| According to W. H. Auden, critics who wish to shed light on literature can do their readers one or more of the following services: (1) introduce them to unfamiliar writers (2) persuade them that they have underestimated the value of a writer because they have not read his or her work carefully enough (3) give them a "reading" of a particular work which deepens their understanding of it (4) point out relationships between the works of different ages and cultures (5) examine the process of artistic "making" or (6) clarify the relation of art to life, to economics, science, religion, ethics, etc. In tracing Auden's writing career from his early search for salvation to his Christian conversion and ultimate resignation to a vision of grace, the present dissertation attempts to serve all six of these functions at once. It aims to provide an informative "reading" of Auden's early poems. In doing so, it hopes to point out some of the parallels between his continuous search for meaning and that of other writers and thinkers who preceded and influenced him. Moreover, it revisits the unfamiliar "later Auden," whose poetry and prose some critics have ignored because of its explicitly Christian tenor. By praising the integrity of his Christian vision, the dissertation tries to refute the contention that Auden's later work is frivolous or disingenuous. Ultimately, it tries, by way of exploring the poet's various and often contradictory approaches toward artistically representing the relations between man and man, man and his nature, and man and God, to illuminate the "making" of Auden's moral imagination and his way of reconciling art with life and its myriad complications. |
