The aim of my PhD research project is the textual, structural and thematical analysis of Edward Upward’s whole literary and political production. The author is one of the major novelists and intellectuals of the Thirties: in my opinion, he has not received full and right acknowledgement by criticism.

More in detail, the project mainly aim is to examine the keen and entangled relationship between art, politics and human and social connections, existing in Upward’s writings. A relationship so far wrongly interpreted, which has led to fragmentary and somewhat contradictory interpretations of the author’s work. In fact, if on the one hand Upward has been often indicated as the true ideological and political conscience of the Thirties, the real éminence grise which lurks behind the artist of the so-called Auden Generation; on the other he has often been accused of remaining too faithfully linked to Marxist dogma, of showing too much detachment and dryness in his writings and of artistically wasting himself after the Second World War, betraying his enormous capability. On this subject, I believe it both correct and necessary to analyse Upward’s complex literary figure not only in the light of the political situation of his times and through his scarce literary output, but also with the help of the political writings and autobiographical memoirs of several outstanding protagonists of the cultural world of the Thirties who shared with him political expectations and literary experiences, such as Stephen Spender, John Lehmann and Christopher Isherwood.

Upward’s political commitment seems to be criticism’s main reading key, and rightly so. I would like to devote a good share of my research project to determine the various leit-motifs of such a complex literary personality. Therefore, I intend to study thoroughly the author’s cultural, social and human relationship with some of the major members both of the Thirties European intelligentsia and of the so-called "absolute silence", that is the period from 1942 to 1962. In this sense, I think it fair enough to give the right value to the deep and subtle relationship of "mentor-disciple" Upward held with his life-long friend and associate Christopher Isherwood. A two ways relation, as a matter of fact, because it is in its mutual stylistical and thematical exchange that it is possible to trace an example of the deep and continuous influence Upward had on his contemporary fellow men of letters.

The fragmentary and disharmonic view held nowadays by academics towards this artist mainly depends on the scarce if any importance conceded to Upward’s juvenile writings, above all to his undergraduate poems and his "Mortmere" stories, the imaginary village created and narrated alongside with Christopher Isherwood: a world at the cross roads between surrealism, parody and fable. This lack of proper attention is partly due to the unavailability, until recently, of the canon of these early short stories; partly it depends from the fact that the academy considered this production as a mere exuberant, immature and therefore limited youthful experience.

A new consideration of Upward’s early production, together with a better political and artistic understanding of the author’s commitment to the CPGB (1934, the first amongst the intellectuals of the Auden Generation) will provide a fertile ground in order to interpret Upward’s subsequent detachment from the party (1948) and his definitive discharge (1954) not as separate, "on the spur" events, but as a Joycean "Non Serviam", the logical consequence of a writer whose artistic nature cannot be flattened by sheer demagogy.