| Summary: | <p>This thesis examines the controversial South African War's influence on English poetry, highlighting the individual responses of established poets and drawing on the work of numerous minor verse-writers to define the changing tradition of 'patriotic' and 'war' poetry.</p> <p>Chapter I sketches the historical and social background, noting how events in South Africa assumed great magnitude for contemporaries whose popular Imperialism was severely tried and who made an unprecedented national 'war-effort'.</p> <p>In Chapter II the late-nineteenth-century tradition of 'patriotic' poetry is identified, through analysis of verse-anthologies and contemporary critical opinion, and by briefly studying the war's lesser poetry which confirmed this mood of Art-for-Morality's-sake writing.</p> <p>Chapter III describes Kipling's personal affection for South Africa, and the political aspirations which were related to his dedicated 1890s' verse-lessons. His reactions to the conflict reveal the disillusionment which distanced Kipling from his audience and changed his patriotic and imperialistic teaching.</p> <p>Inflated by the war, 'Rudyard Kiplingism' became a powerful literary movement. Chapter IV explains the discredit brought by Robert Buchanan's 'Hooligan' criticism, Edgar Wallace's 'barrack-room ballad' imitations, and Kipling's own ill-judged verses 'The Absent-Minded Beggar', but also argues that certain soldier-poets usefully exploited his reputation.</p> <p>Chapter V evaluates the contributions of four respected and influential patriotic poets: the 'undistinguished adequacy' of Alfred Austin, Poet Laureate; the strident verses of W.E. Henley; Henry Newbolt's strongly idealistic encouragement and consolation; and William Watson's brave but costly anti-war stance.</p> <p>Chapter VI considers a variety of poets in demonstrating how, while religious sanction for human conflict and empire-building was emphatically re-affirmed, some questioned the principle of War (including Meredith and Hardy) and denounced the sufferings inflicted on the Boers.</p> <p>The strain imposed on fireside poets' customary responses and rhetoric is outlined in Chapter VII, which also discusses the sentiments of Hardy's discontented 'war-poetry' and The Dynasts, before assessing the impact of personal bereavement on A.E. Housman's loyal poetry.</p>
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