The Poetics of Humiliation: Revisiting W.H. Auden’s The Shield of Achilles

Abstract

Given that most students encounter poems in anthologies removed from their initial published context, poetry books offer us a chance to see a poet's project in a different light, allowing us to piece together connections and gain a greater appreciation and critical scope than individual, uncontextualized poems might allow. By revisiting W.H. Auden’s 1955 poetry collection, The Shield of Achilles, republished as a critical edition last May by Princeton University Press, I offer a reading that attends to a running thread in Auden’s work, thereby connecting the collection’s three constituent parts. My essay argues first that, in the wake of modernity, Auden's Shield poses the question of human solidarity, seeking an answer to the question of how humans might love their neighbors. By reading a selection of poems in Auden’s collection, I argue that Auden contributes a "poetics of humiliation,” which I take to be lyrical self-degradation of both the lyricist and the reader. I contend that by engaging in humiliation, Auden places the lyrical subject in a sinful, low condition in which the only remaining option is a radical, willful acceptance of grace, the likes of which offer an opportunity to have a sacramental vision of the neighbor.