Date of Award

Summer 7-1940

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

English

First Advisor

Cleanth Brooks

Abstract

This is a study of the symbols in the work of five modem English left-wing writers.

Chapter I shows that the number of recurring images in the work of these authors, points to a submerged myth, or formal system of symbols. This has been partially recognized by a few critics but never fully examined. The symbols themselves, because of their newness and because they stand for values many of which are new to bourgeois thought, have earned for the work of these writers a reputation of being both strange and abstruse. It is suggested that Ignorance of the meanings of the symbols is responsible for this view.

Chapter II is an examination of the use of the machine as symbol, of the Images drawn from the economic crash of the thirties, and of the meaning and use of the symbol of the Ice Age.

Chapter III is a review of the opposed forces. On one side is the "enemy" - capitalist civilization end its ally, the death will. On the side of the poets are the poor, the organized workers, the revolutionists, and the "ancestors". Methods advocated by the writers for attacking the "enemy" are examined.

Chapter IV shows the myth in its broadest sense—its use in fantasy and allegory for the purpose of making the conflict evident and objective.

Chapter V is a study of the Ideological base of the myth. Reasons for its creation are found in the necessity for rendering experience concretely and dramatically. Evaluation of the myth is made in terms of these functions and in terms of its usefulness in the creation of understatement and irony,

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