A. E. 하우스먼의 시 ｢신병｣(“The Recruit”)의 극적 독백

A. E. Housman’s “The Recruit” as a Dramatic Monologue

This paper argues that A. E. Housman employed the technique of dramatic monologue in his poetry. To support this argument, I have selected “The Recruit” as his most exemplary dramatic monologue poem after an overall examination of his poetic oeuvre and analyzed it from the theoretical perspective of the seven formal elements of the technique as defined by Ina Beth Sessions. Firstly, my analysis centers on the formal features of the discourse in “The Recruit” to demonstrate that the poem fulfills all seven requirements of the technique. And secondly, the analysis extends to exploring the way the theme of the poem is developed not through the speaker’s discourse alone but through the dialogic interaction between the speaker and the implied listener. These comprehensive analyses aim to corroborate the validity of “The Recruit” as a dramatic monologue. Consequently, based on the conclusion that he was a practitioner of dramatic monologue, this paper suggests Housman should be recognized as a modern poet at the turn of the century. For the dramatic expression of thought and emotion in his poems aligns closely with modern poetics rather than the Romantic tradition, since the dramatic monologue consorts well with the objective and impersonal theory of expression, which is the hallmark of twentieth-century modern poetics.