Louis MacNeice's Poetry of Ambivalence

Abstract

'MacSpaunday,' a satirical acronym formed from the names MacNeice, Spender, Auden, and Day Lewis, was Roy Campbell's label for the group of poets who dominated the English literary scene in the 1930S and whose work, in the foreshortening perspective of literary history, has been taken to be not only the most characteristic but also the most interesting poetry of the period. The high esteem enjoyed by Stephen Spender and C. Day Lewis was an accident of literary fashion; of the four only W.H. Auden and his friend Louis MacNeice poetically survived the thirties to produce a body of poetry that has outlasted their early reputations. In the case of Auden, criticism and exegesis have established a degree of clarity. Assessments of his poetry as a whole, identification of its strengths and weaknesses, and preferences between different parts of his work may vary widely, but there is approximate agreement on what the critical issues are. MacNeice is not so fortunate. His middle and later work, unjustly, received less attention than his earliest. Since his death in 1963, it is true, several books about his poetry have appeared; but though he has become at least subject for academic study, he has not become, so far as I am aware, a subject of discussion.