Student Question
How did Keats influence Wilfred Owen and what was Owen's relationship with Sassoon, Day Lewis, Blunden, and Rosenberg?
Quick answer:
Wilfred Owen was influenced by John Keats in terms of diction and rhythmic style, particularly in his early works. Owen's contemporaries, such as Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden, and Isaac Rosenberg, shared his focus on World War I's grim realities using traditional verse forms. While Owen and Sassoon had a personal friendship, Cecil Day Lewis belonged to a later generation that reacted to the war poets' themes. These poets collectively highlighted the war's harshness.
Wilfred Owen discovered John Keats when he was still in school and his
letters attest the degree to which he admired and was influenced by the earlier
Romantic poetic. Critics have notes that the stylistic influence is apparent in
both diction and rhythmical effects, especially in Owen`s earlier work.
Several poets wrote about the experience of World War I, including Rupert
Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden, and Isaac Rosenberg. Owen was
contemporary with them. They were similar in using traditional rather than
modernist verse technique and depicting the stark realities of the trenches to
emphasize the horrors of war.
Cecil Day Lewis is generally considered as belonging to a slightly later
post-war school along with Auden and Spender, that developed in part in
reaction to the war poets.
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