ABSTRACT

The revolution in English poetry dominant in the first half of the twentieth century was so great that special treatment is demanded from the psychologist’s point of view.

I could find no experiments in this country concerned with the special characteristics of modern poetry, and only very scanty ones conducted in the U.S.A. At first I felt, with some relief, that this exempted me from the necessity of dealing with modern poetry, which I did not feel competent to do, as I had done no experiments with it myself. However, I thought later that I ought to try to do something at least to start such experiments. As I have at present no classes of students suitable for them I had to find collaborators, and here I was fortunate in gaining the help of three: James Britton, Tutor in the teaching of English in the University Institute of Education, London, whose experiments with poetry I have already discussed earlier (p. 348), and who has himself written some poetry;1 A. M. Wilkinson, Tutor in the teaching of English in the Education Department of Birmingham University, who as Peter Gurney has had several verse-plays broadcast in the Third Programme; and Megan Evans, Lecturer in English at Wrexham Training College. I was especially glad to find collaborators who were sympathetically inclined to modern poetry, as I wanted to avoid the influence of any possible prejudice against it in the responses of the students to whom the poems were read and presented by my collaborators.