Woolf and the Thirties Poets

Studying Woolf’s relationship with the British male poets who first came to public attention in the 1930s clarifies tensions of the time concerning gender, generations, and, especially, literary form. The poetry of W. H. Auden, Cecil Day-Lewis, John Lehmann, Louis MacNeice, and Stephen Spender provoked Woolf’s criticism in large part for a reason that has received little attention, Woolf’s competition with poetry. This spirit of competition was not matched by the 1930s poets themselves. While Woolf’s criticism prompted the poets’ counter-arguments, Woolf’s fiction stirred only the young poets’ admiration, and in some cases imagination, both in her lifetime and after. This chapter looks at Woolf’s “A Letter to a Young Poet,” the poets’ response to Woolf in letters, poetry, and criticism, Woolf’s essay “The Leaning Tower” (1941), and the poets’ writing on Woolf after her death.

An English Poetic Rhapsodic Vision of The Spanish Civil War: An Intertextual Analysis of Roy Campbell’s Poetic Oeuvre

This article revisits and re-examines Roy Campbell’s poems inspired by the Spanish Civil War: Flowering Rifle, Talking Bronco and “A Letter from the San Mateo Front”. The studies carried out by Esteban Pujals (1959), Stephen Spender (1980) and Bernd Dietz (1985) reflect the scarcity of research about Campbell’s warlike poems. The methodology used in this article aims to develop a better understanding of Campbell’s war images and literary references to the Spanish conflict, by analysing them in the light of the poet’s own political ideology. Campbell presents a paean to the ‘Nationalist’ leadership and this exaggerated idealising of the rebels and their deeds contrasts with the way he denigrates those in favour of the Republic. The article concludes that this exaggerated feat transforms most of these poetic works into quasi-Manichaean pamphlets resembling more a morality play than a work of modern literature.

Fourteen Poems by C. P. Cavafy, chosen and illustrated by David Hockney, translated by Nikos Stangos and Stephen Spender (1966–67)

Review of: Fourteen Poems by C. P. Cavafy, chosen and illustrated by David Hockney, translated by Nikos Stangos and Stephen Spender (1966–67) London: Editions Alecto, Edition A, Folio, illustrated with 12 etchings bound and 1 loose etching, cotton silk boards and silk slipcase, limited edition item

“Swastika arms of passage leading to nothing”

Though the cross-medium modern style advocated by Herbert Read and Stephen Spender aimed to bring good design to political as well as aesthetic structures, the Ministry of Information mobilized modernist rhetoric for propaganda during World War II. British authors such as Graham Greene and Dylan Thomas scripted films promoting the “new Britain” to be achieved through architecture-led revolution, yet the politicization of style and wartime fears of double agents meant that Elizabeth Bowen, George Orwell, and Christopher Isherwood turned the intense focus on style to their own work. Bowen used the “swastika arms of passage leading to nothing” of the mock-Tudor Holme Dene to scrutinize her memory-laden, late modernist writing, while Orwell and Isherwood directed their attention to streamlined glass and steel structures to contemplate the potential duplicity of their seemingly candid vernacular style.

Between Kultur and Civilisation

This chapter on the interwar origins of the UK’s premier national cultural agency considers why literature—a form seemingly opposed to the more obvious forms of propaganda—was attractive to state investment. It does so by showing how literary policy was first yoked to foreign policy, amid the growing national rivalries of the 1930s, in ways that posed challenges for the cultural philosophy of the British state. It then turns to Stanley Unwin’s Books and Periodicals Committee to show how the British state deferred to literary experts and industry insiders, including to commission libraries of ‘world literature’ on decidedly English terms. The chapter concludes by discussing the contrasting approaches taken by T.S. Eliot and Stephen Spender to working for the state cultural ‘machine’ via the British Council.

Changing Contours of Nature: An Ecocritical Exploration of the Select Poems of Nissim Ezekiel and Stephen Spender

In an age where digital, virtual and augmented reality discourses are on an upsurge, the need to call for an environmental discourse is of paramount importance. Environmental literature or Eco literature stresses on the establishment of a strong bond between human and his or her immediate environment. A scrutiny of the works by eminent poets both East and West discloses the changing contours of nature. The changing landscapes, the extinction of flora and fauna, the diminishing relationship between humans and nonhumans are vividly and exquisitely rendered better by exuberant poets than any other creators. As a theoretical approach, ecocriticism grew out of the traditional approach in literature that addresses how humans relate to the nonhuman world or the environment in literature. In order to highlight the ecological transformation that has taken place from the past to the present, from the rural to the urban and from the local to global the present study has taken for analysis the select poems of the distinguished Indian poet Nissim Ezekiel and the renowned British poet Stephen Spender. Further, the select poems of Nissim Ezekiel and Stephen Spender are examined from an ecocritical lens.

Forming a Transnational Moral Community between Soviet Dissidents and Ex-Communist Western Supporters: The Case of Pavel Litvinov, Karel van het Reve and Stephen Spender

The Soviet dissident and human rights movement, emerging publicly in the mid-1960s, became known globally through various supportive actions of Moscow foreign correspondents and Western intellectuals. For instance, Pavel Litvinov, a well-known dissident, had close relationships with foreigners, especially Karel van het Reve, a Dutch correspondent in Moscow, and Stephen Spender, a British poet, both formerly communists. This article attempts to elucidate aspects of the personal and ethical interactions among these three figures, focusing on van het Reve's and Spender's support activities and projects, particularly the Alexander Herzen Foundation and Writers and Scholars International, founded in 1969 and 1971, respectively, to understand how a transnational moral community was formed.

Modernism, Space and the City

This innovative book examines the development of modernism in four European cities: London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. Focusing upon how literary and cultural outsiders represented various spaces in these cities, it draws upon contemporary theories of affect, mood, and literary geography to offer an original account of the geographical emotions of modernism. It considers three broad features of urban modernism: the built environment of the particular cities, such as cafés or transport systems; the cultural institutions of publishing that underpinned the development of modernism in these locations; and the complex perceptions of writers and artists who were outsiders to the four cities. Particular attention is thus given to the transnational qualities of modernism by examining figures whose view of the cities considered is that of migrants, exiles, or strangers. The writers and artists discussed include Mulk Raj Anand, Gwendolyn Bennett, Bryher, Blaise Cendrars, Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot, Christopher Isherwood, Hope Mirlees, Noami Mitchison, Jean Rhys, Sam Selon, and Stephen Spender.

New Verse

New Verse was a British literary magazine founded by Hugh Ross Williamson (1901–1978) and Geoffrey Grigson (1905–1985). Essentially Grigson’s hobbyhorse, this little magazine would become an influential player in London’s literary and publishing circles during the 1930s, with the young editor serving as chief publisher and curator for the entirety of New Verse’s six-year run (roughly thirty issues, ranging from January 1933 to May 1939). The publication – with its emphasis on observation, the everyday, and socially attuned poetry, however contradictorily channeled through Grigson’s editorial choices – played a key role in the dissemination, commentary, and early praise of the so-called New Country poets: Stephen Spender, Cecil Day Lewis, Louis MacNeice and, most centrally, W.H. Auden.