Inspired by Buster Keaton’s sporadic but crucial presence in Elizabeth Bishop’s writing, this paper examines her artistic ideal of comic surrealism through the lens of queer phenomenology. Keaton’s slapstick comedy serves as a nice cinematic parallel to Bishop’s understanding of ‘real wit’ as ‘usually stoical, unsentimental, and physically courageous’. Taking the oft-cited 1964 letter and Bishop’s ‘Keaton’ (late 1950s) as points of departure, I carry out an intermedial analysis of the Keatonesque elements in Bishop’s comic surrealist poems that blur the demarcation between a brutal reality and a dream world of endless possibilities. These poems bring about a sudden flash of self-awareness of our own contingency, ultimately to reorient us towards what I call queer love. The formal, thematic associations that I draw between the two artists illuminate not only the poet’s surprisingly quirky, experimental sides, but her subtle deftness in addressing political issues around gender, sexuality, class, and race.
{"title":"‘Cheerful AND Profound!’: Elizabeth Bishop’s Buster Keaton","authors":"Alicia Ye Sul Oh","doi":"10.3366/mod.2023.0394","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mod.2023.0394","url":null,"abstract":"Inspired by Buster Keaton’s sporadic but crucial presence in Elizabeth Bishop’s writing, this paper examines her artistic ideal of comic surrealism through the lens of queer phenomenology. Keaton’s slapstick comedy serves as a nice cinematic parallel to Bishop’s understanding of ‘real wit’ as ‘usually stoical, unsentimental, and physically courageous’. Taking the oft-cited 1964 letter and Bishop’s ‘Keaton’ (late 1950s) as points of departure, I carry out an intermedial analysis of the Keatonesque elements in Bishop’s comic surrealist poems that blur the demarcation between a brutal reality and a dream world of endless possibilities. These poems bring about a sudden flash of self-awareness of our own contingency, ultimately to reorient us towards what I call queer love. The formal, thematic associations that I draw between the two artists illuminate not only the poet’s surprisingly quirky, experimental sides, but her subtle deftness in addressing political issues around gender, sexuality, class, and race.","PeriodicalId":41937,"journal":{"name":"Modernist Cultures","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78845018","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In comparison with other modernist writers, little has been written on the role of animals in H.D.’s works. This article examines the significations – the significances and the signifying – of the peripheral yet reoccurring swallows in her posthumous novel Asphodel, thus exploring their contribution to the meaning of the text. Since most of these swallows signify metaphorically, the widespread skepticism toward metaphor within animal studies is also addressed. Employing a Derridean perspective with a focus on iteration, metaphor, and irreplaceability, the swallows’ significations are analyzed in relation to the themes, style, and imagery of Asphodel, demonstrating how they repeatedly turn the direction of the narrative around, while also providing a pattern for stylistic turns. This not only shows the role of swallows in Asphodel, but also indicates the importance of peripheral animals to modernist literature.
{"title":"More Swallows to Follow: Sweeping, Swirling, Wheeling Turns in H.D.’s Asphodel","authors":"Maria Trejling","doi":"10.3366/mod.2023.0396","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mod.2023.0396","url":null,"abstract":"In comparison with other modernist writers, little has been written on the role of animals in H.D.’s works. This article examines the significations – the significances and the signifying – of the peripheral yet reoccurring swallows in her posthumous novel Asphodel, thus exploring their contribution to the meaning of the text. Since most of these swallows signify metaphorically, the widespread skepticism toward metaphor within animal studies is also addressed. Employing a Derridean perspective with a focus on iteration, metaphor, and irreplaceability, the swallows’ significations are analyzed in relation to the themes, style, and imagery of Asphodel, demonstrating how they repeatedly turn the direction of the narrative around, while also providing a pattern for stylistic turns. This not only shows the role of swallows in Asphodel, but also indicates the importance of peripheral animals to modernist literature.","PeriodicalId":41937,"journal":{"name":"Modernist Cultures","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87875999","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of Modernism and Theology: Rainer Maria Rilke, T. S. Eliot, Czesław Miłosz by Joanna Rzepa","authors":"H. Mead","doi":"10.3366/mod.2023.0389","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mod.2023.0389","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41937,"journal":{"name":"Modernist Cultures","volume":"125 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82249440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Displacements: Current Work on Japanese Modernism","authors":"Ryan S. Johnson","doi":"10.3366/mod.2023.0390","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mod.2023.0390","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41937,"journal":{"name":"Modernist Cultures","volume":"165 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86062203","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The modernist writer H.D. was Freud’s analysand in 1933 and 1934 and friend until his death in 1939. This article examines letters, biographies, memoirs, and archival material to trace the interplay between H.D.’s palimpsestic poetics in Trilogy (1973) and Freud’s writing of his last book, Moses and Monotheism (1939) – a work that he was composing throughout the duration of his friendship with the poet. In this book, Freud situates Jewish history as a survival narrative centred on the figure of Moses. Known as one of his most ‘literary’ texts, Moses and Monotheism retraces the life of Moses in a multi-layered narrative that shares in the palimpsestic impulses of H.D.’s writing. This article argues that Freud draws from the revisionist strategies so central to H.D.’s worldview and writerly ethos in order to place creativity and resilience at the heart of Moses and Monotheism.
{"title":"Permission to Wonder: The Palimpsestic Interplay of H.D. & Freud","authors":"V. Papa","doi":"10.3366/mod.2023.0385","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mod.2023.0385","url":null,"abstract":"The modernist writer H.D. was Freud’s analysand in 1933 and 1934 and friend until his death in 1939. This article examines letters, biographies, memoirs, and archival material to trace the interplay between H.D.’s palimpsestic poetics in Trilogy (1973) and Freud’s writing of his last book, Moses and Monotheism (1939) – a work that he was composing throughout the duration of his friendship with the poet. In this book, Freud situates Jewish history as a survival narrative centred on the figure of Moses. Known as one of his most ‘literary’ texts, Moses and Monotheism retraces the life of Moses in a multi-layered narrative that shares in the palimpsestic impulses of H.D.’s writing. This article argues that Freud draws from the revisionist strategies so central to H.D.’s worldview and writerly ethos in order to place creativity and resilience at the heart of Moses and Monotheism.","PeriodicalId":41937,"journal":{"name":"Modernist Cultures","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86176180","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
As an undergraduate studying biology at Bryn Mawr College in the messy aftermath of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, Marianne Moore found herself surrounded by renowned biologists like Thomas Hunt Morgan, Jacques Loeb, Nettie Maria Stevens, and David Hilt Tennent – all of whom were highly invested in debates concerning the epistemological validity of empiricist and essentialist approaches to the natural world. As her biology class manuscripts reveal, these debates had a profound influence on Moore’s early poetry (1908–1924), especially when it involved plants and animals. Eager to perceive other living organisms with precision, Moore rejected the demands of wider vision and focused her inquisitive intensity on the particular properties of individuals. The more that Moore attended to these particulars in her poetry, the more pressure she was able to place on the categorical structures that biologists impose upon organisms for the sake of a stable scientific nomenclature.
{"title":"A Peculiar Kind of Particularity: Plants and Animals in Marianne Moore’s Early Poetry","authors":"Emma Felin","doi":"10.3366/mod.2023.0386","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mod.2023.0386","url":null,"abstract":"As an undergraduate studying biology at Bryn Mawr College in the messy aftermath of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, Marianne Moore found herself surrounded by renowned biologists like Thomas Hunt Morgan, Jacques Loeb, Nettie Maria Stevens, and David Hilt Tennent – all of whom were highly invested in debates concerning the epistemological validity of empiricist and essentialist approaches to the natural world. As her biology class manuscripts reveal, these debates had a profound influence on Moore’s early poetry (1908–1924), especially when it involved plants and animals. Eager to perceive other living organisms with precision, Moore rejected the demands of wider vision and focused her inquisitive intensity on the particular properties of individuals. The more that Moore attended to these particulars in her poetry, the more pressure she was able to place on the categorical structures that biologists impose upon organisms for the sake of a stable scientific nomenclature.","PeriodicalId":41937,"journal":{"name":"Modernist Cultures","volume":"187 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77604328","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay considers the work of John Cage and Dom Sylvester Houédard (dsh) as both concrete poetry and non- or anti-art, paying special attention to their statements of poetics from the early Fifties through to the early Seventies. Although their contribution to the various manifestations of mid-century concrete poetics is well recognised, this recognition has served to obscure their concurrent commitment to anti-art and ‘Neo-Dada’. The inclusion of concrete poetry among the movements of poetic modernism is much debated, and I argue that the accompanying anti-art gestures of these two writers further troubles that designation; for them, concrete poetry as non-art intimated a rejection of their modernist inheritance.
{"title":"Concrete Poetics and Non-Art in John Cage and Dom Sylvester Houédard","authors":"B. Gillott","doi":"10.3366/mod.2023.0387","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mod.2023.0387","url":null,"abstract":"This essay considers the work of John Cage and Dom Sylvester Houédard (dsh) as both concrete poetry and non- or anti-art, paying special attention to their statements of poetics from the early Fifties through to the early Seventies. Although their contribution to the various manifestations of mid-century concrete poetics is well recognised, this recognition has served to obscure their concurrent commitment to anti-art and ‘Neo-Dada’. The inclusion of concrete poetry among the movements of poetic modernism is much debated, and I argue that the accompanying anti-art gestures of these two writers further troubles that designation; for them, concrete poetry as non-art intimated a rejection of their modernist inheritance.","PeriodicalId":41937,"journal":{"name":"Modernist Cultures","volume":"49 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86459565","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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