Abstract
This thesis considers the work of Laura Riding through a sculptural lens. It situates Riding within her modernist contexts and seeks to move beyond recovery-focused critical engagements with Riding by theorizing and examining the sculptural poetics of her work. Using the sculptural as a metaphorical means of engaging with Riding’s poetry generates various ‘ways in’ to this often-difficult poet and emphasizes conceptual overlaps between poetry and sculpture within her historical contexts. The four chapters of this thesis take four varying views of Riding’s work during 1924-1938, shifting in period, perspective and priority. Chapter One establishes Riding’s self-sculpting processes in her first collection The Close Chaplet (1926) and other early materials. I read Riding’s self-sculpting in relation to the feminized (perhaps feminist) creation mythology as presented in this collection. In Chapter Two, I consider how Riding’s concept of the poetic self, and therefore the sculptural logic underpinning her work, emerges out of Riding’s critical responses to Romanticism, particularly in her second collection Love as Love, Death as Death (1928). Chapter Three newly positions Riding’s work in its postwar contexts by considering her engagement with death throughout her career, an engagement that is illuminated by an understanding of sculpture’s memorializing functions. I argue that this informs her portrayal of her 1929 suicide attempt as a true death in her third collection Poems: A Joking Word (1930). Chapter Four considers the sculptural as it pertains to material production, particularly Riding’s publishing work in the context of her collaboration with Graves at Seizin Press. I locate Riding in a wider history of female modernist writer-publishers and explore the relationship between embodiment and material production. Each chapter adopts a distinct viewpoint and interpretation of what thinking sculpturally can offer to Riding’s reader, working chronologically through her life and centring each of her four major poetry collections. While not taking Riding’s version(s) of herself to be authoritative, paying attention to her self-sculpting makes room for a multi-dimensional Riding to emerge.Thesis is embargoed until 31 July 2028.
| Date of Award | Jul 2025 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Sponsors | AHRC Northern Bridge Consortium |
| Supervisor | Fran Brearton (Supervisor) & Gail McConnell (Supervisor) |
Keywords
- Laura Riding
- modernism
- poetry
- publishing
- Laura Riding Jackson
- modernist poetry
- American poetry
- Robert Graves
- visual art
- material culture
- sculpture