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How audens homosexuality showed in his poetry
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This essay will discuss the poet Wystan Hugh Auden, his childhood, religion, his poetry, and what inspired him and influenced his poetry. Our poet was born in the north of England in February of 1907, to a physician father, George Agustus Auden, and Constance Rosalie Bicknell, a deeply believing Christian. Auden experienced doubts in his Christianity and these will be discussed in terms of whether or not they had any effects on his poetry, and if so, in what ways. When one searches for information on W.H. Auden, on the internet for example, it is quickly revealed that he was homosexually oriented. This fact will also be a part of the discussion on his poetry. After doing research on Auden’s inspirations for his poetry, faith and sexual orientation, one might ask how Auden treated homosexuality in his poems.
Wystan Hugh Auden was raised in a Christian home as mentioned above, his parents both being children of clergymen. His mother being a deeply believing Christian, she would make sure that her family would practice their religion, and in doing so “she saw to it that family prayers were held daily” and every Sunday she took Wystan and his two older brothers to services in Solihull parish church. At the Sunday services, dressed in a red cassock and white linen cotta, Wystan, would act as a “boat boy”. He was satisfied with his first encounter of faith, taking actual part in the sermon, instead of sitting on a church bench and having to listen to it. When Auden was around the age of thirteen he started to question his Christian beliefs, and his gradual loss of faith coincided with him becoming more aware of his sexual feelings and at the age of fifteen he had already started to grow sexually attracted to one of his fellow pup...
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Whitehead, John. A commentary on the poetry of W.H.Auden, C.Day Lewis, Louis Macneice, and Stephen Spender. , Lampeter, Dyfed, Wales: The Edwin Mellen Press 1992. 620, 621, 871-73.
Woods, Gregory. "Gregory Woods." : Auden's Platonic Blow. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. .
"W. H. Auden." : The Poetry Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. .
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"How Dirty Is That Auden Poem That Was Too Dirty for the 'Times Book Review'?." Vulture. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. .
The book begins with Whitefield's early years growing up in an inn, which exposed him to many different people, including actors. Later, Whitefield utilized what he learned from the actors and became known for his theatrical sermons. Stout traces Whitefield through some of his difficult days as a student and servitor at Oxford University. As a servitor, Whitefield was in the lowest social class and had to serve more wealthy students. During this time, he converted to Christianity and joined John Wesley's "Holy Club.
As the world progresses, attitudes and values constantly change, like the wind. Flowing through the depths of our inner morality and beliefs. Welcome back to another episode of Poetry Aloud, where I talk about poetry… aloud. Today I will be discussing how Victorian poets are able to illustrate this changeable nature of attitudes and values within their world through highlighting our most prevalent desires that unlock the true beast of humanity, thus exploring humanity’s transforming perspectives as society progresses. Letitia (La tee sha) Elizabeth Landon’s The Marriage Vow highlights
Throughout her early life, Dorothy has been confused about her call of being a Christian. As a little girl, Dorothy was always taught things about Christianity, whether that meant how to behave, how to pray, or even how to think. The reason she began to lose trust in her faith is because no one ever told her why she was doing things a certain way. For her, one of the greatest source of inspiration was the Psalms. “...through these Psalms and canticles I called on all creation to join with me in blessing the Lord. I thanked him for creating me, saving me from all evils, filling me with all good things” (29). Dorothy felt connected to God by reading the Psalms. She felt joyous and enthusiastic to communicate with God in such a way. Another religious influence she had was a volume of John Wesley’s sermons in her early teens. As she grew older and more attached to the materialistic world, her faith slowly became a part of her life that held little or no importance to her.
Comparing The Passionate Shepherd to His Love and Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd. and the stark contrast of the treatment of an identical theme, that of love within the framework of pastoral life. I intend to look at each poem separately to give my interpretation of the poet's intentions and then discuss their techniques and how the chosen techniques affect the portal of an identical theme. The poem The Passionate Shepherd to His Love appears to be about the Elizabethan courtly ideal of living with the barest necessities, like.
The poetry of Phillis Wheatley is crafted in such a manner that she is able to create a specific aim for each poem, and achieve that aim by manipulating her position as the speaker. As a slave, she was cautious to cross any lines with her proclamations, but was able to get her point across by humbling her own position. In religious or elegiac matters, however, she seemed to consider herself to be an authority. Two of her poems, the panegyric “To MAECENAS” and the elegy “On the Death of a young Lady of Five Years of Age,” display Wheatley’s general consistency in form, but also her intelligence, versatility, and ability to adapt her position in order to achieve her goals.
(9) W.H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays, New York: Vintage Books, 1968, p. 235.
10 W. H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays, Vintage New York 1989, p.201
We learned that our genetic make-up determines family; we are who we are as a result of our parents. Although we inherit physical, mental, and emotional characteristics from them, I, however, cannot accept that who our parents are, is whom we will become. Contrary to my beliefs, Andrew Hudgins and Phillip Larkin believe quite the opposite. Hudgins, “Begotten,” and Larkin’s, “This be The Verse,” despite having somewhat similar themes, both poems possess vastly different tones.
Edna St. Vincent Millay has created complex as well as emotionally and politically charged poetry in her career. Her poetry is often considered expressive yet also indifferent by some critics. Yet, her skill with metaphor and other evocative poetic features bring us poems that are reflective of her self, and also ourselves as readers. By developing skilled metaphors for interpreting and developing her own identity as an author and for us as a reader, we are given a construction of selfhood. In this essay, I will analyze Edna St. Vincent Millay’s two poems; If I should learn, in some quite casual way, and What lips my lips have kissed in order to explain the meaning and presence of selfhood in lyric poetry. Through interpreting Millay’s poems, I will explain the construction of selfhood or identity in each poem through formal structures. Understanding selfhood comes with understanding one’s surroundings and how we are able to relate or compare ourselves to these surroundings. Edna St. Vincent Millay does a very complete job of bringing metaphor, narrative, diction and imagery to h...
Whitman uses homosexuality in his poetry to present how sexual experimentation helps individuals develop. The reader should see a person’s sexuality as a development in their life. According to Killingsworth “Complete human beings, especially artists, must transcend themselves during their development
This is to say that the combination of the two conflicting theologies actually resulted from the reality of living in a time of transition from one set of beliefs to the next. The poem’s melting together of Christian and pagan values reflects the time in which it was written, a period in which the virtues of one age began fading and another began to emerge.
Adrienne Rich’s “Twenty-One Love Poems,” which explore the nature of lesbian love, differ strikingly from classic love poems written by a man to a woman, such as Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” and Thomas Campion’s “There Is a Garden in Her Face.” Rich’s poems focus on the “us” aspect of love, the concept of two strong, yet imperfect women facing all oppositions together, while the love poems written by men are far more reverent, almost worshipful of their subjects. The lesbian poems have a sense of love being “real”, a connection based on far more than physical attraction, whereas the men’s poems focus on an idealized view of the woman: beautiful, pure, distant. The women in Marvell and Campion’s poems are lovely façades, storybook figures without any real depth or imperfections. Perhaps the lesbian love poems could be seen as less eloquent, or less flawlessly romantic, but the romance in them is found in the genuine nature of the love. Rich is doubtlessly writing about experiences she has had, real people she has loved, whereas Marvell and Campion could ostensibly be writing about any beautiful, but otheriwse characterless, woman that they’ve seen.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an influential literary figure during the nineteenth century; his works inspired people to think about the world and their own lives differently, but what prompted him to write his poems? How does his life reflect off of his poems? Longfellow’s philosophy begs the question how and why he wrote what he did and what deeper meanings lie behind his poems. His interest to pursue writing, had been encouraged by various events and led to the publishing of numerous essays, poems, novels and dramas, receiving great success. One of his more famous poems, entitled “A Psalm of Life,” had been influenced by the romanticism period and was known for its inspirational message to live life to the fullest. As Longfellow’s work
In the early to mid nineteenth century, two great poets exemplified the American Romanticism period Emily Dickenson and Walt Whitman; Furthermore, their poetry was so unique that it emphasized freedom of individual experiences and found the beauty in life and death in their writings. Throughout this essay, we will cover the similarities and the differences of what early Americans considered to be the “saints” of American Romantic poets because each poet uses a specific style and form, literary voice, and personal experiences within the pieces expressing to readers images of what American was like at the time. It is hard to put these two poets into any one particular category or define one particular style because both Emily Dickenson and Walt Whitman did not follow the norms of writing or style. Whereas, Emily was a recluse where as she kept much of her work private and family published the majority of her work posthumously but Walt was very outspoken about his writings and as an American.
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s personal life and religious background had a powerful, significant influence on his poetry and evidence of this can be found in one of his well known poems, “Good-by”.