Talk:The Movement (literature)

The list of names
I have removed Anthony Thwaite from the list as I believe he is not generally considered a Movement poet. The New Lines 2 anthology is not very useful in defining the list of poets because of its greater diversity of voices (it is less coherent as an anthology) and also because it appeared 'late', when the Movement and its parochial vision were already being pushed aside by new ideas (championed in part by contributors to the New Lines 2 anthology such as Ted Hughes and George MacBeth). Its appearance in the at the age of 12 he star social work
 * Stumps 12:32, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Stumps: It's an interesting point. I've always considered him a "Movement" poet based on the work, the close association with Larkin, and the early publications with Marvell Press. I jumped online to try to prove you wrong and found only two on-point pieces that, very interestingly, both seemed to argue both sides of the point:


 * Bio entry at contemporarywriters.com
 * A review of Thwaite's A Move in the Weather


 * So, while I have the satisfaction of not being transparently wrong, I am not so clearly right that it isn't arguable, and, thus (sigh...), you were probably right to delete it.MaggieT 22:24, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Copyvio or GFDL-vio?
Sadly most of the content here has been taken from "David Morley's first session" which once lived at, www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/undergrad/current/modules/fulllist/special/en331poetry1945/week_3/ but is still available from the Google cache.

The first paragraph is just a skimpy rewrite of Daid Morley's text;

"The phrase, The Movement was a term coined by J. D. Scott, literary editor of the Spectator, in 1954 to describe this group of writers (including Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin, Donald Davie, D.J. Enright, John Wain, Elizabeth Jennings and Robert Conquest himself). The Movement was essentially an English affair; unlike the previous mafia of The New Apocalyptics, poets in Scotland and Wales were not generally included."

The third paragraph also includes the following text which is straightforward copy and paste from the Morley source;

"Conquest described the connection between the poets as ‘little more than a negative determination to avoid bad principles.’ These ‘bad principles’ are usually described as excess, both in terms of theme and stylistic devices. The polemic introduction to New Lines targeted in particular the 1940s poets, the generation of Dylan Thomas and George Barker — though not by name. A second New Lines anthology appeared in 1963, by which time The Movement was a spent force, in terms of fashion; the ‘underground’ in the shape of ‘The Group‘, and the more American-influenced style of the Al Alvarez anthology The New Poetry having come to the fore."

The lists of the poets contained in both New Lines (1956) and New Lines 2 (1963) are also copy and pasted from the Morley source, although is doubtful whether these are strictly speaking copyrightable.

Antithief 19:54, 13 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Copyvio or GFDL-vio?? As I can't find the source in google cache (maybe it's already gone?) ... I haven't been able to put a date against the source of the alleged copyvio. The fact in the first paragraph are so well known and generic that I don't necessarily see it as a rewrite of the alleged source. The first part of the paragraph has been in place since 2003, and was created by User:Vaganyik. The third paragraph however is more interesting with the sentence "These ‘bad principles’ are usually described as excess, both in terms of theme and stylistic devices." This was added in this change in May 2004 by User:Monk Bretton (who seems to have been inactive since March 06).


 * Can anyone put a date to the warwick.ac.uk source?? With the suspect parts of the wikipedia article being added by different users in 2003 and 2004, it smells more like someone has rewritten the wikipedia article (and the copy and paste would therefore be a GFDL-vio).  Stumps 22:40, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

It certainly wasn't copied from that source. For what it's worth, I wrote most of this myself, with a copy of New Lines in front of me. It may not be that original in concept, but this stuff seems fairly standard anyway. And I certainly typed up the poets from the anthologies, as for dozens of other articles here. Charles Matthews 22:56, 13 November 2006 (UTC)