H. D. and the Victorian Fin de Siècle

Laity, Cassandra

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511585654

Cited by 101 publications

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“…H.D. 's use of Swinburne and other Pre-Raphaelite and decadent poets to forge a gender-fluid homoerotic voice has been discussed at length by Cassandra Laity (Laity 1996). Beyond poetry, Sarah Hayden has discussed Djuna Barnes's use of a cross-gendered voice in Nightwood (Hayden 2012).…”

Section: A Man Speaks: Millay's Early Experiments In Masculinitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“It’s Just a Matter of Form”: Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Experiments with Masculinity

Parker

2019

Humanities

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Edna St. Vincent Millay occupies an uncomfortable position in relation to modernism. In the majority of criticism, her work is considered the antithesis to modernist experimentation: as representative of the ‘rearguard’ that rejected vers libre in favour of fixed poetic forms. Indeed, most critics concur that whilst Millay’s subject matter may have been modern and daring—voicing women’s sexual independence, for instance—her form was decidedly traditional. Millay also troubles notions of modernist impersonality by writing seemingly autobiographical lyrics that showcase feminine emotions. In this paper, I aim to challenge this view of Millay by focussing on the two avant-garde works that mark the outset and the zenith of her career: Aria da Capo (1921) and Conversation at Midnight (1937). These works are both formally innovative, blurring the boundaries between poetry and drama, causing Edmund Wilson to complain that Millay had “gone to pieces”. Moreover, both works engage in performances of masculinity, with women all but absent. Aria da Capo, first performed by the Provincetown Players in 1919, dramatizes the conflict between two shepherds as an allegory for the First World War. Conversation ventriloquises an all-male dinner party, ranging through the political issues of the Depression era and foreshadowing the war to come. I use both works to argue that Millay has a more interesting relationship to masculinity and modernism than has been hitherto captured by critics. Millay voices men in innovative ways, radically challenging constructions of both gender and poetic form in the process.

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Section: A Man Speaks: Millay's Early Experiments In Masculinitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“It’s Just a Matter of Form”: Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Experiments with Masculinity

Parker

2019

Humanities

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Poetry

Parkes¹

2007

A Companion to Modernist Literature and Culture

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Modernism

March-Russell

2015

The Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature

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Critics have often starkly contrasted modernism with Victorian literature. This contrast was largely an invention of the modernists themselves, for whom it served as a means of self‐identification – a process exacerbated by the institutionalization of English literary studies. In fact the relationship between modernism and Victorian literature was often more ambiguous than that, and many contemporary literary historians have been working to draw a clearer map of their overlapping tendencies.

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H. D. and the Victorian Fin de Siècle

Cited by 101 publications

References 0 publications

“It’s Just a Matter of Form”: Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Experiments with Masculinity

“It’s Just a Matter of Form”: Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Experiments with Masculinity

Poetry

Modernism

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