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Metres and the Pound: Taking the Measure of British Modernism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2011

Raphael Ingelbien
Raphael Ingelbien*
Affiliation:
Leuven University, Literary Studies, PB 03311, Blijde Inkomststraat 21, 3000 Leuven, Belgium. E-mail: raphael.ingelbien@arts.kuleuven.be
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Abstract

Seen in the broader context of European modernism, British modernist literature stands out through the limited role of collective avant-gardes and the conservative or reactionary politics of the writers who make up the canon of modernist poetry. This article explores how these peculiarities are replicated in the use of traditional poetic forms (metres in particular) in the works of W.B. Yeats (1865–1939), Ezra Pound (1885–1972) and T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). As modernist (rather than avant-garde) writers, those poets rejected or backed away from free verse and simultaneously cultivated forms that harked back to older and less insular poetic traditions than the ones that dominated mainstream English poetry in the Victorian period.

Type
Focus: Avant-garde/Arriere-garde
Information
European Review , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , 14 April 2011 , pp. 285 - 297
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2011

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