Tony Harrison and the Holocaust

337 Pages·2001·3.507 MB·English

by  Anthony Rowland

TONY HARRISON
AND THE HOLOCAUST
LIVERPOOL ENGLISH TEXTS AND STUDIES, 39
i
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ii Tony Harrison and the Holocaust
LIVERPOOL ENGLISH TEXTS AND STUDIES
General editors: Jonathan Bate and Bernard Beatty
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A Quest for Home: Reading Robert Southey
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TONY HARRISON
AND THE
HOLOCAUST
ANTONY ROWLAND
LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS
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iv Tony Harrison and the Holocaust
First published 2001 by
Liverpool University Press
4 Cambridge Street
Liverpool
L69 7ZU
Copyright © Antony Rowland 2001
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise
without the prior written permission of the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A British Library CIP record is available.
ISBN 0-85323-506-6 cased
ISBN 0-85323-516-3 paper
Typeset in Garamond by
Koinonia, Bury, Lancashire
Printed in Great Britain by
Bell and Bain Limited, Glasgow
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To
Tom Rowland
(1915–2001)
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vi Tony Harrison and the Holocaust
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. Cinema, Masturbation and Peter Pan:
A Non-Victim Approach to the Holocaust 33
2. Amorous Discourse and ‘Bolts of Annihilation’
in the American Poems 87
3. Mourning and Annihilation in the Family
Sonnets 144
4. The Fragility of Memory 195
5. Culture/Barbarism Dialectics in Harrison’s
Poetry 248
Bibliography 307
Index 322
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viii Tony Harrison and the Holocaust
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Acknowledgments
Thanks are due primarily to Tony Harrison, for permission to
quote from his work (and the various archival sources) and
Gordon Dickerson, for dealing with matters quickly and
efficiently. John Whale must be lauded for his encouragement
and fine suggestions during the various stages of the PhD.
Emma Liggins, with her shrewd comments and proofreading
skills, has been instrumental to the successful completion of
this book. Avril Horner and Jeffrey Wainwright deserve credit
for their encouraging remarks on early drafts. The European
Studies Research Institute, University of Salford, has been
central to the book with its kind responses to my requests for
research funding. I would like to thank the following proof-
readers of various chapters: Angela Keane, Ian Copestake,
Kirsten Daley, Isobel Clarke and Barry Atkins. The Brother-
ton Library, the Registrar at the University of Leeds, the
Robinson Library, the Literary and Philosophical Society in
Newcastle, the British Film Institute and the Imperial War
Museum must be thanked for their permission to use material
from their archives on Harrison and the Holocaust. The
journals English, Meridian and Critical Survey require acknow-
ledgment for allowing me to reproduce some material in this
book from printed articles. Rory McTurk kindly gave up an
afternoon to translate the Norwegian interview with Harrison;
Anthony Williams similarly gave invaluable help with the trans-
lation of Adorno. Angus Easson, Sue Powell, Paul Callick,
Scott McCracken, Peter Buse, David Lindley, Douglas Jeffer-
son, Kelsey Thornton and Roger Luckhurst deserve credit for
chipping in with those elusive connections, allusions, books or
ix
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