Alen Tate

124 Pages·2010·0.8 MB·English

Allen
Tate
CURRENTLY AVAILABLE
BLOOM’S MAJOR POETS
Maya Angelou
John Ashbery
Elizabeth Bishop
William Blake
Gwendolyn Brooks
Robert Browning
Geoffrey Chaucer
Sameul Taylor Coleridge
Hart Crane
E.E. Cummings
Dante
Emily Dickinson
John Donne
H.D.
Thomas Hardy
Seamus Heaney
A.E. Housman
T. S. Eliot
Robert Frost
Seamus Heaney
Homer
Langston Hughes
John Keats
W.S. Merwin
John Milton
Marianne Moore
Sylvia Plath
Edgar Allan Poe
Poets of World War I
Christina Rossetti
Wallace Stevens
Mark Strand
Shakespeare’s Poems & Sonnets
Percy Shelley
Allen Tate
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Walt Whitman
William Carlos Williams
William Wordsworth
William Butler Yeats
Allen
Tate
© 2004 by Chelsea House Publishers, a subsidiary of
Haights Cross Communications.
Introduction © 2004 by Harold Bloom.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written
permission of the publisher.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
First Printing
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Allen Tate / [edited by] Harold Bloom.
p. cm. — (Bloom’s major poets)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7910-7889-2
1. Tate, Allen, 1899—-Criticism and interpretation. I. Bloom,
Harold. II. Series.
PS3539.A74Z56 2004
818’.5209—dc22
2004002632
Contributing Editor: Gabriel Welsch
Cover design by Keith Trego
Layout by EJB Publishing Services
CONTENTS
User’s Guide 7
About the Editor 8
Editor’s Note 9
Introduction 10
Biography of Allen Tate 12
Critical Analysis of “Ode to the Confederate Dead” 18
Critical Views on “Ode to the Confederate Dead” 25
George Hemphill on the Poem’s Formative Aspects 25
Ferman Bishop on Tate’s Revision Process 29
Radcliffe Squires Explicates the Poem 39
Robert S. Dupree on Tate’s Parody of Religious Ideals 47
William Doreski on the Context of Tate’s Voice 53
Langdon Hammer on the Presence of Other Modernists 55
Critical Analysis of “The Mediterranean” 63
Critical Views on “The Mediterranean” 66
George Hemphill onTate’s Characteristic Tension 66
Radcliffe Squires on Tate’s Intellectual “Home” 68
Robert S. Dupree on the Poem’s Suggestive Language 71
William Doreski on Tate’s Connection to Baudelaire 75
Critical Analysis of “Aeneas at Washington” 78
Critical Views on “Aeneas at Washington” 82
Radcliffe Squires on Tate’s Pairs of Poems 82
Robert S. Dupree on the Poem’s Imaginative Leap 84
Elsa Nettels on the Poem’s Agrarian Statement 88
Critical Analysis of “The Swimmers” 92
Critical Views on “The Swimmers” 96
Radcliffe Squires on Tate’s Formal Approach 96
Robert S. Dupree on the Poem’s Narrative
and Symbolism 97
William Doreski on Tate’s Breaking New Ground 102
Thomas A. Underwood on Tate’s Social Thinking 106
Works by Allen Tate 113
Works about Allen Tate 116
Acknowledgments 121
Index of Themes and Ideas 122
USER’S GUIDE
This volume is designed to present biographical, critical, and
bibliographical information on the author and the author’s best-
known or most important poems. Following Harold Bloom’s
editor’s note and introduction is a concise biography of the
author that discusses major life events and important literary
accomplishments. A critical analysis of each poem follows,
tracing significant themes, patterns, and motifs in the work. As
with any study guide, it is recommended that the reader read the
poem beforehand and have a copy of the poem being discussed
available for quick reference.
A selection of critical extracts, derived from previously
published material, follows each thematic analysis. In most cases,
these extracts represent the best analysis available from a number
of leading critics. Because these extracts are derived from
previously published material, they will include the original
notations and references when available. Each extract is cited,
and readers are encouraged to check the original publication as
they continue their research. A bibliography of the author’s
writings, a list of additional books and articles on the author and
their work, and an index of themes and ideas conclude the
volume.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale
University. He is the author of over 20 books, and the editor of
more than 30 anthologies of literary criticism.
Professor Bloom’s works include Shelley’s Mythmaking (1959),
The Visionary Company (1961), Blake’s Apocalypse (1963), Yeats
(1970), A Map of Misreading (1975), Kabbalah and Criticism
(1975), Agon: Toward a Theory of Revisionism (1982), The American
Religion (1992), The Western Canon (1994), and Omens of
Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection (1996).
The Anxiety of Influence (1973) sets forth Professor Bloom’s
provocative theory of the literary relationships between the great
writers and their predecessors. His most recent books include
Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, a 1998 National Book
Award finalist, How to Read and Why(2000), Stories and Poems for
Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages (2001), Genius: A Mosaic
of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds (2002), and Hamlet:
Poem Unlimited(2003).
Professor Bloom earned his Ph.D. from Yale University in
1955 and has served on the Yale faculty since then. He is a 1985
MacArthur Foundation Award recipient and served as the
Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University
in 1987–88. In 1999 he was awarded the prestigious American
Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Criticism.
Professor Bloom is the editor of several other Chelsea House
series in literary criticism, including BLOOM’S MAJOR SHORT
STORY WRITERS, BLOOM’S MAJOR NOVELISTS, BLOOM’S MAJOR
DRAMATISTS, BLOOM’S MODERN CRITICAL INTERPRETATIONS,
BLOOM’S MODERN CRITICAL VIEWS, BLOOM’S BIOCRITIQUES,
BLOOM’S GUIDES, BLOOM’S MAJOR LITERARY CHARACTERS, and
BLOOM’SPERIODSTUDIES.
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EDITOR’S NOTE
My Introduction contrasts “The Mediterranean,” a poem that
shows Allen Tate’s affinity with Hart Crane, to “Aeneas at
Washington,” where the idiom of T.S. Eliot is dominant.
All six of the critical analyses of “Ode to the Confederate
Dead” seem to me useful, but I am particularly helped by
Langdon Hammer’s acute perceptions. Hammer shrewdly notes
Tate’s recapitulation of his identification with Eliot and
repudiation of Hart Crane. He captures the irony of Crane’s
continued presence in the poem’s metric and cognitive music.
“The Mediterranean” receives four erudite commentaries
here, emphasizing Tate’s evocations of Vergil and Baudelaire,
useful supplements to the surmise in my Introduction that Hart
Crane’s ghost also hovers in this poem.
“Aeneas at Washington,” far more Eliotic than Vergilian, is
seen by three critics here as an exemplification of Tate’s “fierce
Latinity.”
“The Swimmers,” probably Tate’s most socially problematical
poem, is illuminated by four approaches here, all of which
suggest that this work’s creation could not resolve the blockage
of Tate’s imaginative vision.
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