Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Recalling the style of W H Auden (1907-1973), Anglo-American poet, whose work is characterized by stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with moral and political issues, and the relationship between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Auden +‎ -esque

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Examples

  • When W.H. Auden named him the Yale Younger Poet in 1952, he was writing Audenesque lines — these, for instance, from an eighty-line stanzaic masque presaging a deluge:

    Defender of the Earth Vendler, Helen 2009

  • He goes on to recommend learning a craft or taking up a trade that does not “involve the manipulation of words,” a very Audenesque piece of advice that his own industrious practice as an essayist and anthologist belies.

    The Best American Poetry 2008 2008

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