The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Poetry (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

This 2007 Companion offers the most comprehensive overview available of modernist poetry, its forms, its major authors and its contexts. The first part explores the historical and cultural contexts and sexual politics of literary modernism and the avant garde. The chapters in the second part concentrate on individual authors and movements, while the concluding part offers a comprehensive overview of the early reception and subsequent canonisation of modernist poetry. As well as insightful readings of canonical poets, the Companion features extended discussions of poets whose importance is now being increasingly recognised, such as Mina Loy, poets of the Harlem Renaissance, and postcolonial poets in the Caribbean, Africa and India. While modernist poets are often thought of as difficult, these essays will help students to understand and enjoy their experimental, playful and fascinating responses to contemporary social and cultural change and their dialogue with the arts and with each other. This Companion offers the most comprehensive overview available of modernist poetry, its forms, its major authors and its contexts. The first part explores the historical and cultural contexts and sexual politics of literary modernism and the avant garde. The chapters in the second part concentrate on individual authors and movements, while the concluding part offers a comprehensive overview of the early reception and subsequent canonization of modernist poetry. As well as insightful readings of canonical poets, the Companion features extended discussions of poets whose importance is now being increasingly recognized, such as Mina Loy, poets of the Harlem Renaissance, and postcolonial poets in the Caribbean, Africa, and India. While modernist poets are often thought of as difficult, these essays will help students to understand and enjoy their experimental, playful, and fascinating responses to contemporary social and cultural change and their dialog with the arts and each other Cover......Page 1 Title Page......Page 4 Copyright Page......Page 5 Contents......Page 6 Contributors......Page 8 Acknowledgements......Page 12 Chronology......Page 13 Introduction......Page 20 1 Modernist poetry in history......Page 28 2 Schools, movements, manifestoes......Page 45 3 The poetics of modernism......Page 68 4 Gender, sexuality and the modernist poem......Page 85 5 Pound or Eliot whose era......Page 102 6 H.D. and revisionary myth-making......Page 129 7 Yeats, Ireland and modernism......Page 141 8 Modernist poetry in the British Isles......Page 162 9 US modernism I Moore, Stevens and the modernist lyric......Page 178 10 US modernism II the other tradition - Williams, Zukofsky and Olson......Page 196 11 The poetry of the Harlem Renaissance......Page 210 12 Caliban’s modernity postcolonial poetry of Africa, South Asia and the Caribbean......Page 222 13 Modernist poetry and the canon......Page 238 Guide to further reading......Page 257 Index......Page 264 This is a comprehensive and accessible overview of modernist poetry, its forms, its major authors and its contexts