Abstract

 Spain, as one of W. H. Auden’s famous works, describes the history that led up to the Spanish Civil War. Auden, like so many young men of the Left in the 1930s, decided to volunteer for service in the Spain Civil War. Though Auden didn’t come to the fore himself, he wrote this splendid poem to show his reflection on the war. Auden stressed in the poem that what has been done is tomorrow’s history, human beings should shoulder the responsibility at the presence of war and act today because history has no way to change. This thesis analyzes the historical difficulty of human being in the poem. What is more, this thesis further explores Auden’s reflection on this historical difficulty of human being. Finally, this paper is intended to strengthen the understanding of Spain by making a analysis of it and shows the readers a much more well-organized and attracting poem and a different author.

Keywords: Auden; Spain; reflection; historical difficulty; rhetorics

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

1. Introduction-1

1.1 About the author and his relevant life experiences on his Spain writing.-1

1.2 About Spain-1

2. The historical difficulty of human beings in Spain-6

2.1 Hope on history-6

2.2 Fantasies of future-6

2.3 Turning away from the reality-6

3. Auden’s reflection from the perspective of rhetorics-7

3.1 From the perspective of images-7

3.2 From the perspective of irony-8

3.3 From the perspective of metaphor.-8

4. Conclusions-10

References-11