In 1988 the author John Fuller had discovered a manuscript of Stephen Spender´s novel which was called The Temple and was dated 1929. Spender originally wrote this novel in the late 1920s in order to tell his life during his student days. “He sent several copies to friends, among them Auden and Isherwood to get their views about it, and a copy to Geoffrey Faber, his publisher, who pointed out that there could be no question of publishing a novel, which, besides being libelous, was pornographic according to the law at that time.” (Spender 1988 x) Hence, Spender’s work was not published and fell into oblivion. Over all those years Spender forgot that in the financial crisis he had sold his manuscripts to Texas in 1962 However, in 1988 John Fuller discovered the original manuscript and encouraged Spender to revise his work and to publish it. As he did so, in the introduction of The Temple he wrote the following: “This is an autobiographical novel in which the author tries to report truthfully on his experiences in the summer of 1929.” (Spender 1988 xi) In the following I will try to analyze whether The Temple really could be classified as an autobiographical novel or whether we are dealing with any other type of text.
The main question that we have to ask then is, what is autobiography or rather what is an autobiographical novel and what is the difference between those two types of texts? Is it even possible to define autobiography or the term autobiographical novel? When we look those terms up in various dictionaries, for autobiography they mostly all have in common one rather short definition that on the first view explains the term very well: “Autobiography is the history of a person’s life as written by himself.” (Porter Abbot 1988 598) The term autobiographical novel in most dictionaries is not even listed, therefore I will at first concentrate on the definition of autobiography.
Universität Trier
Fachbereich II: Anglistik
Seminar: Lit 501: Queer Brits in 20th Century Berlin
WS 2010/11
Studentin: Nina Jungmann
Stephen Spender’s The Temple as an Autobiografical Novel
In 1988 the author John Fuller had discovered a manuscript of Stephen Spender´s novel which was called The Temple and was dated 1929.Spender originally wrote this novel in the late 1920s in order to tell his life during his student days. “He sent several copies to friends, among them Auden and Isherwood to get their views about it, and a copy to Geoffrey Faber, his publisher, who pointed out that there could be no question of publishing a novel, which, besides being libelous, was pornographic according to the law at that time.” (Spender 1988 x) Hence, Spender’s work was not published and fell into oblivion. Over all those years Spender forgot that in the financial crisis he had sold his manuscripts to Texas in 1962 However, in 1988 John Fuller discovered the original manuscript and encouraged Spender to revise his work and to publish it. As he did so, in the introduction of The Temple he wrote the following: “This is an autobiographical novel in which the author tries to report truthfully on his experiences in the summer of 1929.” (Spender 1988 xi) In the following I will try to analyze whether The Temple really could be classified as an autobiographical novel or whether we are dealing with any other type of text.
The main question that we have to ask then is, what is autobiography or rather what is an autobiographical novel and what is the difference between those two types of texts? Is it even possible to define autobiography or the term autobiographical novel? When we look those terms up in various dictionaries, for autobiography they mostly all have in common one rather short definition that on the first view explains the term very well: “Autobiography is the history of a person’s life as written by himself.” (Porter Abbot 1988 598) The term autobiographical novel in most dictionaries is not even listed, therefore I will at first concentrate on the definition of autobiography.
According to the definition, which says “it is the history of a person’s life”,I will first have a look at Stephen Spender’s life and whether his life is really represented in his novel The Temple. As the novel is just set in the year 1929 and 1932 we can simply concentrate on the first part of his life. Stephen Spender was born on 28 February 1909 as one of four children of his father Harold Spender and his mother Violet Schuster. Unfortunately, when Spender was 12, his mother failed to survive an operation and when he was 17, in 1926, “his father Harold also died, like his wife, following an operation.” (Sternlicht 1992 3) Until then the children were assumed by their grandmother, Hilda Schuster. She and Stephen’s uncle encouraged Spender “in his early desire to become a poet.” (Sternlicht 1992 4) Having this dream, in 1929, after school, Spender decided to attend Universityand went to Oxford. “His interest in poetry, painting, and music and a studied eccentricity in dress made him seem very strange indeed. Desperate for friendship, he forced himself on another undergraduate and tried to acquire an interest in his friend’s athleticism. They made a walking tour, but the friendship failed.” (Sternlicht 1992 4) However, at OxfordStephen Spender was introduced to the young W.H Auden, whose poetry he admired. “Auden had already established himself with his Oxford contemporaries as their leader in literary taste […] and became the major influence on the early development of Spender the poet.” (Sternlicht 1992 5) Moreover, Auden was not just Spender’s “teacher” in literature but they became very good friends, who also had sex. What his sexuality was concerned, already at school, Spender showed a tendency to like boys rather than women, primarily because of “class restrictions, inhibitions, puritanical relatives and the fact that the English school system had conspired to keep the young men from any opportunity to meet, and to be sexually attracted to young woman.” (Sternlicht 1992 4) The result was that Spender and many young men lived the sexuality that was available for them, namely same-sex love.Moreover, Auden then introduced Spender to Christopher Isherwood, “his favorite male lover”, (Sternlicht 1992 5) with whom Spender even had a close relationship when he went on a summer vacation to Germany in 1929. When he returned to Oxford again, in 1930, “at the end of his second year at Oxford, Spender dropped out of the University and never earned a degree […] but at 21 he had to follow his new star, Isherwood, to Germany again.” (Sternlicht 1992 6)
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- Quote paper
- Nina Jungmann (Author), 2011, Stephen Spender's "The Temple" as an autobiographical novel, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/173119
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