Review by Choice Review
Sword (Indiana Univ.) builds on Leon Surette's The Birth of Modernism: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, and the Occult (CH, Sep'93) and, particularly, the work of Timothy Materer, whose Modernist Alchemy: Poetry and the Occult (CH, Sep'96) dealt with some of the same authors (Yeats, Eliot, H.D. Plath, Hughes, and Merrill) treated in the present volume. More narrowly focused than Materer, Sword confines her examination to the place of spiritualism and spirit writing in 20th-century modernist writing. She does, however, go beyond Materer to consider prose writers (Joyce, Lawrence, Mann, and Woolf). Arguing that "spiritualist tropes play a vital role in the thematic and aesthetic innovations of a wide range of modernist writers, the skeptical as well as the credulous," Sword offers a convincing demonstration of the ubiquitous influence of spiritualist practice. Of particular interest is the chapter on "spirit writing"--that is, books written by mediums who claim to be channeling the words of the deceased. This practice raises numerous questions about authorship, authority, allusion, and intertextuality, and Sword provides a useful discussion of these issues. Although the book betrays some of its origins in a dissertation, its extensive bibliography, copious notes, and fine insights make it a recommended volume for academic readers at all levels. B. Diemert Brescia University College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review