Abstract
From the Hellenism of her early Imagist poems to her late epic Helen in Egypt, H.D. displayed a career-long passion for ancient Mediterranean cultures. She also consumed the modern medium through which their myths and artifacts circulate most widely: historical epic film. Filling the screen with grandiose sets, sprawling combat, and star-crossed lovers, popular images of what George MacDonald Fraser dubs the “Egypto-Biblo-Classic era” emerged and resurged alongside H.D.’s portrayals of mythic figures (7). Indeed, the romantic sensibility and pan-Mediterranean scope of epic film inflect H.D.’s most ambitious rendering of Helen. Along with Trilogy , her long poem Helen in Egypt prompted a feminist reappraisal that made H.D. a matriarch of modern and contemporary poetry. And yet curiously, her Hellenism proved divisive even as her mythmaking poems shaped criticism on and anthologies of women’s poetry.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
