This book combines interdisciplinary and comparatist approaches (anthropology, philosophy, psychology, and language) in the investigation of the mythic mode of thought and language in the post-Symbolist poets Arthur Rimbaud, Georg Trakl, Hart Crane, and Charles Olson. Part One covers the philosophical tradition from Gottfried Herder to Ernst Cassirer. Part Two includes close analytical readings of individual poems by these authors as they enact the mythic mode. The conclusion relates the mythic mode to feminist studies of thought and language.