Housman's Pessimism And Stoicism

Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936) is ultimately regarded as the leading Latinist in the English-speaking world of his time. He held the Chair of Latin at Cambridge from 1911 until his death in 1936, and for nineteen years before that had been Professor of Latin at University College London. He is also a successful poet, whose poetry still enjoys wide popularity today, although the output is small, with altogether 175 published poems ascribed to his name.A Shropshire Lad is Housman's first and most important collection of verse. His versification has won great admiration: brevity and lucidity of thought, nice choice of words, direct expression of emotions, and romantic spirit coupled with classical precision. But the pervasive mode of the little volume, with the most recurrent themes of transience of life and inevitability of death, is often considered overwhelmingly depressing and therefore strongly disapproved by some criticsThe thesis attempts to find out the fundamental reasons why Housman's poetry is still widely read today despite its much denounced ingrained pessimism. Since there is very little information from Housman himself about his poems, the method of research adopted in the thesis is based on the theory of the Geneva School, a branch of phenomenological criticism. The approach focuses chiefly on the verbal presence of the poems to explore the author's consciousness, for according to the Geneva School critics, each literary work is a fictional world that is created out of the consciousness of its author and bears the unique imprint of the author's own consciousness. This unique imprint is precisely the ensemble of the"experiential patterns"which characterize the author's life world and are duplicated in his literary work. So I set out to describe Housman's experiential patterns embodied in his views of death, love, work and hardship. The discovery is that on the one hand he is undoubtedly pessimistic about death and love: death to him is a welcome rest upon everything and indicates absolute annihilation, and love, always associated with betrayal, destruction or death, is not desired; on the other hand, he is stoical towards work and hardship. Despite his belief that all work is futile in the end, he still tries to do his utmost. He faces hardship with grim courage and patient endurance, and all this is the mark of a stoic. The conclusion of the thesis is that the verdict that Housman is a pessimist is an oversimplified statement. Housman's stoicism, together with his pessimism, is after all the timeless quality of his poetry.