A.D.Hope: The Prophet In The Desert

A.D. Hope is one of the very few Australian poets who have gained international recognition. Much research has been done on the various facets of his poetry and poetics abroad. Yet it is regrettable that so far, on this prominent English poet in the 20th century, there seems to have been little substantial, comprehensive critical work done in China.This paper hopes to take some modest steps towards providing a more inclusive, up-to-date study on this accomplished poet and developing a fuller appreciation of his work. First, I will give a survey of Hope's life and his poetic achievements and the representative critical responses on the thematic concerns and style of his poetry. Then I will come up with my delineation of the major aspects of Hope's poetics through setting forth the four dualities: freedom vs discipline, self-expression vs conversation, emotion vs intellect, craftsmanship vs spontaneity. In most cases, Hope is capable of effecting a middle way through these opposites. This part ends with charting the convergences between Hope the critic and Eliot the critic, coming to the conclusion that Hope's classicism and traditionalism is part of the neo-classicism "counter-revolution" movement in modernism in which Eliot is the most powerful, leading voice in regenerating the "Augustan" poetic virtues for the 20th century.Next I will concern myself with investigating the modernistic preoccupations and concerns in Hope's poetry, such as the loss of faith, shallowness of the commercial age, alienation and estrangement of modern men, lack of heroic standards, etc. Then I will move on to trace the three major themes-love, death and art, which figure frequently and prominently in Hope's corpus, by centering on and anatomizing the image "Sirens", which provides me a handy avenue to the interpretation of his poetry. In Hope's earlier poems, love and art are both capable of engendering death; love can be easily turned into the turf in which the predatory war between the sexes unfolds, with the participants trying to assert power over each other; there are always animalistic and bestial elements inherent in this kind of frustrated, or distorted,unnatural love. In his later poems, Hope always seeks transcendence in love and art, which assign the most powerful forces in his poetry and, through which, one can gain a glimpse of the eternal. All the thematic exploration will be substantialized by a close reading of a fair proportion of his poetry, especially some distinguished ones.The fifth part touches briefly upon some notable, specific features of Hope's poetry, namely, his remarkable ability in reshaping and reworking the myths, his discursive ease, his almost impeccable diction.The study concludes with the conviction that Hope, as one of the major poetic explorers of sexuality in English language, will be remembered and gain wider recognition for his considerable contribution to the 20th century English poetry.