Modernist Women's Poetry and the Problem of Sentimentality

FAIN: FT-61487-14

Melissa Girard
Loyola University Maryland (Baltimore, MD 21210-2601)

This archivally-based, literary critical study focuses on early twentieth-century American poetry. In the aftermath of World War I, a generation of popular women poets, including Louise Bogan, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sara Teasdale, and Elinor Wylie, dominated the American poetry scene. Their award-winning books were also bestsellers, and they contributed regularly to the era's leading literary publications, including the New Yorker, New Republic, and Poetry. However, with the rise of the New Critics, who came to prominence in the literary academy at mid-century, these women poets' reputations were altered fundamentally. By charting the rise and fall of these influential women poets, "Lines of Feeling" offers a fresh perspective on the development of modern poetry. Drawing on multiple archives and dozens of early twentieth-century periodicals, I recover and reevaluate a major body of poetry and poetic criticism that literary critics have too often dismissed as "minor."