The persistence of allegory in modern and comtemporary American poetry

This study registers the continuing presence of allegory in modern and contemporary American poetry, and argues that the persistence of allegory marks a distinct response to our condition in modernity. After an examination of the demotion allegory in the romantic period, this study provides various definitions of modernism and postmodernism to demonstrate why, for some postmodern theorists, allegory has returned to favor. Whereas theories of allegory have come to the fore in the postmodern period, this study remarks the presence of the allegorical impulse in modernist texts. The work of T.S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens as representative of the modernist period, and the work of Frank Bidart and Jorie Graham as representative of the contemporary period, provide illustrations of the persistence of allegory. This study concludes that the allegorical impulse of twentieth-century American poetry is rooted in modernism and that forms of this modernist endeavor with allegory continue today as an important response, rather than a capitulation, to our postmodern situation.