I'd agree that one is more likely to see emphasis on their role as serving as a foundation of modernism than identifying them as modernists. I might be better considering them less definitively modern.

> You could take it to extremes and say that Wordsworth was a modernist

The slippery slope argument is a fallacy.

Anyway, my point was that I thought Baudelaire's antagonism to modernity was something very many modernists shared in

>> modernists such as Baudelaire are often said to be antagonistic to modernity

Of course I didn't mean he was an English language high modernist.

Luke

On 7 February 2018 at 17:31, David Lace <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

At most he was a transitional figure. But even this is problematic as his most direct influence was on the poets Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé who became symbolists because of it and not modernists. It's true that he came up with the term "modernity" but I don't think that's strictly the same as "modernism" -- as we know it today.

The trouble with the “origins” theory of poetry is that it forgets that everything is on a continuum. You could take it to extremes and say that Wordsworth was a modernist because he rejected poetic diction, which led the way to free verse though Whitman and to some extent Dickinson. I’ve even heard that some of Blake’s poetry is free verse. So it all melds into a mishmash.






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Luke wrote:

I *think *that's up for debate, if one is so inclined.
Luke

On 7 February 2018 at 16:26, David Lace <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I didn't know he was a modernist. I thought he was a symbolist or
> something. He did influence Eliot though.
>