Article published In: English Text Construction
Vol. 17:2 (2024) ► pp.208–233
Thom Gunn’s poetry and capital
A reading through Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology
Published online: 16 October 2025
https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.22009.sha
https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.22009.sha
Abstract
Thom Gunn grows to fame and popularity with the Movement poets in the 1950s. Coming from a well-educated family
with a stake in journalism, Gunn develops a taste for literature from childhood and enhances his cachet at Cambridge. Culture
expands into a principal issue in Gunn’s poems manifested in the field of literature and his drawing on canonical English poets
like Shakespeare, and practicing the motorcycling subculture. Moreover, Gunn exhibits his cultural competence and artistic
distinction through discussing the uncanny workings of canonicity of art in the field of religion. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s
sociological concepts like habitus, capital and distinction, this study sheds some light on Gunn’s work and career. The aim is to
explicate how Gunn rises to a high status as a poet by accumulating different forms of capital in the field of culture;
particularly literature, art, and subculture.
Keywords: capital, habitus, distinction, culture, subculture, Tom Gunn, Pierre Bourdieu
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Discussion
- 2.1Thom Gunn and the field of literature
- 2.2Thom Gunn salutes American subculture
- 2.3Thom Gunn on religious art in the field of religion
- 3.Conclusion
- Notes
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