Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism and the Poetry of W. H. Auden

• Thesis title in Czech: Reinhold Niebuhr, křesťanský realismus a poezie W. H. Audena
• Thesis title in English: Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism and the Poetry of W. H. Auden
• Key words: W. H. Auden, Reinhold Niebuhr, studená válka, křesťanský realismus
• English key words: W. H. Auden, Reinhold Niebuhr, Cold War, Christian realism
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2013/2014
• Thesis type: Bachelor's thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: doc. Justin Quinn, Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 29.09.2014
• Date of assignment: 29.09.2014
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 13.10.2014
• Date and time of defence: 07.09.2015 00:00
• Date of electronic submission: 08.08.2015
• Date of proceeded defence: 07.09.2015
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: PhDr. Ladislav Vít, Ph.D.

Guidelines

The aim of the thesis is to explore the intellectual influence that W. H. Auden’s friendship with Reinhold Niebuhr had on both his life and poetry and how this relates to the ties between W. H. Auden and the US Cold War propaganda. The thesis will focus on both the wider political and cultural US Cold War environment of the period from the late 1940s to the early 1960s and the impact it had on Auden’s work, and the more particular influence of Reinhold Niebuhr’s link to this environment on Auden. The more general focus on the US Cold War propaganda and its soft power notion (as opposed to the Soviet propaganda policy) will be examined through the example of W. H. Auden and the impact of the American soft power on his work. That will be considered along with and linked to the significance of Reinhold Niebuhr and his philosophical perspective, which combines the moral and the political, for W. H. Auden and how it affected the further development and shaping of Auden’s own stance, both critical and poetic.

References

Auden, W. H. Collected Poems. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.
Brunner, Edward. Cold War Poetry. University of Illinois Press, 2001.
Foulkes, A. Peter. Literature and propaganda. London: Methuen, 1983.
Niebuhr, Reinhold. The Irony of American History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Osgood, Kenneth. Total Cold War: Eisenhower's Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006.
Rice, Daniel F. Reinhold Niebuhr and His Circle of Influence. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Rubin, Andrew. Archives of Authority: Empire, Culture, and the Cold War. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012.
Saunders, Frances Stonor. Who Paid the Piper: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War. London: Granta Books, 2000.
Sharpe, Tony. W. H. Auden in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.