The Drunk in the Furnace (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: W. S. Merwin
- First Published: 1960
- Type of Work: Poetry
- Genres: Poetry, Dramatic monologue
- Subjects: Human race, Alcoholism or alcoholics, Kings, queens, or royalty, Fate or fatalism, Heroes or heroism, Life and death, Pollution
With The Drunk in the Furnace, Merwin intensified and expanded his earlier position that human beings had become increasingly subject to divorce from their environment and from their integrating spiritual centers. The book is enclosed by two defining figures, a Greek warrior-hero and a street person, who reflect for Merwin the typical human situation. The first is the title character in “Odysseus,” the epic wandering hero of the Homeric poems, about whom Alfred, Lord Tennyson had written two poems in the high Victorian mode projecting Odysseus's role as the model male hero,...
[The entire page is 645 words long]
See Also:
- Add The Drunk in the Furnace to your favorites