Nations of Nothing But Poetry

Modernism, Transnationalism, and Synthetic Vernacular Writing
Erscheinungsjahr 2010
ISBN: 978-0-19-539033-9
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 256 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 552 g

What happens when poets combine vernacular language with the spirit of modernity? Can a poem be cosmopolitanism and vernacular at the same time? Nations of Nothing But Poetry answers these questions through case studies of Scottish, English, and "Black Atlantic" poetries from the landmark modernist year of 1922 through the mid 1970s. Hart combines discussions of canonical poets, such as T.S. Eliot and W. H. Auden, with chapters on key but lesser known poets noted for their unique and creative introduction of their native vernaculars, like Hugh MacDiarmid, Basil Bunting, and Melvin B. Tolson. Throughout, Hart puts forward a new interpretation of Anglophone modernist verse that disrupts the literary-critical conflict between "national" and "transnational" poetries. Describing how these poets make "synthetic vernacular" poems out of a disordered medley of formal and linguistic parts, this study explains how poetic modernism is shaped by the incompletely globalized nature of twentieth-century history.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hart, Matthew

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Lyrik und Dichter
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction 1

- 1.: Vernacular Discourse from Major to Minor 47

- 2.: The Impossibility of Synthetic Scots; or,

- Hugh MacDiarmid's Nationalist Internationalism 94

- 3.: A Dialect Written in the Spelling of the Capital:

- Basil Bunting Goes Home 146

- 4.: Tradition and the Postcolonial Talent:

- T. S. Eliot versus E. K. Brathwaite 198

- 5.: Transnational Anthems and the Ship of State:

- Harryette Mullen, Melvin B. Tolson and the

- Politics of Afro-Modernism 263

- Epilogue Denationalizing Mina Loy 328

Über Autor(innen)

Matthew Hart is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and he is the Associate Editor of the journal Contemporary Literature.