THE IDYLLIC SPACE IN THE POETRY OF A. E. HOUSMAN
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17072/2037-6681-2018-1-88-97Keywords:
English poetry of the late 19th – early 20th, A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, idyll, idyllic space.Abstract
The article treats various aspects of the idyllic space and ways of its organization in the oeuvre of Alfred Edward Housman in the context of traditional idyllic topoi and the problem of Englishness. In the course of analysis, a number of works written by Housman’s contemporaries are addressed, namely those by T. Hardy, R. Brook, R. Aldington, T. S. Eliot. The author of the article reveals the means by which the idyllic components, common for idylls since the time of Theocritus and Virgil, function in the poetry of Housman, and also describes how the poet embeds the world of his own creation into the world of the antique idyll. Both traditional and individual methods of dealing with the idyllic space are singled out. One of the most prominent aspects is Housman’s usage of hydronyms. They are responsible for maintaining the idyllic balance of the real and the ideal. Moreover, their etymology brings out the hidden spatial pair of oppositions “light / dark”, in which the “light” component prevails, not only thus initially characterizing the space in the poems, but also actualizing the idyllic river topoi as markers of the opposition and duplicity of the idyllic space of Shropshire and the whole of England simultaneously. Thereby the poet emphasizes the indubitable relation of the topoi of idyllic space to the national conceptosphere. An antithesis between the rural and the urban space based on the opposition of “statics / dynamics” activates the very etymology of the static, lying underneath the term “idyll”, and the connotation linked with the semantic group “peace – harmony – simultaneity”. The idyllic conflict between the urban life with its culture and the ideal of the natural life with its plain and simple domesticity leads both to the impossibility of keeping the idyll intact (this line gets its development in the poetry of English modernism) and to an endeavor to preserve it primordial (as in the poetry of Edwardian and Georgian poets). The distinctive affinity of the dead and the living allows the idyllic continuity of life to manifest itself on the level of space.References
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