Lines of Resistance

Resistance is a key concept for understanding the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and for approaching the poetry of the period. This collection of 15 critical essays explores how poetry and resistance interact, set against a philosophical, historical and cultural background. In the light of the upheavals of the age, and the changing perception of the nature of language, resistance is seen to lie at the core of poetic preoccupations, moving poetic language forward. From this perspective, the resistance of poetry is connected with the human call to solidarity, resilience, and, ultimately, meaning. The volume covers poetry from Hardy, Yeats and Auden, among others, to contemporary writers like Hugo Williams and Linton Kwesi Johnson.

Adrian Grafe is a professor of English at Artois University in France. He was an associate professor at the Sorbonne for 10 years, has published broadly on poetry, and was named a Fellow of the English Association in 2011.
Jessica Stephens is an assistant professor of English at Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle University, where she teaches translation. Until the spring of 2010 she was co-director of the English Department at Angers University where she taught poetry and the translation of contemporary British poetry, and ran a Translation Studies MA program.

Edited by Adrian Grafe and Jessica Stephens
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 250
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2012
pISBN: 978-0-7864-6283-4
eISBN: 978-0-7864-9092-9
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      vii
Introduction
(ADRIAN GRAFE and JESSICA STEPHENS)      1

Part I: From Constraint to Release
1. The Self-Resisting: Hardy’s Ambivalent Evocation of Romantic Childhood
(GALIA BENZIMAN)      15
2. Hardy’s Cunning in Form and Diction
(EMILIE LORIAUX)      29
3. “Minds” and “Manacles” in Late Lawrence
(ELISE BRAULT-DREUX)      41
4. Lawrence Between Resistance and Dissolution
(SARAH BOUTTIER)      55

Part II: Against the Odds
5. The Poem or the “Fierce Desire” to Live: Isaac Rosenberg and Robert Graves
(ANNE MOUNIC)      70
6. Resisting Theological Error as a Means of Political Salvation: Charles Williams’ and Dorothy L. Sayers’ Second World War Poetry
(SUZANNE BRAY)      88
7. Resilience and Regeneration: Four Quartets in French Translation
( JESSICA STEPHENS)      104

Part III: Northern Resistance
8. Basil Bunting: Resistance, History and Myth
(CHARLOTTE ESTRADE)      120
9. Ted Hughes and “That Built-In Resistance”: Versions of the Calder Valley
(CLAIRE HÉLIE)      135

Part IV: The Celtic Strain
10. “The Embattled Stance”: Late Yeats
(ELIZABETH MULLER)      149
11. W.B. Yeats and Resistance
(CATHERINE PHILLIPS)      166
12. Responding, Rewording and/or Resisting: Edwin Morgan
(SHONA M. ALLAN)      179

Part V: Irony, Play and Pleasure
13. Auden’s Irreducible Art
(BOUTHEINA BOUGHNIM LAARIF)      194
14. Hugo Williams: Standing the Test of Time?
(ADRIAN GRAFE)      206
15. “Wi Naw Tek Noh More A Dem Oppreshan”: Linton Kwesi Johnson’s Resistant Vision
(EMILY TAYLOR MERRIMAN)      218

About the Contributors      235
Index      237

“Recommended”—Choice.