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James George Frazer and Sigmund Freud confirmed the sustained but divided critical interest in myth characterizing modernity and ranging from eschewal to espousal. The Enlightenment thinker Bernard de Fontenelle treated myth as a superstitious obstacle to understanding. For the Romantics, mythopoeic sensibility provided a “vital way of knowing the world” and a welcome alternative to abstracting reason. W. H. Auden was a novice poet forming his poetic voice in the 1920s when anthropology and psychology were inspiring the early generation of modernists to the use of the “mythical method” as a means of grasping the present. In this context, Auden also pondered deeply over myth and its relevance to contemporary poetry and society. This paper aims to examine Auden’s ruminations on the category of myth for its capacity to deliver knowledge and enlightenment, but also blind and manipulate man and his consciousness. First, the present paper focuses on Auden’s understanding of myth as a discourse for establishing useful and fruitful connections between the past and the present with the hope of broadening our awareness of the underlying attributes of the condition humaine. Then, it also proposes a counter-movement, drawing attention to Auden’s suspicion of condemnable collective narratives with the potential to shade truth.

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The myth of the Golden Age found in 20th-century British prose fiction and, particularly, in accounts of the Edwardian decade, seems from the current perspective to be a nostalgically envisioned idyllic haven. Suggestive of peace, innocence, and prosperity, the myth of the Golden Age features in literary renditions of a pre-WWI world, with the works of Kenneth Grahame being a notable example. In stories aimed at younger readers, and in adult fiction too, war – and particularly WWI – constitutes a caesura at which the playful agon of the Edwardian Golden Age transforms into a life-and-death struggle; by the same token, it dramatically severs the nostalgically recalled visions of peace and security. In the paper, I first focus on defining the mythical and the nostalgic. I argue that, exposed through the workings of nostalgia, the notion of war becomes a pivot upon which the myth of the golden-age of Edwardian England is constructed and preserved in the collective memory. Furthermore, I argue that British literature includes literary examples which, paradoxically, both re-enforce and yet simultaneously challenge the golden-age traits of the Edwardian decade. In Kenneth Grahame’s The Golden Age and Dream Days the golden past is perpetuated and firmly cemented, whereas in Siegfried Sassoon’s autobiographical fiction as well as L. P. Hartley’s The Go-Between the initial reminiscences of an idyllic pre-WWI countryside are subsequently questioned. In these texts, the retrospective viewpoint helps investigate the links between myth and nostalgia, which ultimately culminates in a critical message: while deploying the “gilded” images and established rhetoric Sassoon and Hartley challenge the myth of the Golden Age and expose the reality of the Edwardian era.

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In line with current developments in Irish and modernist studies, the article focuses on Eimar O’Duffy’s Cuanduine trilogy (1926–1933) to illuminate some facets of the legacy of James Joyce’s Ulysses in post-revolutionary Ireland and O’Duffy’s innovative relationship with the mythology of his nation. In the trilogy, O’Duffy draws heavily on Ulysses in terms of intertextuality and form, including the mimicry of different writing styles, but, above all, multifariously “receptionates” Joyce’s use of myths in Ulysses. Following Joyce’s example, O’Duffy blends characters from legend and contemporaneity to satirise whatever heroic pretensions the Free State could still have, since he describes the demi-god Cuanduine and Cuchulain – the mythological hero celebrated by Irish nationalism and the Literary Revival – wander through an impoverished Dublin marred by ethnoreligious sectarianism. Moreover, like Joyce, O’Duffy uses myths not only to ironically juxtapose heroic values with bleak contemporary realities: Ireland’s mythical tradition was created by a vital culture, characterised by equality and pluralism, from which contemporary Ireland should take inspiration. Hence, the analysis of the trilogy in light of Ulysses points out the innovative use of myth in that it is geared towards the creation of a new kind of community.

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The present article attempts to explore both theory and practice of Robinson Jeffers’ inhumanist nature poetry. Jeffers’ ideas (presented mostly on the basis Jeffers’ original preface to his 1948 volume of poetry The Double Axe) are placed in the context of Joseph Hillis Miller’s concept of “the poetry of reality.” Miller’s chief contention was that the poetry of reality embraced reality and focused on things as they are, which constituted a radical break from the nineteenth century forms and ideas, shaped by romantic dualism (mind vs. body, spirit vs matter, ego vs. the world). Since Miller emphasizes the ethical dimension of this way of writing, various controversies related to Jeffers’ moral position cannot be omitted from discussion. This problem will be discussed in the context of Czesław Miłosz’s critique of Jeffers’ poetry. The article discusses to what extent Jeffers’ nature poetry fulfills the criteria of Miller’s poetry of reality. I conclude that rather than write about nature without imposing any ideas on it, Jeffers creates a powerful myth which is clearly a projection of human desires.

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Leading British modernist writers, seeking and constructing mythic models of literary history to authorise their double-acts of critical construction and creative rebellion, had difficulties with Shakespeare. Eliot notoriously valorised, above his plays, the epics of Virgil and Dante; Wyndham Lewis played off Shakespearean against Machiavellian nihilism; Joyce generated for him a mythical and Oedipal biography. In this context Empson’s treatment of Shakespearean poetic drama stands out – for brilliant ingenuity, theatrical awareness, and relative subsequent neglect. This paper shall address Empson’s responses to three Shakespearean cases of problematic transition. Concerning Hamlet; why does the protagonist return, from England, so changed? Is the change superficial or real? Does Hamlet’s soliloquy, before departure, clarify or confuse the issue? Concerning Falstaff; how do developments, or continuities, in the role illuminate the links and the gaps between the plays of Henry IV and Henry V? Concerning Cleopatra; how do images of fertility and of destruction, how do practices of patience and caprice, map on to her options and actions in face of death? For Empson, indeed, encounters with death focus, supremely, options for self-assertion – hence, for both critical distinctions and inclusive richness.

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This article aims to discuss modernist literary patronage in order to comment on the myths of modernism in a twofold manner. Firstly, the form patrons take in the cultural imaginary of modernist writers directly influences the final versions of their works. Thinly veiled versions of patrons appear time and again in various modernist novels, contributing to the way patrons are perceived in real-life as well as in academic discourse. By being reduced to lionhunters or two-dimensional characters in romans à clef, patrons are mythologised, which allows writers to navigate the difficult power dynamics and expectations of literary patronage more easily. Secondly, studying the way patrons are written and talked about allows us to critically engage another, bigger myth of modernism: that of the author and their creative dominance. By looking at Lady Ottoline Morrell, a modernist patron, and her beneficiaries, D. H. Lawrence and Aldous Huxley among others, this paper provides a novel perspective on modernist works and their conception.

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Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) was one of the most important figures of Modernism. Her texts, as well as her personality, attracted the attention of her contemporaries and continue to inspire researchers and authors. The aim of the article is to outline the steps of revisiting the myth of Modernism (Gertrude Stein). This article focuses on two contemporary novels that discuss the life of this significant modernist author: Monique Truong’s The Book of Salt (2003) and Hassan Najmi’s Gertrude (2014). Both novels directly and indirectly relate to Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1932). The social context of the contemporary novels is based on the theme of the “otherness,” a significant issue in the Stein-Truong-Najmi paradigm, which involves the readers in the game of allusions. Both contemporary authors pay tribute to Gertrude Stein, her literary salon and her “myth” by emphasizing the importance of Stein’s influence on modernist culture. Literary, historical and social determinants that have been chosen for this comparative analysis provide the discussion points on the effect of modernism on contemporary fiction, which very often displays rather turbulent coexistence of different cultures and civilizations.

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Harold Bloom’s highly influential model of the ‘anxiety of influence’—the agon between fathers and sons—and the haunting presence of the ‘myth’ of literary Modernism, which all succeeding generations of writers have had to contend with, may induce literary critics to view contemporary writers as the ‘children’ or ‘grandchildren’ of their great Modernist precursors. While investigating the intertextual relationship between Pat Barker and Virginia Woolf, however, it is, I argue, far more useful to analyse Barker’s engagement with Woolf’s work in the context of Juliet Mitchell’s theories of sibling relationships (2003). The lateral aspect of Barker’s intertextual relationship with her precursor is best demonstrated through a detailed analysis of Toby’s Room (2012), whose title is a direct reference to Woolf’s third novel, Jacob’s Room (1922). Like Elinor Brooke, whose paintings express her desire for freedom from the oppressive absence of her dead brother, Toby, Barker attempts to „clear [some] imaginative space”2 for herself, to make some ‚room’ in which she can exist, by challenging a few of Woolf’s most influential views, as expressed in her fiction and in such works as A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas. Toby’s Room is thus the product of Barker’s combined admiration and hostility towards Woolf’s oeuvre—an ambivalent hommage in which Barker positions herself not as Woolf’s descendant, but as a literary sibling. By re-assembling various fragments of Woolf’s oeuvre, just as Elinor re-assembles the ‘pieces’ of her brother, Barker resurrects her precursor in such a way as to be able to simultaneously honour her and to allow her own literary self to exist.

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In this essay I would like to analyse biographical writing by three female modernist writers: H.D.’s HERmione, Bryher’s A Heart to Artemis, and Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. How do these biographic novels draw on mythology to constitute the writing woman (of modernism)? At first, I would like to analyse these novels with regard to the question of how they try to articulate a biography of a female writer against the lack of historical models. Here, I would like to add readings of Virginia Woolfs A Room of One’s Own, as a take on the issue of missing cultural history of female writing. Secondly, the implementation of mythology in these texts will be analysed. Here I would like to add readings of H.D.’s Helen in Egypt, as a take on the issue of missing literary and cultural representation of women by women. Lastly, I would like to establish how these female authors are writing themselves in relation to the man-centred artistic world of their time. Here I would like to add reading of Gertrude Stein’s Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, as a take on the competition of female writers with their male counterparts at their time.

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The purpose of this paper is to discuss Alison Bechdel’s second graphic memoir, Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama (2012) in order to analyse the American cartoonist’s interest in myth, and her dialogic relationship with Virginia Woolf’s autobiographical writings, in particular To the Lighthouse (1927). Bechdel’s Are You My Mother? is first introduced via its brief comparison with Bechdel’s debut memoir, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006), devoted to her father. Then, the paper traces the parallels and differences between Bechdel’s and Woolf’s works and quests to examine their respective relationships with their own mothers. In both daughters’ autobiographical writings, the mothers appear as mythical figures, who are subjected to demythicisation necessary for the daughters’ liberation as artists. In addition, the paper discusses both authors’ reflections on the process of artistic creation seen in Woolf’s depiction of Lily Briscoe’s painting and in Bechdel’s own self-portrait. Finally, the paper demonstrates Bechdel’s postmodernist intensification of Woolf’s modernist, already self-reflexive model of writing, made possible thanks to the medium of the graphic narrative itself.