Georgian poetry

Edward Marsh , 1907

With Georgian Poetry (Georgian poetry) a series of five anthologies of poetry is called in the strict sense, which in the early years of the reign of George V appeared. In its current sense, the term is used to describe the type of poetry of the group of English poets and writers published in this series.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton in 1914

William Henry Davies

John Masefield , 1912

Isaac Rosenberg : Selfportrait in a Trilby Hat , oil on canvas, 1914

Philip Alexius de László : Lady Vita Sackville-West , oil on canvas, 1910

Photo by Siegfried Sassoons by George Charles Beresford , 1915

Emergence

It appeared in 1912 ( Georgian Poetry 1911–1912 ), 1915 ( Georgian Poetry 1913–1915 ), 1917 ( Georgian Poetry 1916–1917 ), 1919 ( Georgian Poetry 1918–1919 ) and 1922 ( Georgian Poetry 1920–1922 ). The initiator and central person was Edward Marsh , who was both the editor (in collaboration with Harold Monro (1879-1932), who gave the group with his poetry bookshop) a spatial and publication center) and mentor of a group of poets who were accordingly referred to as Georgian Poets , acted. JC Squire later published other anthologies under the same title.

Allegedly, the anthology idea was based on a joke when Marsh, Duncan Grant and George Mallory published a parody of the small volumes of poetry that flooded the book market one evening in 1912. In the course of the discussion they decided to turn it into a serious project. Marsh and Rupert Brooke approached Monro, who had just opened The Poetry Bookshop on Devonshire Street in London . He agreed to the plan in return for half of the profit.

Involved poets

The poets represented in the first five anthologies (an X marks the individual participations) were:

Georgian poetry	1911-12 (1912)	1913-15 (1915)	1916-17 (1917)	1918-19 (1919)	1920-22 (1922)
Lascelles Abercrombie	x	x		x	x
Martin Armstrong					x
Herbert Asquith			x
Maurice Baring			x
Edmund Blunden					x
Gordon Bottomley	x	x	x	x
Francis Brett Young				x	x
Rupert Brooke	x	x
GK Chesterton	x
William Henry Davies	x	x	x	x	x
Walter de la Mare	x	x	x	x	x
John Drinkwater	x	x	x	x	x
James Elroy Flecker	x	x
John Freeman			x	x	x
Wilfrid Wilson Gibson	x	x	x	x	x
Robert Graves			x	x	x
Ralph Hodgson		x	x
Richard Hughes					x
William Kerr					x
DH Lawrence	x	x		x	x
Francis Ledwidge		x
John Masefield	x	x	x
Harold Monro	x	x	x	x	x
Thomas Sturge Moore	x
Thomas Moult				x
Robert Nichols			x	x	x
JDC Pellow				x	x
Frank Prewett					x
Peter Quennell					x
Isaac Rosenberg			x
Ronald Ross	x
Vita Sackville-West					x
Edmund Beale Sargant	x
Siegfried Sassoon			x	x
Edward Shanks				x	x
Fredegond Shove				x
John Collings Squire			x	x	x
James Stephens	x	x	x
RC Trevelyan	x
Walter J. Turner			x	x

Term of epoch

The (original) Georgian Poets saw themselves as modern and progressive and the term demarcated them from the Victorian era as the past conquered, but the volumes edited by JC Squire and the literary debates that went with them gave Georgian poetry a conservative flavor and so it became a battle term against modernity .

reception

Later criticism, starting in the 1950s, accused the Georgian Poets of lacking depth and instead experimenting with depicting artificial feelings. At the same time, this criticism surely overshot the target for most of the represented authors, because it wanted to hit more Marsh, Munro or a few of the smaller poets.

Fredegond Shove , photographed by Lady Ottoline Morrell , 1917

For example, one of their most typical representatives can be seen in John Drinkwater , as he idealized the tranquil country life with balanced verses. Also Fredegond Shove , one of the few women in these volumes, at whose occupation it anyway disputes between Marsh, Munro and applicable also as known literary critic Edward Shanks gave, can be associated with him despite their places mythifizierenden elevation of the countryside. Marsh is said to have pushed Fredegond Shove through against Harold Monros , Siegfried Sassoons and Shanks' concerns, allegedly with the aim of including an English poet in his collection .

In his critical classification of Grierson's Critical History of English Poetry , 1946, René Wellek also criticized the inclusion of Fredegond's Shove in the canon of acclaimed authors.

As far as the aforementioned style is concerned, this also applies to Edmund Blunden , who is known today primarily for his editorial work in the service of John Clare and Ivor Gurney , who also adorned country life in many details. However, Blunden's prose work Undertones of War enjoyed the best reviews as an experience report on the war. Edward Thomas , who had to make a living as a journalist, enjoyed widespread popularity in the 1950s due to the clarity of his poetry. Although Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, in contrast, thematized industrial England and the life of the working class, he was also one of the Georgian Poets.

The services of the poet and critic John Collings Squire were valued above all after the First World War . While his tastes were emphatically old-fashioned, he enlivened the literary landscape thanks to his publication of The London Mercury .

Photo portrait of the young DH Lawrence , 1906

Even DH Lawrence and GK Chesterton , whom many today inappropriately reduce only to his father Brown stories, which "were only secondary works for him" had published sensitive poems in the first volumes.

William Henry Davies was one of the most famous writers in this group for a long time, so the title of his Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (1908) had a meaning even for modern music history and his love and nature poems were always valued in England for their intense power.

Other authors such as Ralph Hodgson or James Stephens were early talents who later faded into literary obsession. Because of his visions of nature, Hodgson was even compared to Blake, the Irish Stephens is now more praised for his prose works, such as The Crock of Gold. One of them was Edward Shanks , once feared for his sharp tongue , whose revisionist, patriotic war poems serve as a daunting example today, while one would even like to put his fantastic utopias alongside those HG Wells . The People of the Ruins was considered a typical social utopia of the 1920s, which was written more frequently in the United Kingdom at that time. In it, Shanks looks at a Europe, and especially England, a decade after it was overwhelmed by a communist revolution . From today's perspective, the science fiction novella is described as shockingly poor in direct comparison with contemporary works of the genre given Edward Shank's literary reputation, although some elements of his book have been picked up by better science fiction writers.

The now largely forgotten George William Russell was also connected to mysticism . The war veteran Martin Armstrong , on the other hand, had a special talent for dressing everyday events ( The Buzzards , Honey Harvest , Miss Thompson Goes Shopping , 1922) in children's and young people's poems that are still popular today, and because of the education he supported his stepdaughter Joan Aiken in this way literarily significant and, thanks to his diverse relationships, had a decisive influence on the design of the BBC's cultural program after the Second World War . In addition, his horror story The pipe smoker from the short story collection General Buntop's Miracle and Other Stories from 1934 has been widely remembered to this day, as it has been reprinted in various horror anthologies to this day.

John Masefield later changed from melancholy seafaring poetry to realistic narratives ( The Everlasting Mercy , 1911; The Widow in the Bye Street 1912), then with Dauber (1913) he again devoted himself to the maritime theme and even in 1919 with Reynard the Fox a realistic one Description of the fox hunt provided.

Walter de la Mare

Robert Graves has had one of the longest running careers for the Georgian Poets. After initially writing ballads in which he tried to imitate Skelton, he developed into a modernist with Laura Riding , but later returned self-critically to his earlier styles. Today he is best known for his historical novels, which he had already published in the 1930s, I Claudius (1934) and Claudius the God (also 1934, in German translation Ich Claudius, Kaiser und Gott. ), Count Belisarius ( 1938, Bellisar, the Glorious 1962) and 1943 The Story of Mary Powell, Wife to Mr. Milton .

James Elroy Flecker , in his Cambridge office, around 1905

Even if Walter de la Mare caused some literary controversy, his poetry is still valued today. The orientalist and diplomat among the Georgian poets, James Elroy Flecker , whose The Bridge of Fire (1907) was influenced by the French group of poets of the Parnassians of the second half of the 19th century, is praised by critics and connoisseurs to this day was committed to the principle of L'art pour l'art (literally: art for art , meaning: art for art's sake ). On the other hand, his studies of oriental languages ​​and the longstanding diplomatic service in the Orient as well as the translations he made from the local languages ​​significantly shaped his style. The poem The Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913), with long, varied rhythms and rich, exotic imagination, is still one of the most cited poems in the English-speaking world when it comes to the fascination of the Orient. One of his main works, the verse drama Hassan (1915/1922), experienced a brief but significant success in the posthumous staging in the 1920s, which was surprisingly reflected in the orientalism of the Hollywood film industry. Originally, because of its fashionable subject in an adaptation by James T. O'Donohoe , Hassan was used as a script template for the silent film The Lady of the Harem by Raoul Walsh with Ernest Torrence , William Collier Jr. and Greta Nissen , the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, as early as 1926 produced and distributed Paramount Pictures . 1937 to handle the substance varied in the early TV series Theater Parade as Hassan in several episodes in which Greer Garson the Yasmin played.

Rupert Brooke , 1913

Of all things, the previously venerated victim of the First World War, Rupert Brooke , has been the focus of literary criticism in recent decades. He wrote his Poems (1911) and 1914 and Other Poems before the war, but they only became known to the general public after his death in 1915. In these poems idealism, conscientiousness and patriotism were synthesized. The fact that Brooke saw the war as a fateful event and the hero's death as a fulfillment was tragic in two respects, also in view of his own fate. But for the interwar generation, who also had to bear the consequences of the war in every respect, such poems were almost unbearable. The criticism, which is certainly justified in part, forgot, on the one hand, that Brooke was in many ways a child of his era and, on the other hand, that there is still a military and moral tradition in the UK, without which the constant new editions would be inconceivable. In contrast, Siegfried Sassoon , who survived the war, was able to change the content of his work. In Memoirs of a Fox-Haunting Man (1928, Glück im Sattel ) he staged the ideal life of an English country gentleman, he later wrote poems with satirical tips aimed at the brutal reality of the war. On the other hand, Wilfred Owen , who fell shortly before the end of the war, is usually counted among the Georgian Poets, although his works did not appear in the anthology.

“While this was initially not taken seriously by the critics because of the intellectually undemanding tendency of numerous contributors to rural clichés and romantic phrases, a more positive view has prevailed today. The best Georgians include E. Thomas, Edmund Blunden, Robert Graves, William Henry Davies, Walter de la Mare, Andrew Young, Rupert Brooke, and Wilfried Owen. Her best pieces often amount to a kind of reality-related pastoral poetry in which the contradicting impulses of the approach to reality ("truth to life" ') and the nostalgic landscape ideology, to which one clings for fear of the destructive effects of social and spiritual change enter into a more or less successful connection. Georgian Poetry, which is sharply demarcated from Kipling's shrill gestures and avoids the aesthetic pose, seeks a renewal of the English poetic language through reduction. Oral speech is preferred as a linguistic model and unobtrusively sticks to the small and inconspicuous of the mostly rural scene, but often - which modernists rightly criticize - lapses into epigonal romanticism.

literature

• Michael Bell (ed.): The Context of English Literature 1900-1930. London 1980.
• David Crystal: The Cambridge Biographical Dictionary. Cambridge University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-521-56780-7 .
• Paul Goetsch (ed.): English literature between Victorianism and modernity. Darmstadt 1983.
• Horst Oppel (ed.): The modern English poetry. Interpretations. Berlin 1967.
• Robert H. Ross: Georgian Revolt: Rise and Fall of a Poetic Ideal, 1910-22. Faber 1967.
• Carl K. Stead: The New Poetic. London 1964.

Web links

• Edward Howard Marsh: Georgian Poetry 1911–12 in Project Gutenberg ( currently not usually available for users from Germany )
• Edward Howard Marsh: Georgian Poetry 1913–15 in Project Gutenberg ( currently not available to users from Germany as a rule )
• Edward Howard Marsh: Georgian Poetry 1916–17 in Project Gutenberg ( currently usually not available for users from Germany )
• Edward Howard Marsh: Georgian Poetry 1918-19 in Project Gutenberg ( currently not available to users from Germany as a rule )
• Edward Howard Marsh: Georgian Poetry 1920–22 in Project Gutenberg ( currently not usually available to users from Germany )

Individual evidence

1. ^ John D. Gordan: Letters to an Editor: Georgian Poetry. Ayer Publishing 1967, p. 29f.
2. ↑ The first three anthologies did not contain a poet: Chris Baldick: The Oxford English Literary History: Volume 10: The Modern Movement (1910–1940) . Vol. 10, Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford / New York 2006, p. 112.
3. ^ Jean Moorcroft Wilson: Siegfried Sassoon: the journey from the trenches: a biography (1918–1967) . Routledge, London 2003, p. 128.
4. ↑ Timothy Rogers: Georgian poetry 1911-22: the critical heritage . Routledge, London 1997, pp. 414f.
5. ^ René Wellek: History of literary criticism 1750–1950. Vol. 4, The 20th Century. English and American literary criticism 1900–1950 . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1990, pp. 70f.
6. ↑ Rolf Giese: The poetry of Edmund Blundens. Traditionalistic approach and modern experience of reality. Bochum 1982, ISBN 3-88339-273-1 .
7. ^ Ifor Evans : History of English Literature. Translated from the English by Paul Baudisch . Revised by Manfred Vasold after the 1976 edition . Beck, Munich 1983, p. 96, ISBN 3-406-09324-8 .
8. ↑ Elmar Schenkel : Chesterton, G [ilbert] K [eith]. In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning , Verlag JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , p. 116.
9. ↑ To the classification; Mark Bould: The Routledge companion to science fiction . Taylor & Francis 2009, p. 195.
10. ↑ John Lucas: The radical twenties: writing, politics, and culture . Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ 1999, p. 160.
11. ↑ See the symbolic representation: Malcolm Smith: Britain and 1940: history, myth, and popular memory . Routledge 2000, p. 18.
12. ↑ Timothy Rogers: Georgian poetry 1911-22: the critical heritage . Routledge, London 1997, p. 271.
13. ^ Anita Silvey: The essential guide to children's books and their creators . Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston / New York 2002, p. 8.
14. ^ Edward Butscher: Conrad Aiken: Poet of White Horse Vale . University of Georgia Press, 2010, p. 200.
15. ^ Iain Emsley: Today is Tuesday . In: januarymagazine.com, December 2008. Accessed November 26, 2012.
16. ↑ Julia Eccleshare: Joan Aiken: Outstanding storyteller with an unusual ability to write for all ages . In: The Guardian , January 7, 2004. Accessed November 26, 2012.
17. ^ Ifor Evans: History of English Literature. P. 97 and p. 215.
18. ^ Peter Hühn : Graves, Robert In: Metzler Lexicon of English-speaking authors. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning, Verlag JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , pp. 242–243.
19. ↑ Timothy Rogers: Georgian poetry 1911-22: the critical heritage . Routledge 1997, p. 402.
20. ^ Edward B. Shanks: Second Essays on Literature . Ayer Publishing, New York 1937, p. 90.
21. ^ Richard Bevis: Images of Liberty: The Modern Aesthetics of Great Natural Space . Trafford Publishing 2010, p. 92.
22. ↑ David Perkins is relatively singular, denying him any individual style and completely ignoring Flecker's background: David Perkins: A history of modern poetry: from the 1890s to the high modernist mode . Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1976, p. 194.
23. ↑ The Dundee Repertory Theater even opened in 1939 with a production by Hassan . David Kemp: The pleasures and treasures of Britain: a discerning traveler's companion . Dundurn Press, Toronto 1992, p. 371.
24. ↑ JR Smart: Tradition and modernity in Arabic language and literature . Routledge 1996, p. 162.
25. ↑ See Robin W. Winks, James R. Rush: Asia in Western fiction . Manchester University Press, Manchester 1992, p. 46.
26. ↑ Info on imdb.com
27. ↑ American Film Institute: The American Film Institute catalog of motion pictures produced in the United States , part 1. University of California Press 1997, p. 415.
28. ↑ Info on imdb.com
29. ↑ Michael Troyan: A rose for Mrs. Miniver: the life of Greer Garson . University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1999, p. 58.
30. ↑ See Michael Copp: Cambridge Poets of the Great War: An Anthology. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Madison, New Jersey 2001.
31. ^ Jon Silkin: Out of Battle: The Poetry of the Great War. MacMillan et al. a., Basingstoke et al. a. 1998.
32. ↑ Vera Brittain: Because You Died: Poetry and Prose of the First World War and After. Hachette UK 2010, p. 11.
33. ↑ On Owens' similar reception: George Stade, Karen Karbiener (Ed.): Encyclopedia of British writers, 1800 to the present. / [Volume 2], 20th century and beyond. Facts on File, New York 2009, p. 375.
34. ^ Hans Ulrich Seeber (ed.): English literary history . JB Metzler, 3rd expanded edition Stuttgart / Weimar 1999, p. 332.