Criticism > Poetry > Tate, Allen - Sister Mary Bernetta (essay date spring 1951)

Tate, Allen - Sister Mary Bernetta (essay date spring 1951)

Sister Mary Bernetta (essay date spring 1951)

SOURCE: Bernetta, Sister Mary. “Allen Tate's Inferno.” Renascence 3, no. 2 (spring 1951): 113-19.

[In the following essay, Bernetta examines the theme of damnation in Tate's poetry.]

                    Gentlemen, my secret is
Damnation.

(“To the Lacedemonians”)

Certain critics have called the verse of Allen Tate Augustan, pointing out in particular his affinity to Pope; others have labeled it metaphysical, after the poetry of Donne's age; still others, in the tradition of the Greco-Roman classics. Yet his basic concern, especially as revealed in Poems: 1922-1947, is medieval. In the Middle Ages there was one drama which took precedence over all other conflict: the struggle of Everyman to win beatitude and and to escape eternal reprobation. Tate recognizes the issue as a subject most significant for literature. With the old veteran of “To...

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