Modernism, Periodicals, and Cultural Poetics

After the publication of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, a complex series of debates occurred over the traditions of English poetry. Analyzing these diverse discussions in a wide range of well-known periodicals during the late modernist period, Chambers uncovers how poetry was shaped by avant-garde ideas, setting poetic trends for the 20th century.

Modernism, Periodicals, and Cultural Poetics addresses how late modernist poetry in Britain tended toward a culturalist expression and importantly how this occurred within the pages of literary periodicals. ''Periodical formations'' describe networks of exchange within and between different literary periodicals that condition the types of poetry published and the kinds of poetic discourse that come to predominate. A re-emphasis on periodical production following the publication of Eliot''s The Waste Land and culminating with the pre-Movement magazines of the 1940''s illustrates a complex and diverse series of debates and negotiations about not only the tradition of English poetry and its role in contemporaneous form, but also how poetry of the period related to the avant-garde trends prominent on the European continent and in America. By focusing on periodical formations, the development of what are now accepted understandings of the period can be better addressed, and certain lasting assumptions can be demythologized.