The Poetics of Utopia : Shadows of Futurity in Yeats and Auden

Focusing on the work of two of the 20th-century’s most politically engaged poets - W. B. Yeats and W. H. Auden - this book unpacks how they directly confront the concept of “utopia,” how they engage with utopia as a literary genre, and how their work conceives of poetry as a utopian artform capable of uniquely embodying our social aspirations. Despite consistently projecting visions of more ideal futures through both its subject matter and its form, poetry is not often counted among the annals of utopian literature. Through an examination of these two great writers' poems, essays, reviews, and other writings, with a focus on many of their best-known poems, this book highlights both the pervasive presence of a utopian impulse in their work and the importance of their contributions to discussions of utopia’s meaning and relevance in both their own politically fraught era and ours. Cover Half Title Title Copyright Contents Figures Acknowledgments Introduction: Shadows of Futurity Chapter 1 “Ever New and Ever Ancient”: The Pastoral Utopias of Early Yeats Chapter 2 “History Is Very Simple”: Desire and the Meanings of Utopia in Later Yeatd Chapter 3 “The Good Place Has Not Been”: The Pursuit of Unity in Early Auden Chapter 4 “The Ungarnished Offended Gap”: Utopia and Negative Poetics in Later Auden Chapter 5 Draped in Black: Ekphrasis and the End(s) of Utopia Conclusion: Shadows of Futurity Works Cited Index