Constructing Identity in the Poetry of Tony Harrison
Revised and Expanded Edition
©2021
Monographs
208 Pages
Series:
Transatlantic Studies in British and North American Culture, Volume 34
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.
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.
Excerpt
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
- Publication 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.
- Product Safety
- Peter Lang Group AG