RETURN TO POESIA (FIRST PAPER)
1. Introduction (by Paola
Enguix)
2.
Influence of Byronism until World War II
2.1.
Byron’s influence on Victorian writer Charlotte Bronte (by Mª José Jorquera)
2.2. The
20th Century
2.2.1. The first decades of the 20th Century (by Josué Álvarez)
2.2.2. The Thirties (by Manuela
Elisa Blanes & Julia Fernández)
2.2.3. The Forties (by Jéssica Aguilar & Cristina
Camps)
When the 1940s arrived
United Kingdom was at war, and a new generation of war poets appeared in
response. These included Keith Douglas, Alun Lewis, Henry Reed and F. T.
Prince. Many of these war poets owed something to the 1930s poets, but their
work grew out of the particular circumstances in which they found themselves
living and fighting.
The main movement in
post-war 1940s poetry was the New Romantic group that included Dylan Thomas,
George Barker, W. S. Graham, Kathleen Raine, Henry Treece and J. F. Hendry.
These writers saw themselves as in revolt against the classicism of the New
Country poets. They turned to such models as James Joyce, and helped their own
poetry to emerge as a recognisable force.
Other significant
poets to emerge in the 1940s include Lawrence Durrell, Bernard Spencer, Roy
Fuller, Norman Nicholson, Vernon Watkins, R. S. Thomas and Norman McCaig. These
last four poets represent a trend towards regionalism and poets writing about
their native areas; Watkins and Thomas in Wales, Nicholson in Cumberland and
MacCaig in Scotland. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_poetry#The_Forties)
The Apocalyptic Movement:
The New Apocalyptics were a group of poets in the UK in the 1940s, taking
their name from the anthology The New
Apocalypse (1939), which was edited by J. F. Hendry and Henry Treece. There
followed the further anthologies The
White Horseman (1941) and Crown and
Sickle (1944). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Apocalyptics)
The Apocalyptic Movement or New Apocalypse were a group of poets in which
were included writers such as J. F. Hendry and Henry Treece, which ones we
could consider the fathers of the movement. But, we have to mention that Dylan
Thomas was who really was in charge of the poetry of the movement. Some of the
authors that rejected strict adherence to the movement were W. H. Auden,
Stephen Spender, Louis MacNeice, and C. Day Lewis. But, there were some poets
that could be mentioned because of their important paper inside the movement
poetry, as Ian Bancroft, Alex Comfort, Dorian Cooke, John Gallen, Wrey
Gardiner, Robert Greacen, Robert Herring, Sean Jennett, Maurice Lindsay, Nicholas
Moore, Philip O'Connor, Leslie Phillips, Tom Scott, Gervase Stewart, Vernon
Watkins, and Peter Wells.
(http://www.enotes.com/twentieth-century-criticism/apocalyptic-movement).
James
Findlay Hendry and Henry Treece were a Scottish and a British poets and writers, that wrote together some poetry anthologies such as The New Apocalypse (1939); followed by
the further anthologies The White
Horseman (1941) and Crown and Sickle
(1944). Henry Treece wrote also some critical
studies, for example, one of Dylan Thomas, after which edition they both fell
out because Thomas refused to sign up as a New Apocalyptic. That fact seems to
be very strange, because Thomas was who continued their poetry for ages.
Dylan Thomas was a
very important author in the 1940’s, not because his writings developed towards
or away from difficulty, but because it was liable to lean either way at any
time, until it reached certain stability in his last poems. Thomas used to talk
with hostility towards common external opinions because he was a rebel and
wanted to write as anyone had written before. This is one the characteristics
he shares with Byron’s poetry. But there are some more such as the non-answered
questions that appear in his poems or problematic complexity in some bipolar
tendencies and themes.
This post-Thomas
manner, called New Apocalypse, was a 1930s phenomenon marginally attached at
the end of the decade to a poetry which had been in production since 1933, in
Thomas’s hands, and a good deal earlier among the forces that influenced him.
Probably most poetry
readers at 1940s extremist poetry now would see it ludicrously perverse, and
certainly as poetry of and for a group or clique of poets completely
disconnected from any common reader. But it shouldn’t be forgotten that it
arose directly from the popular and successful poetry of Thomas himself.
(http://www.aprileye.co.uk/thomas.html)
Bibliography:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_poetry#The_Forties
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Apocalyptics
Home page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki
http://www.enotes.com/twentieth-century-criticism/apocalyptic-movement
Home page: www.enotes.com
http://www.aprileye.co.uk/thomas.html
Home page: www.aprileye.co.uk
3. Conclusion (by Aina García & Mª Llanos García)
RETURN TO POESIA (FIRST PAPER)