Books in Brief
July 17, 2024
The Island: War and Belonging in Auden’s England
Author: Nicholas Jenkins
“From his first poems in 1922 to the publication of his landmark collection On This Island in the mid-1930s, W. H. Auden wrestled with the meaning of Englishness. His early works are prized for their psychological depth, yet Nicholas Jenkins argues that they are political poems as well, illuminating Auden’s intuitions about a key aspect of modern experience: national identity. Two historical forces, in particular, haunted the poet: the catastrophe of World War I and the subsequent ‘rediscovery’ of England’s rural landscapes by artists and intellectuals.”
Jenkins is an associate professor in the Department of English and co-director of the Creative Writing Program.
