Ode to the Medieval Poets
Ode to the Medieval Poets - meaning Summary
Admiration Shaded by Envy
Auden addresses medieval poets with admiration and envy, noting their cheerful, bawdy, robust verse despite real dangers and privations. He contrasts their communal, spirited making with modern writers who, cushioned by comforts, seem morose, self-obsessed, and alienated from public life. Auden longs to write their kind of joyous verse but concedes he cannot match their authenticity, implying the modern Age itself discourages such art.
Read Complete AnalysesChaucer, Langland, Douglas, Dunbar, with all your brother Anons, how on earth did you ever manage, without anaesthetics or plumbing, in daily peril from witches, warlocks, lepers, The Holy Office, foreign mercenaries burning as they came, to write so cheerfully, with no grimaces of self-pathos? Long-winded you could be but not vulgar, bawdy but not grubby, your raucous flytings sheer high-spirited fun, whereas our makers, beset by every creature comfort, immune, they believe, to all superstitions, even at their best are so often morose or kinky, petrified by their gorgon egos. We all ask, but I doubt if anyone can really say why all age-groups should find our Age quite so repulsive. Without its heartless engines, though, you could not tenant my book-shelves, on hand to delect my ear and chuckle my sad flesh: I would gladly just now be turning out verses to applaud a thundery jovial June when the judas-tree is in blossom, but am forbidden by the knowledge that you would have wrought them so much better.
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