The Sound of the Past: Echoes and Incantations in Eliot, H.D., and Woolf

'The Sound of the Past' collects nine essays on the topic of Modernism and its relationship to past histories, literatures, artworks, environments, and cultural moments. The collection specifically explores the way sound informs the work of T. S. Eliot, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), and Virginia Woolf. Some chapters address sound through allusion and prosody, while others do so through travel and “anaesthetics.” Sound allows echoing, seeming, voicing, announcing, scaling, plunging, and hearing. These allowances offer a wide approach to both literary and sound studies. This collection addresses various genres, including the long poem, the novel, the travelogue, and the “it-narrative.” As such, it will be a useful collection for anyone interested in the multiform way Modernist writers echo or channel their precursors.

List of Figures
Introduction: “Drawing sustenance from the dead”
Susan McCabe, Steven Minas and Catherine Theis
University of Southern California

PART ONE: T. S. ELIOT
Chapter One
T.S. Eliot, Black Musicality, and the Inaudible Past
Steven Nathaniel
Grand Valley State University
Chapter Two
Eliot’s Sylvan Sound: The Sacred Wood and Resonant Allusion
Steven Minas
University of Southern California
Chapter Three
What’s Your Final Destination?: Place in Mirrlees, Eliot, and The Modernist Long Poem
Catherine Theis
University of Southern California

PART TWO: H.D.
Chapter Four
Choliambics of a Forgotten Melic’: H.D.’s Rejection of Ezra Pound’s Patriarchal Prosodies
Demetres Tryphonopoulos
University of Alberta, Augustana campus
Chapter Five
H.D. & Bryher: Ecstatic Channeling & Green Hermeticism
Susan McCabe
University of Southern California
Chapter Six
Travel Sketches from the Past: H.D.’s “Ear-Ring,” “Pontikonisi,” and “Aegina” as Hyper-Realist Autobiographies
Anna Fyta
Athens College, Greece
Chapter Seven
Incidents in the Order of Time: Epic and Apocalyptic Form in H.D.’s Helen in Egypt and Trilogy
Graham Borland
University of Cambridge

PART THREE: VIRGINIA WOOLF
Chapter Eight
“The Body Intervenes”: Embodiment, the Senses, and Prehistory in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves
Kevin Tunnicliffe
University of Victoria, Canada
Chapter Nine
Virginia Woolf’s Flush and the Novel of Circulation
Jonathan Najarian
Sacred Heart University
About the Contributors
Index

Susan McCabe was born on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, has taught in Oregon and Arizona, and received her PhD at UCLA. She also taught and conducted research in her mother’s country of Sweden. She teaches at the University of Southern California. She directed the PhD in Literature and Creative Writing Program at USC (2006-2009), and has acted as President of the Modernist Studies Association. She is the author of six books, including two critical studies—'Elizabeth Bishop: Her Poetics of Loss' (Penn State University Press, 1994) and 'Cinematic Modernism: Modern Poetry and Film' (Cambridge University Press, 2005)—and two poetry volumes, 'Swirl' (Red Hen Press, 2003), and 'Descartes’ Nightmare' (winner of the Agha Shahid Ali prize and published by Utah University Press in 2008). She is also the author of a bi-biography of a modernist poet and writer pair, 'An Untold Love Story: H.D. & Bryher' (Oxford 2021). Most recently, McCabe’s new poetry book, 'I Woke A Lake' (2025), has been published by The Center for Literary Publishing (CLP) at Colorado State University (CSU).

Steven Minas is a lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Southern California. His research focuses on the early modern period with a broad interest in poetics. He has published on Milton’s use of allusion in 'Milton Studies' and on the history of creative criticism in 'Diacritics'.

Catherine Theis is the author of the poetry collection 'The Fraud of Good Sleep' (Salt, 2011) and the play 'MEDEA' (Plays Inverse, 2017). She is the translator of Slashing Sounds (University of Chicago Press, 2024), the first collection of the Italian poet Jolanda Insana to be published in English. Theis’ latest collection of poems, 'By a Roman', will be published by Antiphony Press in October 2025. Her work has also been published in 'Classics in Modernist Translation' (Bloomsbury, 2019), a volume that addresses modernist engagements with the literature of Greco-Roman antiquity. Her contribution, “Braving the elements,” explores the similarities between poets H.D. and Robinson Jeffers and their interest in the choral odes of Euripides’ The Bacchae. Theis teaches at the University of Southern California.

Allusion, Aesthetics, Echo, Prosody, Place, Travelogues, Autobiography, Hyperrealism, Hermeticism, It-Narratives, Epic, Long poem, Sonic, Mythical method