Modernism and Memory: The Evolution of 20th Century English and Irish Poetry

Abstract

This paper examines how modernism reshaped the poetic imagination in twentieth-century England and Ireland through the lens of memory as both theme and technique. Focusing on poets such as T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, and Seamus Heaney, it explores how personal, collective, and cultural memories became central to their artistic responses to modernity, war, and spiritual crisis. For these poets, memory was not merely recollection but reconstruction—a means of restoring meaning in a fragmented world. Yeats reimagined myth and history to forge Irish cultural identity, Eliot transformed memory into a vehicle for spiritual continuity amid modern disillusionment, Auden used it as moral reflection on social change, and Heaney turned it into an archaeological act of recovering the buried layers of Irish experience. By blending innovation with reverence for tradition, these poets reveal how modernism’s evolution was rooted in the creative power of remembrance. The paper argues that this dialogue between memory and modernism defines the enduring vitality of English and Irish poetry, where remembrance becomes an art of renewal.