Introduction

The Modernists that Davie had in mind also maneuvered themselves into the public eye, whether by befriending the right people or by providing their audience with spectacular performances of their own. The glorious rebellions from the age of manifestoes had become old news, and the postwar revival of this rebellious spirit was a second-generation response to a first-generation event. The avant-garde dicta of the contemporary period often bore an uncanny resemblance to the dicta of the 1910s and 1920s. Certain people need little reason to become curmudgeons, and this is true of many who feel themselves pitted against the world. The fragmentation of the British Empire is usually seen as the central historical event of this era, from which other events, trends, and facets of social psychology extend in some sort of causal relation, however indirect. Modern American and English poetries had diverged starting in the 1940s.