ABSTRACT
Modernists, such as Wyndham Lewis or Ezra Pound, announced with iconoclast pathos that the past would disappear in a vortex and give way to the new, as expressed in such experimental movements as vorticism, futurism, imagism and other forms of highbrow literature. With the perceived change in culture that Woolf locates in 1910 but which would be felt even more powerfully after World War I, the time was ripe for a reevaluation of the English literary tradition, and scholars and writers vigorously debated who should be included in that tradition. The social usefulness of reading great literature was a key element in many of the discussions surrounding the education of the lower classes. The way that Sayers approached literary criticism was also very different from the Leavises. Sayers's criticism differs from the Leavises in two significant ways: She is more intentional about evaluating works based on the goals of the author, and she openly acknowledges her own preferences as preferences.
