At Home in Time: Forms of Neo-Augustanism in Modern English Poetry

Patrick Deane argues that modern English poetry, in some key aspects, is indebted to the classical tradition and to the attitudes and modes of the 18th century. He illustrates how neo-Augustan values are apparent in the works of T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, A.D. Hope, Donald Davie, Charles Tomlinson, and others. The presence of these values, Deane suggests, is not a curiosity but part of a vital tradition of modern neo-Augustanism that has been previously overlooked. By tracing these writers' common interest in Horace, John Dryden, and Samuel Johnson, he uncovers important links between seemingly diverse modern poets. He challenges the whole interpretation of literary modernism, which has traditionally linked the modern poets to the Romantics and seen both as anti-Augustan. Deane concludes that these modern poets share a ready acceptance of linear time, within which all acts of artistic and social creativity must take place - a crucial factor in both the form and substance of their writings.