Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the British Essay
- The Cambridge History of the British Essay
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Preface to a History in the Manner of an Essay
- Part I Forming the British Essay
- Part II The Great Age of the British Essay
- Part III Assaying Culture, Education, Reform
- Part IV Fractured Selves, Fragmented Worlds
- 29 The Preface Essay
- 30 A Brief History of Travel and the Essay
- 31 Grist for the Mill: History and the Essay in India, 1870–1920
- 32 The African Gold Coast Essay: Straddling Fact and Prophecy
- 33 The Short Essay in Context, 1870–1920
- 34 A Room of One’s Own: The New Woman and the Essay
- 35 The Essay in the Age of Catastrophe
- 36 Undiplomatic Relations: Modernism and the Essay
- 37 Feeling Real: Psychoanalysis and the Essay
- 38 Transatlantic Essayism
- Part V The Essay and the Essayistic Today
- Book part
- Bibliography
- Index
36 - Undiplomatic Relations: Modernism and the Essay
from Part IV - Fractured Selves, Fragmented Worlds
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 October 2024
- The Cambridge History of the British Essay
- The Cambridge History of the British Essay
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Preface to a History in the Manner of an Essay
- Part I Forming the British Essay
- Part II The Great Age of the British Essay
- Part III Assaying Culture, Education, Reform
- Part IV Fractured Selves, Fragmented Worlds
- 29 The Preface Essay
- 30 A Brief History of Travel and the Essay
- 31 Grist for the Mill: History and the Essay in India, 1870–1920
- 32 The African Gold Coast Essay: Straddling Fact and Prophecy
- 33 The Short Essay in Context, 1870–1920
- 34 A Room of One’s Own: The New Woman and the Essay
- 35 The Essay in the Age of Catastrophe
- 36 Undiplomatic Relations: Modernism and the Essay
- 37 Feeling Real: Psychoanalysis and the Essay
- 38 Transatlantic Essayism
- Part V The Essay and the Essayistic Today
- Book part
- Bibliography
- Index
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.
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- The Cambridge History of the British Essay , pp. 540 - 554Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024