This book takes a thematic-cum-stylistic approach to Audens earlier poetry and poetics. By dividing the poets ethical consciousness into three thematic groups (cognition, emotion and conation), it demonstrates how readers can construct poetic themes by experiencing texts within their social and historical contexts. This allows a congruence of consciousness to be achieved between poet and reader. The book reveals the wide-ranging ethical concerns of Audens poetry (19351940), which include addressing the social and moral crisis of the West, denouncing the evil of international fascism and the injustice of appeasing it, expressing sympathy for those who suffer, urging joint action against fascism, promoting mutual love, and envisioning a community of freedom and brotherhood. When examining Audens poetry, the author employs traditional and cognitive stylistic tools to focus on how verbal nuances and patterns work together to evoke readers perception, feeling and cognition, thereby conveying poetic meaning. While offering new insights into Audens poetry and poetics, the study sheds light on the merits of what Geoffrey Leech calls an interpretive synthesis of stylistics and literary studies. Covering a wide range of Audens canonical poems, including Spain, In Memory of W. B. Yeats, Refugee Blues, September 1, 1939, Musée des Beaux Arts, Epitaph on a Tyrant and New Year Letter, this book will appeal to students and scholars interested in modern Anglophone poetry, literary criticism, and cognitive stylistics (or poetics).
