W.H. Auden: Prose Literary Elements

Essay

Victorian England and the contemporary society

W.H. Auden is the narrator and the essays are written in first person narrative scheme.

Direct, Ironical, Satirical, Discursive

The narrator is the protagonist himself. Antagonist N/A

The major conflict of his essays is the lost tradition of English culture and the degradation of literary works.

Auden refers to the poetry of Wordsworth as intellectually absurd and illusive at the climax of one of his arguments.

Auden foreshadows the future of the youth of his generation in his essay, 'Poet and the City'. At the beginning of this essay Auden remarks about their pursuit of career. The romantic ideals and irrational attitude towards their lives, lead to their downfall morally. At last they pursue some subliterary careers like advertising.

In 'Making, Knowing and Judging' Auden understates his position as a "professor of poetry". He refers to himself as a barbarian in the contemporary literary circle. For his lack of fluency in Latin, he understates his knowledge as a whole. This comparison is actually an example of ironic statement. Here he actually mocks the contemporary literary critics.

In one of his essays Auden alludes to a joke published in the famous 'Punch' magazine. This cartoon is believed to be made by well-known poet and critic A.E. Housman.

To prove his argument about poetic imagination Auden uses a chain of images in his essays. He uses the images in this manner: "A sacred being may be attractive or repuIsive-a swan
or an octopus-beautiful or ugly-a toothless hag or a fair
young child-good or eviI-a Beatrice or a Belle Dame Sans
Merci..." Those consecutive images are important in respect to his argument in the essay.

Auden's reference to "creative writing" is presented as a paradox in his essay. According to the critic, people generally take this form of writing as an out-of-the-box profession without knowing the importance of writing or the role of writer in a society. Auden's remark presents the moral scarcity of the age.

While presenting a critical response to Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan', Auden's idea is in parallel to the idea of Coleridge, as a critic. He supports the romantic poet's claim by quoting from his prologue to 'Kubla Khan'.

"Chair" is associated with the title of poet laureate. It is a use of metonymy and the word is treated as a symbol for the thing symbolised.
"Barbarian" stands for the quality of being an outcast. It is a reference of synecdoche and here the word refers to an abstract idea.

Conscience is personified as an "inner examiner" in one of Auden's essays.