The Problem of Consciousness in Modern Poetry [Paperback]

Modernist aesthetics have been identified with a sense of cultural crisis, defined by its distance from an ideal of unified consciousness.Modernist aesthetics have been identified with a sense of cultural crisis, defined by its distance from an ideal of unified consciousness.Modernist aesthetics have been identified with a sense of cultural crisis, defined by its distance from an ideal of unified consciousness.Modernist aesthetics have been identified with a sense of cultural crisis, defined by its distance from an ideal of unified consciousness. This original study examines the struggle toward that ideal of unitary subjective experience in modern British and Irish poetry from Hardy to Ted Hughes. Hugh Underhill argues that the poetry's emphasis on inner states underrepresents the extent to which the crisis is in fact socio-historically determined.Preface; Introduction: the inward revolution; 1. From Georgian origins to 'Romantic Primitivism': D. H. Lawrence and Robert Graves; 2. Strangers to nature: modern nature poetry and the rural myth; 3. The 'poetical character' of Edward Thomas; 4. 'Myself Must I Remake': W. B. Yeats; 5. 'Here and Now Cease to Matter' T. S. Eliot; 6. The Work of Man: Louis MacNeice and W. H. Auden; 7. 'Nothing of our Light': Ted Hughes; Conclusion; Notes; Select bibliography.