Louis MacNeice : radio, poetry and the aural imagination

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to give serious consideration to the relatively neglected radio dramas and features of Louis MacNeice, showing how they were an imaginative and innovative development of what was at the time an avant-garde art form. It gives extensive treatment to radio plays such as MacNeice's Christopher Columbus (1942) and The Dark Tower (1946) which were a tour deforce in the genre. MacNeice's radio writing may be underestimated by those approaching it in poetic terms but this is because sound drama is written to be spoken, to be heard; whether in verse or in prose it is not strictly 'poetry', but pure sound. As only a very small number of MacNeice's radio programmes have been preserved as sound recordings, it has been necessary to develop a critical approach to his recorded scripts which is sensitive to the fact that they were primarily intended to be experienced aurally and were written explicitly for a pure-sound medium.