Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T21:19:58.871Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

36 - Undiplomatic Relations: Modernism and the Essay

from Part IV - Fractured Selves, Fragmented Worlds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2024

Denise Gigante
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
Get access

Summary

Why would a literary scholar say that he would ‘take it as a reproach’ if his work was called essayism? There is a good chance that we may understand this comment too easily, or not at all. The polemical postures of modernism (and the critical fashions of the academy) often seem remote from, or even opposed to, the essay in its casual, elegant, personal, speculative modes. This chapter traces not a reconciliation between the two stances but various forms of entanglement. Looking at work by Virginia Woolf, Marianne Moore, T.S. Eliot, H.D., and Ezra Pound, this chapter asks what happens when modernist rigour needs the conceptual flexibility of the essay; when poetry cannot do without prose; when the imaginary is seen as the fiercest form of the real; when the objective correlative, without becoming subjective, encounters more shades of meaning than anyone thought it could manage.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×