01-01-2023, 09:32 PM
I think the larger question is why the general public hasn't heard of Ocean Vuong or Ted Kooser, while Tennyson or Eliot were much better known in their times.
And here, I disagree with that assertion in the first place.
The average factory worker or farmhand, to say nothing of gardeners, wouldn't have heard of Tennyson. Or if he had, it'd have been when Tennyson had already become a public celebrity at 80. The average man in industrial age Britain would've worked his 12 hours and have spent his leisure time at the pub and the football.
Tennyson and Eliot loom large in the Anglosphere because they have been made to loom large through universal school education, and later, widespread university education in the 20th century. It all worked very well for the first few generations. The canon was small, and universally accepted. But in a finite number of schooling years, and in minutes within that that can be earmarked for literature, you can fit in Dylan Thomas only if you exclude someone else.
It's quite as simple as that. The poets after Eliot don't feature as much in the popular imagination because there was never any space for them in the syllabus.
And here, I disagree with that assertion in the first place.
The average factory worker or farmhand, to say nothing of gardeners, wouldn't have heard of Tennyson. Or if he had, it'd have been when Tennyson had already become a public celebrity at 80. The average man in industrial age Britain would've worked his 12 hours and have spent his leisure time at the pub and the football.
Tennyson and Eliot loom large in the Anglosphere because they have been made to loom large through universal school education, and later, widespread university education in the 20th century. It all worked very well for the first few generations. The canon was small, and universally accepted. But in a finite number of schooling years, and in minutes within that that can be earmarked for literature, you can fit in Dylan Thomas only if you exclude someone else.
It's quite as simple as that. The poets after Eliot don't feature as much in the popular imagination because there was never any space for them in the syllabus.