ambitious, scholarly ... Highly recommended.
B. Wallenstein, CHOICE
Epic Negation represents a powerful, theoretically sophisticated, and cohesive account of twenty-five crucial years of twentieth-century British literary history, while offering a framework for a number of subtle new readings of key works from the end of World War I to the end of World War II. Along the way, ... Read moreC. D. Blanton engages in an impressive sweep of more localized literary historical investigations and theoretical reflections.
Tyrus Miller, author of Modernism and the Frankfurt School
Intricately studying allusion and intergeneric relations in late modernism, C. D. Blanton's capacious and deeply thoughtful Epic Negation traces how extrinsic voices, historical forces, and forms snake their way into even seemingly closed poems. With its fusion of sinuous close readings and lively theoretical analysis, Blanton's book makes a serious contribution to twentieth-century poetry studies.
Jahan Ramazani, author of Poetry and Its Others: News, Prayer, Song, and the Dialogue of Genres
C. D. Blanton revives the intractable subject of modern epic poetry by reminding us that thinkers and poets as divergent as Pound and Lukacs were once engaged in a common dialectical project. In doing so, he puts back into circulation questions that sustained the feverish modernist debate about totality (and totalitarianism)-questions that may now help us understand poetry's possible relation to new forms of globalism.
Daniel Tiffany, author of My Silver Planet: A Secret History of Poetry and Kitsch
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