W. H. Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening

Chris Baldick (Goldsmiths College, University of London)

Ed. by Chris Baldick, Goldsmiths College, University of London
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.08: English Writing and Culture of the early Twentieth Century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: Chris Baldick (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Peter Childs (Newman University), Louise McDonald (Newman University)

Dates

First circulation or publication Jan 1938

Places

England (Country of Origin; Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Poem

Resources

“As I Walked Out One Evening” (1938) is a ballad by W. H. Auden. More exactly, it is a pastiche of ballad-like effects, arising from Auden’s immersion in popular verse traditions while he was preparing his anthology The Oxford Book of Light Verse (1938). Its opening echoes that of a traditional ballad, “The Sailor’s Return”, beginning “As I walked out one night, it being dark all over”, which he included in that anthology. Employing some basic principles of balladry, notably the recounting of a story through voices contending in dialogue, Auden develops it with his own distinctive devices of comical exaggeration and of sinister allegorical imagery. The poem’s subject is the t…

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1165 words

Citation: Baldick, Chris. "As I Walked Out One Evening". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 August 2017 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=38743, accessed 22 November 2024.]

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