The Enchafed Flood is a collection of essays, published in 1950. The collection of essays derived from Auden's lectures, given at The University of Virginia. The Enchafed Flood has three lectures in it. The three are titled The Sea and the Desert, The Stone and the Shell, and Ishmael–Don Quixote.
Through these three lectures, Auden wants to explain the nature of romanticism using a single theme, the sea. In his lectures, Auden talks about Wordsworth's Prelude, in which Wordsworth describes a dream. In the dream, there are some symbols: an abstract stone, sea, and seashell. These symbols are metaphorical. These symbols represent other possible routes for salvation for a soul.
The use of sea and desert symbolizes the writer's thought for an escape from the social world and responsibilities. The lecture deals with major poems by Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Hopkins, and Herman Melville.
