Shield of Achilles by W. H. Auden

Shield of Achilles

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Shield of Achilles by W. H. Auden
  • Shield of Achilles by W. H. Auden
Shield of Achilles

Princeton University Press

Shield of Achilles

$22.95
$22.95
In stock

Back in print for the first time in decades, Auden's National Book Award-winning poetry collection, in a critical edition that introduces it to a new generation of readers

The Shield of Achilles, which won the National Book Award in 1956, may well be W. H. Auden's most important, intricately designed, and unified book of poetry. In addition to its famous title poem, which reimagines Achilles's shield for the modern age, when war and heroism have changed beyond recognition, the book also includes two sequences--"Bucolics" and "Horae Canonicae"--that Auden believed to be among his most significant work. Featuring an authoritative text and an introduction and notes by Alan Jacobs, this volume brings Auden's collection back into print for the first time in decades and offers the only critical edition of the work.

As Jacobs writes in the introduction, Auden's collection "is the boldest and most intellectually assured work of his career, an achievement that has not been sufficiently acknowledged." Describing the book's formal qualities and careful structure, Jacobs shows why The Shield of Achilles should be seen as one of Auden's most central poetic statements--a richly imaginative, beautifully envisioned account of what it means to live, as human beings do, simultaneously in nature and in history.
Book Details
Publisher:
Princeton University Press
ISBN:
9780691218656
Binding:
Hardcover
Pages:
136
Authors:
W. H. Auden
Published Date:
2024-05-07
Language:
English
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About W. H. Auden

One of the leading English-language poets of the twentieth century, W. H. Auden (1907–1973) was born in York, England, and educated at Christ Church, Oxford, where he befriended Stephen Spender and Christopher Isherwood. The 1930 publication of Poems established him as the defining voice of a new generation. He traveled to Iceland, China, and Spain during the Civil War, then emigrated to the United States in 1939 and became an American citizen. The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry came in 1948 for The Age of Anxiety. Auden served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1954 until his death and divided his later years between New York City and Austria. He died in Vienna on September 29, 1973.

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