About
A Walk after Dark …
I have opened this blogspace for the 1940s because I feel that, in terms of the poetry as well as the history of ideas, the “age of anxiety” is a rich and surprisingly under-researched period. My opening subtitle has been taken from a poem by W.H. Auden, because I share his wish to understand how and why “what needn’t have happened did”. Indeed, that is what these pages are all about.
I intend this blog primarily as a personal tribune from which to share my interest in the poetry and politics of a particular period. This means that I will not be posting readers’ comments directly, but I do very much welcome suggestions and queries, which may be sent to this address:
Where all this is coming from …
This blog has been set up and is maintained by Dr. Helen Goethals, with more than a little help from her friends. I teach Commonwealth Studies at the University of Toulouse at Le Mirail, and direct research into the history and the various forms of communication of the idea of Greater Britain, from the invention of the idea, by Charles Dilke in 1868, to its apparent demise, satirically celebrated in Philip Larkin’s “Homage to a Government” in 1968.
My own research field is the history and communication of ideas. I am particularly interested in the connections between poetry and politics, in the ways in which an idea is communicated through a particular poetic form at a specific political moment. I call this field the poetry of an idea.
Department of English Studies, University of Toulouse 2
Commentaires récents