Ritual and the Idea of Europe in Interwar Writing

Query examines the ways interwar writers use three European ritual forms-verse drama, bullfighting and Roman Catholic rite-to articulate ideas of European cultural identity. Although these ritual forms were frequently associated with the most conservative tendencies of the age, Query shows that each had a remarkable political flexibility in the hands of interwar writers including T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, D.H. Lawrence, Stephen Spender, Cecil Day Lewis, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh and David Jones.