Dislocating Country: Post-War English Poetry and The Politics of Movement

Herd, David

doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199596805.013.013

Oxford Handbooks Online 2013

DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199596805.013.013

|View full text |Cite

Dislocating Country: Post-War English Poetry and The Politics of Movement

David Herd

Help me understand this report

Search citation statements

Order By: Relevance

Paper Sections

Select...

Citation Types

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Year Published

2017

2018

Publication Types

Select...

Article2

Relationship

Self Cite0

Independent2

Authors

Journals

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In part, I develop David Herd's description of Davie as a writer for an England grappling with its 'post-war condition'. 9 However, I also offer a different understanding of Davie and 'Englishness' that disentangles him from the conceptions of national identity otherwise attributed to the Movement, as well as an alternative to Herd's contention that 'from its origin in the 1950s, Davie's criticism is a record of the effort to contain poetic language within the contours of country and nation.' 10 Davie himself claimed the opposite, stating that he moved away from the values of the central figures of the Movement precisely because 'they fed our national wish to be a tight little island unto ourselves' after the war.…”

mentioning

confidence: 94%

Donald Davie and Englishness

Davies

2018

The Review of English Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article examines the importance of 'Englishness' as a thematic element in the poetry and criticism of Donald Davie (1922Davie ( -1995. Beginning with a consideration of Davie's position writing in the aftermath of the Second World War and the decline of the British Empire, the article argues that Davie capitalises on an internationalist sensibility otherwise rejected by many of the post-war writers of the Movement with whom he was initially linked. In so doing, this article traces a tension in Davie's writing between, on the one hand, a resistance to the parochialism and insularity he saw emerging in post-war England, particularly in the poetry of Philip Larkin, and, on the other, the affirmation of a living 'Englishness' that he explores through England's provincial regions and, at times more problematically, the nation's imperial past. This is detailed further through Davie's later poetry, particularly the long poem England and the collection The Shires, in which the relation between landscape and history become increasingly significant for Davie's poetics. By framing Davie in terms of his negotiation of 'Englishness', this article locates Davie as a significant poetic commentator during the turbulent changes that England underwent following the Second World War.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 94%

Donald Davie and Englishness

Davies

2018

The Review of English Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Performing innocence: Violence and the nation in Ian McEwan’s Saturday and Sunjeev Sahota’s Ours Are the Streets

Sánchez-Arce

2017

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Mainstream British society and post-9/11 fiction borrow from the discourse of American exceptionalism (including the fall from innocence to experience, the desire to create or preserve a better world, a “Messianic consciousness” reflecting the arrogance of virtue, the development of narratives of heroism and goodness tied to nation-building, and the use of the above to justify “exemptionalism”) to expose and query the entitlement of those within the narrative home of Britishness and the outsider status of those used to define its borders. This article discusses Ian McEwan’s Saturday and Sunjeev Sahota’s Ours Are the Streets, arguing that they illustrate a turning point in Britain’s imagination of itself as a nation in a struggle over Britishness which is predicated on notions of violence and innocence. Since 9/11 the debate about Britishness has used innocence as a constitutive inside of the nation and direct violence as an exclusionary characteristic. McEwan satirizes this rhetoric of innocence whereas Sahota challenges it. Both novels illustrate how post-9/11 British fiction deals with politics as war, placing violence at the heart of society. McEwan parodies the point of view of British normative society by allowing his main character to justify his privileged position under the guise of arguing for the current social and international status quo. Sahota charts the journey of those who are caught between the rejection of unjust social structures and the desire to fit within them, depicting his protagonist’s misguided attempt to redefine the British nation through terrorism. Violence and exceptionalism are central to both novels, which portray a turn in the imagining of Britain. The events of 9/11 can therefore be seen not just as a historical turning point but as a turn in Britain’s imagination of itself.

show abstract

scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.

Contact Info

customersupport@researchsolutions.com

10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614

Henderson, NV 89052, USA

Blog Terms and Conditions API Terms Privacy Policy Contact Cookie Preferences Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information

Made with 💙 for researchers

Part of the Research Solutions Family.

Dislocating Country: Post-War English Poetry and The Politics of Movement

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Donald Davie and Englishness

Donald Davie and Englishness

Performing innocence: Violence and the nation in Ian McEwan’s Saturday and Sunjeev Sahota’s Ours Are the Streets

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About