Stylistic Innovation, Conscious Experience, and the Self in Modernist Women's Poetry: An Imagist Turned Philosopher

133 Pages·2021·1.312 MB·English

by  Kristina Marie Darling

Stylistic Innovation,
Conscious Experience,
and the Self in Modernist
Women’s Poetry

Stylistic Innovation,
Conscious Experience,
and the Self in Modernist
Women’s Poetry
An Imagist Turned Philosopher
Kristina Marie Darling
LEXINGTON BOOKS
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
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Copyright © 2021 The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
Excerpts by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), from HELEN IN EGYPT © 1961 by Norman
Holmes Pearson. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Darling, Kristina Marie, author.
Title: Stylistic innovation, conscious experience, and the self in modernist women’s
poetry : an imagist turned philosopher / Kristina Marie Darling.
Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, 2021. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021031402 (print) | LCCN 2021031403 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781793633064 (hardback) | ISBN 9781793633071 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: American poetry—Women authors—History and criticism. |
Modernism (Literature)—United States. | American poetry—20th century—History
and criticism. | Philosophy in literature. | English language—20th century—Style.
Classification: LCC PS310.M57 D37 2021 (print) | LCC PS310.M57 (ebook) |
DDC 811/.5099287—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021031402
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021031403
∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Contents
List of Figures vii
Introduction: Modernism as a Reframing of Individual Conscious
Experience ix
1 Reclaiming the Intellectual Agency of Women:
Marianne Moore and Jamesian Psychology 1
2 “Each Alone Would Have Left Us to Our Dreams”:
Avant-Garde Film, Sound Technology, and Montage
in H.D.’s Helen in Egypt 25
3 Gertrude Stein: Inhabiting (and Interrogating) the Sentence 49
4 Mina Loy: A Poetics of Rupture and Resistance 73
Conclusion: Beyond the Self/Other Binary: An Afterward 95
Works Cited 103
Index 111
About the Author 113
v

List of Figures
Figures 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3: Film stills from Monkey’s Moon 44–45
vii

Introduction
Modernism as a Reframing of
Individual Conscious Experience
MODERNISM AND THE RISE OF THE SOCIAL SELF:
RECLAIMING POEMS AS PHILOSOPHICAL TEXTS
The early twentieth century represents a time of great artistic and cultural
upheaval. With the rise of industry, the proliferation of urban communities,
and the advent of film, individuals began to see their identities as inextricable
from the mass culture that circulated around them. This notion of the self as
essentially relational, constructed and shaped by one’s interactions with a
larger community, surfaces in the philosophical writings of the time as well.
Even in the late nineteenth century, Charles Saunders Peirce, William James,
and Henri Bergson had argued for an understanding of the self as being at
once corporeal and relational, a locus for the various ideas, texts, and types
of language that circulate within culture. In short, the once clear distinction
between self and other was increasingly called into question. This breakdown
of boundaries between self and world frequently manifested itself in the style
of literary works. modernist poetry, like the stream-of-consciousness fiction
that was being written at the time, made great use of style and technique to
blur the boundaries between self and other, artist and audience, and individual
and collective.
This book focuses specifically on modernist poetry by women who actively
engaged philosophical texts, particularly those concerned with the increas-
ingly porous boundaries of the self in relation to the other. By examining texts
by Mina Loy, H.D., Gertrude Stein, and Marianne Moore, I show that female
modernists of this particular historical moment shared an interest in ques-
tioning existing boundaries between self and other. Even more importantly,
they sought to reclaim agency over the predominantly male philosophical
discourse that had heretofore defined the boundaries of the subject in relation
ix