A study of the poetry of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War as a reflection of its age

Abstract

I have attempted in this thesis to study war poetry from various angles in order to show how far it reflected its age, and to trace how the changes occurring in poetry produced between the opening of the 1930 decade as far as the end of the Second World War depended a great deal on the changes in outlook actually taking place in England at that time. Some comparison with the First World War is intended again to bring out the literary difference occasioned by events. Part I covers the Spanish Civil War, led up to in the Introduction by a brief resumee of previous war poetry, intended to mark the chief differences in outlook of the twentieth century. It was necessary to deal with the Spanish War by a consideration of most of the 1930 decade, proving that the war itself, while quite individual in character, was merely a link in a chain, and as far as the poets were concerned extremely important for its POSITION - the climax of early 1930 aspirations, and the landslide towards the Second World War. After a general resumee of movements and types of poetry produced in this decade in Chapters 1 and 2, I have approached the subject in Chapter 3 by means of a "close-up", a detailed study of two poets, who, by contrast, seemed to reveal the age most appositely.I n Part II I have dealt with the Second World War by choosing representative poets of three generations to contrast the different ways in which men reacted to the war, according to their experience, I have tried to bring out in the Introduction what the poets themselves considered they should he doing, in Chapter 1 what they actually accomplished, and in Chapter 2 what their reviewers considered they had achieved or failed to achieve. Chapter 5, in a "close-up" of certain poems, discusses how far and in what ways the war period was a communal one. The conclusions reached in the body of the thesis are briefly summarised in the Epilogue by means of a general consideration of the imagery.