ABSTRACT

Making extensive use of archival materials by Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, and Anne Sexton, Amanda Golden reframes the relationship between modernism and midcentury poetry. While Golden situates her book among other materialist histories of modernism, she moves beyond the examination of published works to address poets’ annotations in their personal copies of modernist texts. A consideration of the dynamics of literary influence, Annotating Modernism analyzes the teaching strategies of midcentury poets and the ways they read modernists like T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, and W. B. Yeats. Situated within a larger rethinking of modernism, Golden’s study illustrates the role of midcentury poets in shaping modernist discourse.

chapter |28 pages

Introduction

Annotating literary history

chapter 1|62 pages

Reading modernist texts

Sylvia Plath’s library and teaching notes

chapter 2|38 pages

John Berryman annotating modernism

chapter 3|46 pages

Annotating herself

Anne Sexton’s teaching notes

chapter |18 pages

Coda

Ted Hughes and the midcentury American academy

chapter |4 pages

Conclusion