Abstract

The dissertation is a study of the poetry of W. H. Auden in relation to the political thought of Hannah Arendt. It demonstrates the degree to which the central concerns of some of their major works converge and argues that these points of convergence disclose hitherto unexplored dimensions in both of their writings. ;The dissertation begins by analyzing the relation between space and language in the Origins of Totalitarianism and shows that, for Arendt, spatial formations are linked to linguistic modes of expression according to a rigorous rule: the greater the displacement, the less meaningful the language. The dissertation then turns to Auden's Age of Anxiety as an extended experiment in distorted temporality. An extraordinary yet little-noticed temporal distortion in the poem emerges in the messianic motif of "the ragged remnant" around which its longest speech is structured. The poem's messianic dimension finds expression in the phrase by which its Jewish character describes her own displacement: "anxious hope." ;The dissertation then turns to Arendt's Human Condition and argues that it should be recognized as a messianic---but non-eschatological---treatise. Arendt, who follows a distinguished tradition of Jewish-German scholarship, develops the messianic as a schema in which the inner potentialities of action redeem action and action, in turn, saves the world from ruin. Against the ever-recurring cycles of nature and the end-dominated world of the human artifice, action is always new, and novelty, figured in the image of birth, is inherently miraculous. The final chapter consists in a reading of Auden's "Canzone" in light of Arendt's notes on the faculty of willing. Both writers are drawn toward a consideration of the legitimacy of the will, and Arendt's reflections revolve around the same temporal conundrums that structure Auden's poem. ;The conclusion outlines Arendt's and Auden's corresponding responses to the threat of totalitarianism. Both emphasize the modest---and messianic---imperative of "going on." The dissertation ends with a reading of "In Praise of Limestone" and argues that the poetic praise of faults, fractures, and frailties can be understood in terms of Arendt's account of action---as its completion