"A Country of Prisms and Fountains": Louis MacNeice and the USA

This project explores the influence of the United States on the poetry and aesthetic imaginary of Louis MacNeice (1907-1963). It examines his formative readings of Emerson, Whitman, and Eliot, before tracing intertextual allusions and lines of reciprocal influence between MacNeice and his American contemporaries, including Frost, Bishop, Williams, Stevens, and Cummings. Combining formal analysis with revisionary archival research, it seeks to map, for the first time, the poet's critical reception in the US. Finally, it argues that a critical re-orientation of MacNeice in light of his transatlantic experience is necessary to illuminate the later Irish-American exchanges that his example enabled.