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17 - Auden and ecology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

Stan Smith
Affiliation:
Nottingham Trent University
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Summary

Radical anthropocentrism

Auden's aversion to Romantic idealism, especially the Shelleyan mingling of spiritual sublimation and political radicalism, is well documented. His nature images also reject Romantic models. For the Romantics, nature provided an imaginary framework enabling the self to overcome alienation. 'Nature' bridged the gap between childhood and adulthood as a quasireligious power enabling the self to enter a higher plane than that of a mundane reality where actual, physical nature was increasingly sacrificed to the Industrial Revolution.

In Auden, images of nature are always man-made constructs. The early poem '1929' is telling. It contains a list of potentially Romantic nature images, frogs in ponds, 'traffic of magnificent cloud' across open sky, only to frame them in the urban context of a public garden and eventually of individual, social and political concerns. Already the term 'traffic' hints at a thoroughly anthropocentric perspective. In an essay on Robert Frost in 1936, Auden stated bluntly: 'Man is naturally anthropocentric and interested in his kind and in things or animals only in so far as they contribute to his life and sustain him; he does not interest himself in things to the exclusion of people till his relations with the latter have become difficult or have broken down.'

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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  • Auden and ecology
  • Edited by Stan Smith, Nottingham Trent University
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to W. H. Auden
  • Online publication: 28 May 2006
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521829623.017
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  • Auden and ecology
  • Edited by Stan Smith, Nottingham Trent University
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to W. H. Auden
  • Online publication: 28 May 2006
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521829623.017
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Auden and ecology
  • Edited by Stan Smith, Nottingham Trent University
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to W. H. Auden
  • Online publication: 28 May 2006
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521829623.017
Available formats
×