Modernist aesthetics have been identified with a sense of cultural crisis, defined by its distance from an ideal of unified consciousness. This original study examines the struggle toward that ideal of unitary subjective experience in modern British and Irish poetry from Hardy to Ted Hughes. Hugh Underhill argues that the poetry's emphasis on inner states underrepresents the extent to which the crisis is in fact socio-historically determined.

Modernist aesthetics have been identified with a sense of cultural crisis, defined by its distance from an ideal of unified consciousness. This original study examines the struggle toward that ideal of unitary subjective experience in modern British and Irish poetry from Hardy to Ted Hughes. Hugh Underhill argues that the poetry's emphasis on inner states underrepresents the extent to which the crisis is in fact socio-historically determined.