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    A Study Guide for A. E. Housman's "To an Athlete Dying Young"
    A Study Guide for A. E. Housman's "To an Athlete Dying Young"
    A Study Guide for A. E. Housman's "To an Athlete Dying Young"
    Ebook35 pages19 minutes

    A Study Guide for A. E. Housman's "To an Athlete Dying Young"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for A. E. Housman's "To an Athlete Dying Young," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateAug 19, 2016
    ISBN9781535841214
    A Study Guide for A. E. Housman's "To an Athlete Dying Young"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for A. E. Housman's "To an Athlete Dying Young" - Gale

      6

      To an Athlete Dying Young

      A. E. Housman

      1896

      Introduction

      A. E. Housman’s To an Athlete Dying Young was published in his first collection, A Shropshire Lad, in 1896 and is generally considered one of his best poems. Like much of the poet’s work, its themes include the preciousness of youth and the nature of early death. It is a speaker’s narrative, or dramatic monologue, that tells the story of an athlete, a runner, who has died at the peak of his youthful and abundant athleticism. The lyrically presented images contain the irony that the same crowd of townspeople who once carried the runner on their shoulders after he had won a race now carry him to his place of final rest.

      The poem holds a tension—inherent in many of Housman’s poems—between the concept of worldly life being a place where vibrancy exists, especially in youth, and the idea that it might be better to die at the peak of life rather than grow old and exist when one’s achievements or honors will not be remembered. To an Athlete Dying Young is characteristic of Housman’s work in that the youthful speaker is experiencing the paradox of the situation. The poem is also thought by some to reflect the influence of Housman’s classical Greek scholarship, because it evokes images of the Greek runner wearing the classic laurel wreath and also makes associations with esteem and love for the young male at his peak of beauty and athleticism.

      Author Biography

      A. E. Housman was born in 1859 in Fockbury, Worcestershire, England. The eldest of seven children in a family that would produce a famous dramatist (Housman’s younger brother, Laurence) and a novelist and short story writer (his sister Clemence), Housman attended Bromsgrove School, a notable institution that emphasized Greek and Latin studies. Though successful academically, Housman was a small and frail boy who did not easily form friendships. When he was twelve, Housman’s mother died; this was the first of a number of events that would affect him profoundly and erode his religious faith. (Years later he

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