of a literary cult of personality who became a scapegoat and a poet-expatriate largely excluded from British literary history because he left. About a poem - ''September 1, 1939'', his most famous and celebrated, yet one which he tried to rewrite and disown and which has enjoyed - or been condemned - to a tragic and unexpected afterlife. About a city - New York, an island, an emblem of the Future, magnificent, provisional, seamy, and in 1939 about to emerge as the defining twentieth-century cosmopolis, the capital of the world. And about a world at a point of change - about 1939, and about our own Age of Anxiety, about the aftermath of September 11, when many American newspapers reprinted Auden''s poem in its entirety on their editorial pages.

Product details

• Authors: Ian Sansom, Ian Sansom
• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 31.12.2018
• EAN: 9780007557233
• ISBN: 978-0-00-755723-3
• Dimensions: 129 mm x 198 mm x 23 mm
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; New York, New York City, History of Ideas, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary Figures, English, HISTORY / United States / 21st Century, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, 21st Century, famous, United Kingdom, Great Britain, Literary studies: poetry & poets, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / General, c 1930 to c 1939, c 1918 to c 1939 (Inter-war period), Early 21st century c 2000 to c 2050, Literary studies: poetry and poets