The ancient world served as an unconventional source of inspiration for a generation of modernists. Drawing on examples from literature, dance, photography, and film, Modernism's Mythic Pose argues that a strain of antimodern-classicism permeates modernist celebrations of novelty, shock, and technology. The touchstone of Preston's study is Delsartism--the popular transnational movement which promoted mythic statue--posing, poetic recitation, and other hybrid solo performances for health and spiritual development. Derived from nineteenth-century acting theorist François Delsarte and largely organized by women, Delsartism shaped modernist performances, genres, and ideas of gender. Even Ezra Pound, a famous promoter of the "new," made ancient figures speak in the "old" genre of the dramatic monologue and performed public recitations. Recovering precedents in nineteenth-century popular entertainments and Delsartism's hybrid performances, this book considers the canonical modernists Pound and T. S. Eliot, lesser-known poets like Charlotte Mew, the Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov, Isadora Duncan the international dance star, and H.D. as poet and film actor. Preston's interdisciplinary engagement with performance, poetics, modern dance, and silent film demonstrates that studies of modernism often overemphasize breaks with the past. Modernism also posed myth in an ambivalent relationship to modernity, a halt in the march of progress that could function as escapism, skeptical critique, or a figure for the death of gods and civilizations.

Table of Contents:
Series Editors' Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction. I. Modern, Antimodern, and Mythic Posing II. Gendered Identity and Embodiment III. Biblical Typology and Classical Ritual IV. Solo Genres V. Modernist Kinaesthetics Chapter 1. The Solo's Origins: Monodramas, Attitudes, Dramatic Monologues I. Galatea's Reach: Gestures of the Monodrama II. Veiled Motions: Emma Lyon Hamilton's Attitude III. Goethe's Proserpina and Later Posers IV. Barrett Browning: Naming "Aeschylus" and "The Virgin Mary" V. Types and Housewives in Christina Rossetti and Augusta Webster Chapter 2. Posing Modernism: Delsartism in Modern Dance and Silent Film I. Delsarte's Aesthetics of the Attitude II. Disseminating Delsarte III. Performing Delsartism: Genevieve Stebbins and the Early Motions of Modern Dance IV. Performing Delsartism (Take Two): Denishawn and Hollywood V. The Russian Delsarte: Kuleshov and Film Montage Chapter 3. Positioning Genre: The Dramatic Monologue in Cultures of Recitation I. Expression, Recitation, and Literary Interpretation II. Charlotte Mew: The Magdalene in "Madeleine in Church" III. T. S. Eliot's "Magus": Impersonality, Objective Correlative, and Mythical Method IV. Chautauquas, "Sextus Propertius," and Ezra Pound's History V. Amy Lowell's Polyphonic Emma Lyon Hamilton Chapter 4. The Motor in the Soul: Isadora Duncan's Solo Dance I. The Shock of Solo Expression II. The Proto-Motor: Duncan and Delsartean Posing III. The Joints of Modernism: Conjunctures of Materialism and Metaphysics IV. The Multiplied Body of the Motor V. Motorized Propulsion and Modernist Ritual VI. Repetitions of the Motor: Will and Spontaneity VII. The Weight of a Thigh and the New Woman of (Anti)Modernism Chapter 5. Ritualized Reception: H.D.'s Antimodernist Poetics and Cinematics I. Imagism Unstuck: H.D.'s Dissent and Pound's Revision II. Stepping from Stone: Dramatic Monologues of The God The Ritual Chorus and a Soloist's Suspicion in Ion and "The Dancer" IV. Types of Participation: H.D.'s Film Essays and Reviews V. H.D.'s Attitudes on Film VI. Montage, Technology for the Soul VII. The Soloists of Trilogy Afterword. Post-Antimodernism