Ebook: W.H. Auden: towards a postmodern poetics

This study of Auden's complete poetry and plays reads them in conjunction with two crucial twentieth-century concepts, modernism and postmodernism. A detailed analysis of Auden's writings shows their engagement with and eventual rejection of modernism, with its nostalgia for lost certainties and attempts at renewed wholeness. It demonstrates that questions of the self in relation to itself, others and truths require answers that are risky and often lead to the sacrifice of identity and meaning. Yet instead of another wasteland, Auden's works create an appealing optimism out of conscious failure. They advocate the acceptance of limits, admit the need for others without attempting to dominate them, and accept belief as a need rather than a certainty. Most importantly, they develop a very topical ethical position out of their experiments: a challenge to the individual to act responsibly in the face of an absence of guarantees, guidelines and truths.