John Wain

This article is about the poet and writer John Wain. For the actor, see John Wayne ; on the theologian, see John Waine ; for other people, see John Vane .

John Barrington Wain (born March 14, 1925 in Stoke-on-Trent , † May 24, 1994 in Oxford ) was an English novelist, poet, author and critic who was a member of the Movement group. For a large part of his life he worked as a freelance journalist and publicist for various newspapers and the BBC . He wrote some articles of political relevance for different magazines.

life and work

John Wain studied English literature at St. John's College at the prestigious University of Oxford , where he received his Master of Arts (MA) degree in 1950. Until 1954 he worked as a lecturer at Reading University and then as a freelance journalist a. a. for the BBC. From 1973 to 1978 he taught after his appointment as Professor of Poetry ( Professor of Poetry ) at Oxford University.

Mainly because of his first novel Hurry on Down (1953, Hurry on Down , 1982) Wain was counted as a writer among the so-called Angry Young Men , a group of socially critical authors of the 1950s.

The protagonist of his first novel is the picaresque antihero Charles Lumley, who paradigmatically becomes the rebel of the era and later novels Wain, whose prose work comprises a total of 13 novels and 3 short story volumes. In addition, there are a large number of critical writings and literary theoretical publications.

One of Wain's main concerns was to oppose the restriction of individual opportunities for development through a hierarchically structured society. The conflict between the individual and social constraints is expressed in various forms in Wain's literary work, for example in the father-son conflict in Strike the Father Dead (1962, Jeremy and Jazz, 1964) or The Smaller Sky (1967 , Eng. The smaller sky , 1968). Here, the scientist Arthur Geary flees from family and the world of work in London's Paddington train station and becomes a victim of the media as a representative of the leveling, conformist system.

In addition, the originality of the province, in contrast to the alignment or leveling by the metropolis, is another focus of Wain's work, for example in A Winter in the Hills (1970), in which the linguistic and cultural independence of Wales is contrasted with the economic dominance of London becomes.

In the trilogy Where the Rivers Meet (1988), Comedies (1990) and Hungry Generations (1994) Wain describes the life story of an Oxford university lecturer between the 1930s and 1950s. This creates a panorama of the city in which the world of industry is contrasted with that of the university.

Wain took a similar socially critical approach in his early poetry, which is assigned to the Movement . His volumes of poetry Mixed Feelings (1951) and A Word Carved On a Sill (1956) are still determined by a strict meter that is abandoned in Wildtrack (1963).

In his poem Feng (1975), Wain also tries to illustrate the threat to the individual posed by social hierarchies by adapting the Hamlet material .

Wain's literary critical or theoretical writings are in the tradition of Matthew Arnold : For him, literary criticism also means social criticism. In addition to a study on William Shakespeare , The Living World of Shakespeare (1964), written for interested laypeople, Wain published a number of anthologies of critical essays and his lectures as Professor of Poetry under the title Professing Poetry (1977). In 1974 he also wrote a biography of the famous scholar, writer, poet and literary critic Samuel Johnson under the same title.

All of Wain's work is strongly influenced by the self-image of the homme de lettres of the 18th century. The pronounced intertextuality of his work shows his profound literary knowledge and deep ties to English literature as a whole. However, Wain is less considered an innovator, since his publications essentially stick to the literary traditions of the 18th and 19th centuries.

For his achievements, Wain was awarded the Order of the British Empire at the level of Commander ( CBE ) in 1983 .

Works

Novels

• Hurry on Down (1953) or Born in Captivity (am. Title)
• Living in the Present (1953)
• The Contenders (1958)
• A Traveling Woman (1959)
• Strike the Father Dead (1962)
• The Young Visitors (1965)
• The Smaller Sky (1967)
• A Winter in the Hills (1970)
• The Pardoner's Tale (1978)
• Lizzie's Floating Shop (1981)
• Young Shoulders (1982) and The Free Zone Starts Here
• Where the Rivers Meet (1988)
• Comedies (1990)
• Hungry Generations (1994)

Poetry

• A Word Carved on a Sill (1956)
• Weep Before God (1961)
• Wildtrack (1965)
• Letters to Five Artists , Poems (1969)
• Feng, a poem (1975)
• Poems 1949-79 (1980)
• Poems for the Zodiac (1980)
• The Twofold (1981)
• Open Country (1987)

Short stories

• Manhood (1980)
• The Valentine Generation
• Down our way
• A Message from the Pig-man

Stage plays

• Johnson is Leaving (1973) (monodrama)
• Harry in the Night (1975)

Frank (1984) (radio play)

Short story collections

• Nuncle and Other Stories (1960)
• Death of the Hind Legs and Other Stories (1966)
• The Life Guard (1971)

Literary criticism and interpretations

• Interpretations, essays on twelve English poems (1955 and 1972)
• Preliminary Essays (1957)
• American Allegory (1959)
• Strength and Isolation in "The Living Milton" , ed. by Frank Kermode (1960)
• Essays on Literature and Ideas (1963)
• The Living World of Shakespeare, a playgoer's guide (1964)
• Theodore Roethke (1964) (in: Critical Quarterly )
• Arnold Bennett (1967)
• A House for the truth, critical essays (1972)
• Johnson as critic (1973)
• An Edmund Wilson celebration (1978)
• Edmund Wilson, the man and his work (1978)
• Professing poetry (1979)
• Introduction to Milton's "Paradise Lost" (1991), published by The Folio Society (2003)

Biographies

• Sprightly Running: Part of an Autobiography (1962)
• Samuel Johnson: A Biography (1975)

literature

• Steffi Zug: Tradition and Innovation: Perspectives of John Wain's literary criticism. Dissertation, Free University of Berlin , 1988.
• David Elwyn Gerard: John Wain: a bibliography. Mansell, London 1987.
• Joachim Schwend: John Wain: writer and critic. C. Winter Verlag , Heidelberg 1984, English Research, Issue 173.
• Dale Salwak: John Wain. Twayne Publishers, Boston, Mass., 1981.

Web links

• Literature by and about John Wain in the catalog of the German National Library
• John Wain - British Critic and Writer - Entry in the Encyclopædia Britannica (English)
• Obituary in The Independent (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Joachim Schwend: Wain, John [Barrington]. In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning, Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , 666 p. (Special edition Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-02125-0 ), p. 598 See also the entry in the Encyclopædia Britannica on John Wain - British Critic and Writer .
2. ↑ See as far as Joachim Schwend: Wain, John [Barrington]. In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning, Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , 666 p. (Special edition Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-02125-0 ), p. 598 See also the entry in the Encyclopædia Britannica on John Wain - British Critic and Writer .
3. ↑ See Joachim Schwend: Wain, John [Barrington]. In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning, Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , 666 p. (Special edition Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-02125-0 ), p. 598 See also the entry in the Encyclopædia Britannica on John Wain - British Critic and Writer .
4. ↑ See the entry in the Encyclopædia Britannica on John Wain - British Critic and Writer .