Focusing on the work of two of the 20th-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.
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.

- 232 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Half-title Page
- Title Page
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Shadows of Futurity
- Chapter 1 “Ever New and Ever Ancient”: The Pastoral Utopias of Early Yeats
- Chapter 2 “History Is Very Simple”: Desire and the Meanings of Utopia in Later Yeats
- Chapter 3 “The Good Place Has Not Been”: The Pursuit of Unity in Early Auden
- Chapter 4 “The Ungarnished Offended Gap”: Utopia and Negative Poetics in Later Auden
- Chapter 5 Draped in Black: Ekphrasis and the End(s) of Utopia
- Conclusion: Shadows of Futurity
- Works Cited
- Index
- Copyright Page
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Yes, you can access The Poetics of Utopia by Stewart Cole in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & English Literary Criticism. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.