Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 25 - William Carlos Williams

  • from Part III - Forms of Modernism, 1900–1950
  • Edited by Alfred Bendixen, Princeton University, New Jersey, Stephen Burt, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of American Poetry
    Published online:
    05 December 2014
    Print publication:
    27 October 2014, pp 557-582

  • Summary

    A great deal of critical attention has been paid to naturalism in fiction, not as much has been paid to the movement's impact on poetry, perhaps in part because naturalist poets themselves appeared most successful in other genres, especially fiction and social science. The most important and influential American naturalist poets, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edwin Markham and Stephen Crane, were writing for a popular press, with the line between muckraking journalism and poetry at times significantly blurred. Gilman's politics build on a foundational naturalism: while individuals are controlled by their environment, she also believes that that environment is susceptible to change. Also like Gilman, Markham became widely famous for a single blockbuster poem. Crane's naturalism is on full display, as his speaker finds himself in a world where man is beast, caught in a jungle that allows for no comfort in any guiding light.