“Funeral Blues” (1938), also known by its first line, “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone”, is a song of 16 lines by W. H. Auden, published under this title in 1940, although it is adapted from an earlier dramatic song of Auden’s from his and Christopher Isherwood’s play The Ascent of F6 (published 1936, performed 1937). Loosely reminiscent of contemporary American blues lyrics in its simple couplet rhymes, it is a parodically exaggerated dirge for one recently dead, calling for the whole world to come to a stop because the speaker’s beloved has died.

The slightly longer 20-line 1936 song from which this one derives was never published separately, but forms part of the …

876 words

Citation: Baldick, Chris. "Funeral Blues". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 October 2017 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=38784, accessed 28 March 2024.]

38784 Funeral Blues 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.