Laura Riding's sculptural modernism

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 <i>Love as Love, Death as Death</i> (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 <i>Poems: A Joking Word </i>(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.<br><br><i>Thesis is embargoed until 31 July 2028.</i><br>