Isabelle Stuart

My doctoral research will analyse the influence of verse recitation practice and theory on the development of modernist poetics from 1900 to 1950. I am interested in defining the relationship between elements of modernist poetry recitation cultures and key features of modernist poetics, such as impersonality, free verse and the fascination with verse drama. I first came to Oxford for my undergraduate degree in English, before migrating to study for an MPhil in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Cambridge. My undergraduate dissertation looked at voices in T. S. Eliot’s poetry, whereas my MPhil research was primarily interested in Arthur Hugh Clough’s prosody, examining how he consciously fails to achieve the classical hexameter his verse strives towards. My DPhil will combine these interests in sound studies, modernist poetry and historical poetics under the supervision of Professor Michael Whitworth. I am co-funded by the AHRC, Worcester College and a Clarendon Scholarship.