The Dividing Sword: Basil Bunting’s The Spoils
The late celebrity of Briggflatts has tended to subsume the body of Basil Bunting’s poetry into that poem’s themes and expectations and obscured the underlying assumptions that motivate his work. This is his extreme rejection of modernity – manifest in a money economy, the administered state and abs...
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Centre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte"
2023-11-01
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| Series: | Sillages Critiques |
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| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/15314 |
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| author | Jeffrey Twitchell-Waas |
| author_facet | Jeffrey Twitchell-Waas |
| author_sort | Jeffrey Twitchell-Waas |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The late celebrity of Briggflatts has tended to subsume the body of Basil Bunting’s poetry into that poem’s themes and expectations and obscured the underlying assumptions that motivate his work. This is his extreme rejection of modernity – manifest in a money economy, the administered state and abstract thought – to which Bunting reacted by adopting an anti-humanist stance that determines both the form and content of his poetry. The basic terms of this position are preliminarily examined in a handful of early short poems, followed by a close reading of The Spoils – a poem that seems to baffle most commentators but represents Bunting’s most trenchant expression of his values and world view. Finally, the implications of this examination are brought to bear on Briggflatts itself to indicate how it is motivated by a systematic negation of the contemporary society that Bunting rejects. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-246f80d8b4a24e6da46bd41af37461bb |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 1272-3819 1969-6302 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2023-11-01 |
| publisher | Centre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte" |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Sillages Critiques |
| spelling | doaj-art-246f80d8b4a24e6da46bd41af37461bb2025-01-30T13:47:50ZengCentre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte"Sillages Critiques1272-38191969-63022023-11-013510.4000/sillagescritiques.15314The Dividing Sword: Basil Bunting’s The SpoilsJeffrey Twitchell-WaasThe late celebrity of Briggflatts has tended to subsume the body of Basil Bunting’s poetry into that poem’s themes and expectations and obscured the underlying assumptions that motivate his work. This is his extreme rejection of modernity – manifest in a money economy, the administered state and abstract thought – to which Bunting reacted by adopting an anti-humanist stance that determines both the form and content of his poetry. The basic terms of this position are preliminarily examined in a handful of early short poems, followed by a close reading of The Spoils – a poem that seems to baffle most commentators but represents Bunting’s most trenchant expression of his values and world view. Finally, the implications of this examination are brought to bear on Briggflatts itself to indicate how it is motivated by a systematic negation of the contemporary society that Bunting rejects.https://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/15314Bunting (Basil)OdesThe SpoilsBriggflattsanti-modernityanti-humanism |
| spellingShingle | Jeffrey Twitchell-Waas The Dividing Sword: Basil Bunting’s The Spoils Sillages Critiques Bunting (Basil) Odes The Spoils Briggflatts anti-modernity anti-humanism |
| title | The Dividing Sword: Basil Bunting’s The Spoils |
| title_full | The Dividing Sword: Basil Bunting’s The Spoils |
| title_fullStr | The Dividing Sword: Basil Bunting’s The Spoils |
| title_full_unstemmed | The Dividing Sword: Basil Bunting’s The Spoils |
| title_short | The Dividing Sword: Basil Bunting’s The Spoils |
| title_sort | dividing sword basil bunting s the spoils |
| topic | Bunting (Basil) Odes The Spoils Briggflatts anti-modernity anti-humanism |
| url | https://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/15314 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT jeffreytwitchellwaas thedividingswordbasilbuntingsthespoils AT jeffreytwitchellwaas dividingswordbasilbuntingsthespoils |