Renascence

Volume 70, Issue 4, Fall 2018

The Church Elegy
Recuperating Anglican Memory in Post-war English Poetry

Following the pattern set by Philip Larkin and John Betjeman, numerous post-war English poets responded to the decline of the Church of England as a physical and cultural fabric by composing elegies on the Church. Steeping their poems in the collective memory of Anglicanism, they commemorate church buildings and churchyards as sites of collective memory, endow the history and landscape of Britain with Christian mythology, and lament the social ramifications of a post-Christian culture. This essay demonstrates that a poetic lament for the loss of Anglican hegemony is a common motif in post-war English poetry and defines genre of “church elegy.” What is mourned is not the loss of Christianity itself but the end of a common cultural identity once sustained by the Church of England. In response, poets fretted by the disorder and fragmentation of modern British society are engaged in an effort to resuscitate Anglican cultural memory.