Loading...

Constructing Identity in the Poetry of Tony Harrison

Revised and Expanded Edition

by Agata Handley (Author)
©2021 Monographs 208 Pages

Summary

When, in 1948, Tony Harrison entered Leeds Grammar School as a scholarship boy, he found himself, as Richard Hoggart saw, “at the friction point of two cultures”. His schooling introduced him to the “classics”; but it also deprived him of a clear identification with the place where he grew up. His work reflects and explores this tension; and it may be seen, in some ways, as a form of “identity construction.”
The book examines key texts such as v. and the School of Eloquence sequence, where this “construction” takes different forms—oscillating between identity as a state, or a process; as continuity, or change; or as the outcome of conformity, or revolt.
This second edition has been extensively revised and includes a new chapter on Harrison’s Elegies.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Dedication
  • Table of Contents
  • INTRODUCTION: “The Whole View North”
  • A “scholarship boy”
  • Identity issues
  • The “mutable self”
  • 1. Identity—state or process
  • 2. Identity—continuity and/or Otherness
  • 3. Identity—a consequence of conformism or revolt
  • CHAPTER ONE “Correct your Maps: Newcastle is Peru”: Continuity of exploration and exploitation in The Loiners
  • “Négritude”
  • The fragmented body
  • Memory
  • Identity and kinship
  • “Westerners”
  • “Nothingness”
  • “Nuptial Torches”
  • Periphery and centre
  • CHAPTER TWO “Wherever did you get your talent from?”:: Continuity of Poetic Heritage in The School of Eloquence
  • The crisis of belonging
  • The suppression of working-class speech
  • The struggle for language
  • The constraint of form
  • “On Not Being Milton”
  • Ambivalent heroes
  • The poles of identity
  • “Barbarians”
  • CHAPTER THREE “The still too living dead”: Continuity of Mourning in Selected Elegies from The School of Eloquence
  • Trauerarbeit
  • The figuration of loss
  • The question of inheritance
  • CHAPTER FOUR “Hawthorns Laden with Red Berries”: Evocative Objects in Harrison’s Elegies152
  • CHAPTER FIVE “Half versus half, the enemies within”: Changing Patterns of Revolt in v.
  • The mining community as collective protagonist
  • “The Legacy of Mining”
  • Graveyard and pit
  • Gray’s “Elegy”
  • Language as a site of struggle
  • The “Pygmalion” syndrome
  • CHAPTER SIX “This frightening mask”: The Continuity of the Poetic Gaze in Selected War Poems
  • “The sun of poetry is set”
  • The “gaze” of the camera
  • The “complete witness”
  • Prosopopeia
  • “Cornet and Cartridge”
  • Memory
  • CONCLUSION: “How have you been useful for the polis?”
  • BIBLIOGRAPHY
  • Index of Names
  • Series index

INTRODUCTION

“The Whole View North”

In the poem “Facing North”, Tony Harrison describes “the act of poetic composition” as a “luminous O of . . . light, itself illuminating” (Byrne 1998: 177) darkness.

Details

Pages
208
Year
2021
ISBN (PDF)
9783631855287
ISBN (ePUB)
9783631855294
ISBN (MOBI)
9783631855300
ISBN (Hardcover)
9783631837450
DOI
10.3726/b18444
Language
English
Publication date
2021 (July)
Keywords
BRITISH POETRY CONTEMPORARY POETRY ELEGY ENGLISH NORTH WORKING-CLASS CULTURE MEMORY
Published
Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien, 2021. 208 pp.

Biographical notes

Agata Handley (Author)

Agata Handley works as a lecturer and researcher at the University of Lodz, Poland. Her main areas of academic interest are contemporary British poetry, with a special focus on the representation of memory; and on intermedial issues. Her current research looks at the use of ekphrasis in contemporary Anglophone literature.

Previous

Title: Constructing Identity in the Poetry of Tony Harrison
book preview page numper 1
book preview page numper 2
book preview page numper 3
book preview page numper 4
book preview page numper 5
book preview page numper 6
book preview page numper 7
book preview page numper 8
book preview page numper 9
book preview page numper 10
book preview page numper 11
book preview page numper 12
book preview page numper 13
book preview page numper 14
book preview page numper 15
book preview page numper 16
book preview page numper 17
book preview page numper 18
book preview page numper 19
book preview page numper 20
book preview page numper 21
book preview page numper 22
book preview page numper 23
book preview page numper 24
book preview page numper 25
book preview page numper 26
book preview page numper 27
book preview page numper 28
book preview page numper 29
book preview page numper 30
book preview page numper 31
book preview page numper 32
book preview page numper 33
book preview page numper 34
book preview page numper 35
book preview page numper 36
book preview page numper 37
book preview page numper 38
book preview page numper 39
book preview page numper 40
210 pages