A critical appraisal of the works of Louis MacNeice
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Abstract
The purpose of the dissertation is to appraise the qualities of Louis MacNeice's poetry, to discover its relationship to his critical theories, and to determine its development since his first important work in the nineteen-thirties. That there has been a development has not always been recognized; there have been no full length studies of MacNeice's work, and the short discussions of his poetry have been primarily concerned with his place in the Auden Group.
Poetry, MacNeice came to believe, is essentially a communication of some truth, rising out of the poet's own experience but bearing an essential relationship to more universal truths, grounded in a belief held by the poet but shared by other men, and striving through the ritual of its expression to extend its grasp of truth beyond the limits of empirical reality to the Unknown. The poet's duty is to find an organic relationship with the life of the community that he may speak to the common man. The changing themes in MacNeice's poetry are the result of his attempt to apply these theories [TRUNCATED]
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University
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