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14 - Auden

love, sexuality, desire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

Stan Smith
Affiliation:
Nottingham Trent University
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Summary

A comprehensive treatment of the subject of this chapter would involve much of what made Auden an influential writer, conceivably touching on nearly every poem, play and libretto he wrote, as well as a fair proportion of his prose, published and unpublished. Little of his writing from the 1920s and 1930s does not involve 'desire', even restricted to its psychological meanings, and with his extensive reading of Sigmund Freud, D. H. Lawrence and Georg Groddeck, among others, Auden did much to adapt psychoanalytic thought for Anglo-American modernism. If he wrote some of the most memorable love poetry of his time, this also constituted a sophisticated engagement with a body of erotic and Romantic writing stretching from Plato through Petrarch and Dante to Shakespeare. Along with T. S. Eliot, he ranks as one of the most important English-language religious poets of the last hundred years, for whom the interrelation of Eros and Agape was an abiding concern. It is easier, in other words, to say what Auden wrote that does not impinge on love, sex and desire, than what does.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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  • Auden
  • Edited by Stan Smith, Nottingham Trent University
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to W. H. Auden
  • Online publication: 28 May 2006
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521829623.014
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  • Auden
  • Edited by Stan Smith, Nottingham Trent University
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to W. H. Auden
  • Online publication: 28 May 2006
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521829623.014
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Auden
  • Edited by Stan Smith, Nottingham Trent University
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to W. H. Auden
  • Online publication: 28 May 2006
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521829623.014
Available formats
×