"What Need, Then, for Poetry?": The Genteel Tradition and the Continuity of American Literature
1994; The MIT Press; Volume: 67; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/366079
ISSN1937-2213
Autores Tópico(s)Poetry Analysis and Criticism
ResumoF there is a single moment in American poetry that crystallizes response of post-World War I modernism to pre-war aesthetics, it is E. E. Cummings's Poem, or Beauty Hurts Mr. Vinal, first published in November 1923 issue of literary magazine S4N and later reprinted in Cummings's collection Is 5.' Cummings had earlier taken aim at remnants of nineteenth century in his disparaging remarks concerning the Cambridge ladies live in furnished souls and who believe in Christ and Longfellow, both dead.2 However, later poem attacks not merely fossilized New England Brahminism but principles governing American letters in nineteenth century: that mixture of aesthetic idealism and cultural conservatism that
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