A Study of Seven Representative Contemporary British Poets

This paper comprises a preliminary survey of seven representative contemporary British poets. They are Charles Causeley, Seamus Heaney, Thom Gunn, Ted Hughes, Norman MacCaig, Adrian Mitchell, and Edwin Morgan. The results may be summed up as follows: After T. S. Eliots later poetry in the middle of the present century, British poetry has developed in many aspects including fresh subject-matters, new ways of expressing ideas effectively and other various techniques formerly unknown to us. However, British poetry after T, S. Eliot does not seem to have much exploited what may be termed as T. S. Eliotean technicality such as we have seen in his The Waste Land. Rather, it seems that post-Eliotean British poetry has gone back to pre-Eliotean mode in which poetry was composed with less technicality. In Charles Causeley's poetry, for instance, innocence in childhood is expressed vividly and convincingly but in a moderate way in his poems such as "By St. Thomas Water" and "Reservoir Street". In Seamus Heaneys poetry, Irish rural life he has seen in his home county Derry in his childhood is described in such a way that it finely and ultimately represents Gaelic tradition. Thom Gunn sees man's will to push on to his goal in the boys on motorcycles as he writes in "On the Move". Ted Hughes tries to depict what he calls "the war between vitality and death", especially, with his animal poems. Indeed, his animal poems are remarkable and add a new dimension to post-Eliotean British poetry. Among the rest of poets, Adrian Mitchell seems to have been preoccupied for a while with the cruelty and madness of the war describing them in a series of poems such as "Veteran with a Head Wound", "Cease Fire", and "Norman Morrison". Among the seven poets I have examined, Seamus Heaney who is read and loved most widely in England and America is outstanding. He tirelessly produces poems after poems, and it seems that he has already been recognized as the most important poet after Yeats and T. S. Eliot.이 論文은 敎育部에서 支給한 學術硏究 助成費에 의하여 이루어졌음