A Coherent Splendor: The American Poetic Renaissance, 1910-1950

by Albert Gelpi

Overview

In this book Professor Gelpi traces the emergence of American Modernist poetry as a reaction to, and outgrowth of, the Romantic ideology of the nineteenth century. He focuses on the remarkable generation of poets who came to maturity in the years of the First World War and whose works constitute the principal body of poetic Modernism in English. This large historical argument is developed through monographic chapters on the poets which include close readings of their major poems. Comprehensive in scope and subtle in its analysis, Gelpi's book promises to be one of the major studies of American poetry for years to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521345330
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/29/1988
Pages:	496
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 8.98(h) x 1.34(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction: the Janus-face of Romanticism and Modernism; 1. Robert Frost and John Crowe Ransom: Diptych of Ironists, the Woodsman and the Chevalier; 2. Wallace Stevens: World as Mundo, Mundo as world; 3. T. S. Eliot: The lady between the yew trees; 4. Ezra Pound: Between Kung and Eleusis; 5. H. D.: Helen in Bethlehem, Hilda in Egypt; 6. William Carlos Williams: Mother-Son and Paterson; 7. Allen Tate and Hart Crane: Diptych with Demons and Angels Coda; Yvor Winters and Robinson Jeffers: The Janus-face of anti-modernism.

Editorial Reviews

"The most vigorous, most consistently interesting study we have of twentieth-century American poetry in its relation to its Romantic precursors. Albert Gelpi's book is a powerful revisionist history of Modernism...[His] breadth and range are remarkable." Marjorie Perloff

"A Coherent Splendor has the makings of a standard; its breadth and reach make it a welcome new addition to the discussion on modernism." The New England Quarterly

"A Coherent Splendor is a book which no student or teacher of American literature would want to overlook. Its richness and insight make each of the separate sections valuable, able to stand alone as an introduction to the poet covered. As John Dryden said fo Geoffrey Chaucer in his oft-quoted remark, ‘Here is God's plenty.'" Leon Lewis, Macgill's Literary Annual

"A Coherent Splendor has the makings of a standard; its breadth and reach make it a welcome new addition to the discussion on modernism." Suzanne Matson, Boston College, in The New England Quarterly

From the Publisher