Classical influences in Louis Macneice's work

Abstract

In the controversial years of 1930's Louis MacNeice (1907-1963) emerged not only as a poet and classical scholar but also as a thoroughly classical intellectual. Although he was a modern man of his times, there were many aspects of classical attitude in him. The aim of this thesis is to prove that part of MacNeice's involvement in poetry and drama can be interpreted in many ways in terms of the classical images and ideas which occur in his work. This study consists of three parts: The first one is a study of MacNeice's poetry with special emphasis on those of his poems which contain classical themes. We shall consider these poems in the order in which they appear in his Collected Poems (1979). The second part is a practical criticism of MacNeice's translation of Aeschylus' Agamemnon; we have used Fraenkel's scholarly translation and Fagles' liberal one as parameters. In the third part we shall discuss those of MacNeice's BBC radio dramas which contain classical themes. The reason for this criticism is to show how MacNeice perceived the recurrence of classical events in modern times. He considered classicism as a living continuation of ancient ideals and events. T.S. Eliot established a distinguished line of 20^th century poets with classical themes in their work. This thesis endeavours to show MacNeice as a brilliant participant in this sequence.

More information

Identifiers

Catalogue record

Export record

ASCII CitationAtomBibTeXData Cite XMLDublin CoreDublin CoreEP3 XMLEndNoteHTML CitationHTML CitationHTML ListJSONMETSMODSMPEG-21 DIDLOpenURL ContextObjectOpenURL ContextObject in SpanRDF+N-TriplesRDF+N3RDF+XMLRIOXX2 XMLReferReference ManagerSimple Metadata