Revolt Or Reconciliation:Aesthetic Redemption In W.H.Auden's Poems

Wystan Hugh Auden(1907-1973),a forceful presence in both English and American literature,is ranked as one of the most influential poets after William Butler Yeats and Thomas Stearns Eliot in the 20 th century.He distinguished himself by the novelty of the alliterative meters,the causticity of the verse and the unexpectedness of the allusions.Dozens of studies on W.H.Auden have been carried out over the past few decades,which mostly focused on his biography,influence,artistic characteristics,ethics and religious belief.To accomplish a further understanding of this poet,this thesis takes critical concepts from the Frankfurt School,the concept of aesthetic redemption in particular,to promote a comprehension of some of his representative short poems from different periods.Specifically,this thesis intends to take several of Auden's particular poems as examples to reveal the social reality,his ethical reflection,and poetic aesthetics: it firstly discusses his reflective revolt against social alienation,individual lost,and moral degeneration under the erosion of modernization;and secondly explores his later aesthetic reconciliation with religious belief and nature.Thus,with a synthesis of features from Frankfurt School's aesthetics and Auden's literary views,the thesis attempts to delineate Auden's poetic insights: he implants the interpretation of the delicate relationship between literature,history,culture,and his understanding of the origin,vitality,and function of literature,typically poetry,into poetic creation.Chances are that W.H.Auden has demonstrated that art is not magic,but the game of knowledge which is responsible for truth on the one hand;and on the other hand,poetry makes nothing happen;it is a way of happening,from which he can evolve his own verbal modes of happening.His poetry works towards the disenchantment of modernist hopes for aesthetic experience.