Laura Riding, A Survey of Modernist Poetry

Ella Ophir (University of Saskatchewan)

Ed. by Nick Selby, University of East Anglia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.08: English Writing and Culture of the early Twentieth Century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: Chris Baldick (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Peter Childs (Birmingham Newman University), Louise McDonald (Birmingham Newman University), Andrew Radford (University of Glasgow)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1927

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Commentary / Criticism (literary)
- Essay Collection

Resources

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The sober title

A Survey of Modernist Poetry

masks a highly charged fusion of idiosyncratic literary history, provocative criticism, polemical cultural commentary, and meticulous textual analysis. The prevailing tone is subtly ironic and slightly arch, but the whole amounts to a lengthy defense of the value of poetry, and in that the authors are entirely serious.

Survey represents one of the earliest uses of the term modernism in its current sense, and was at its publication in 1927 the most thorough study of the literary experimentation of the period. While it names modernism in poetry only to announce its end, Survey is itself a quintessentially modernist work, belonging to that curious genre of half-conciliatory, half-admonishing public pedagogy that includes Pound’s ABC of Reading

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1392 words

Citation: Ophir, Ella. "A Survey of Modernist Poetry". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 April 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6947, accessed 23 November 2024.]

Laura Riding, A Survey of Modernist Poetry

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