Motifs and Themes in Modern British and American Poetry

This volume brings together fourteen German and English articles, some previously published, others printed here for the first time. All the studies focus on motifs and themes in modern British and American poetry and examine how these textual elements are employed. They shed light on the aesthetic and interpretative choices made by individual writers, describe the authors’ debt to, and criticism of, tradition, and demonstrate the significance of motifs and themes in the history of ideas and literature. The ancient heritage is represented by essays on Prometheus, Orpheus, Circe and the sirens, the Christian tradition by an article on the church motif. The poets’ response to public motifs and themes is illustrated by studies of city poetry and the urban crowd, the fortunes of the English country house, the Holocaust, the atom bomb, and the Gulf War. The final section deals with poems on poetry and discusses problems of composition and inspiration (Thomas Hardy), writers’ attitude towards museums, and their handling of the motif of the blank page.