This paper is a comparative study of Aristotle's Poetics and Ezra Pound's ABC of Reading to discover and determine values in literature, especially poetry, which reflect on the nature and the manifestations of human communication. I feel that scholars in the field of communication can benefit personally and academically from exposure to those poets who have expr essed themselves on the reasons or the manners in which people communicate. To pursue this question requires the use of a guide to poetry, a method by which I can learn to recognize a poem on sight; so that when it comes to discourse about the communicative values of poetry, I can be assured that it is poetry and not some other thing which would be the subject of discourse. The guide is called a poetics. From among the various texts on poetics I have selected these two because not only do they contain scholarship and observation of extraordinary acumen, but also because a comparison between the two can produce valuable similarities and differences, which are of further use in establishing values for a given text of poetics.

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T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound are two of the most prominent figures of Anglo-American modernist poetry, both having played central roles in the development of a distinct poetic style and atmosphere in the early 20th century by means of their publishing and editing the work of other poets as well as publishing their own poetry. However, Eliot and Pound have an interest in the classical world that is not clearly shared with the majority of other modernist poets, and this interest distinguishes the sense of "modernism" that Eliot and Pound promoted from that of other major modernists like William Carlos Williams. The general notion of modernism representing a radical break from tradition is, in the works of Eliot and Pound, not at all obvious despite the two poets' shared status at the forefront of Anglo-American modernist poetry. This thesis explores the aesthetic theories that Eliot and Pound describe in their prose works and compares them with the aesthetic theories of other modernist poets to illustrate how Eliot and Pound appreciate the past, and in particular the classical world, in ways that other modernists simply do not.

<p>Literary approaches to Ezra-Nehemiah studies are becoming more common. However, there is still a lack in the literary study of Ezra-Nehemiah of a structural analysis of Nehemiah's covenant renewal account that respects its particular fit within Nehemiah's story. The aim of this thesis is to explain how the covenant renewal account (commonly held to be Neh 8-10) is integral to the book ofNehemiah (Neh 1-13). Since narrative structural analysis is the study of the semantic structures that preside over a text's creation, this methodology is well suited to discerning whether or not the content found in the covenant renewal account fits within the broader story (and text) of Nehemiah. Accordingly, my structural analysis of the covenant renewal account reveals a deep, underlying structure that shows this account to be an integral piece of the book of Nehemiah.</p> / Master of Divinity (M.Div)

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Les philosophes juifs du Moyen Âge emploient des stratégies d’écriture ésotériques pour traiter certains problèmes d’importance capitale. L’opposition de la « thèse religieuse » de la création du monde et de la « thèse philosophique » de son éternité en est l’exemple type. Ces « arts d’écrire » ont été généralement considérés, depuis les travaux de Leo Strauss, comme des moyens de dissimuler une opinion hétérodoxe, en vue de se prémunir contre la persécution politique. Nous nous engageons à comprendre cet « ésotérisme », non pas comme un stratagème politique, mais comme la conséquence proprement philosophique d’une difficulté intrinsèque à certains problèmes qui mettent en défaut les capacités expressives du langage, comme en l’occurrence la tentative d’énoncer l’origine radicale de toute chose. À partir de cette hypothèse, nous abordons le traitement de la création du monde chez des philosophes juifs actifs entre le Xe et le XVe siècles, qui soutiennent chacun une thèse différente sur la question (Saadia Gaon, Abraham Ibn Ezra, Maïmonide, Isaac Albalag, Gersonide et Ḥasday Crescas). Nous montrons comment la perspective doxographique, visant à identifier la « véritable thèse » de chaque auteur, n’est pas appropriée eu égard à de tels écrits ésotériques et nous efforçons de mettre en lumière, à travers eux, un style original du philosopher qui s’invente dans le moment médiéval de la rencontre de la philosophie et de la « révélation ». / The Medieval Jewish philosophers used esoteric writing strategies in order to deal with matters of critical importance. The opposition between the « religious theory » of the creation of the world and the « philosophical theory » of its eternity constitues one of the most typical example of such subjects. Since Leo Strauss’ works, these « arts of writing » have been generally considered as means of hiding heterodox opinions, used by the philosophers in order to avoid political persecution. We try to show that this esotericism does not stem from mere political calculation, but from intrinsically philosophical considerations : the limitation of langage itself, that fails to express certain issues, such as the radical origin of all things. From this starting point, we discuss the views and writing strategies of diverse Jewish philosophers, active between the 10th and the 15th centuries, each of whom held a different theory on creation (Saadia Gaon, Abraham Ibn Ezra, Maimonides, Isaac Albalag, Gersonides and Ḥasday Crescas). We argue that the doxographic perspective, aiming at identifying each author’s « real view », is not appropriate when dealing which such esoteric writings, which we propose to envisage as the manifestation of a specific philosophical style, emerging in the Medieval period from the confrontation between philosophy and « revelation ».

Les mythologies - gréco-romaine, irlandaise, perse, indienne, japonaise, chinoise -sont omniprésentes dans la poésie de Bunting, Eliot, Pound et Yeats. Les prédilections desauteurs pour certaines mythologies, véritables choix identitaires et politiques, montrenttoutefois une péroccupation commune pour les mythes violents, aux niveaux martial et sexuel.Ce premier niveau thématique se combine avec une réflexion plus distanciée sur le mythe,outil critique qui permet la reformulation de croyances rituelles et spirituelles, et de nouvellesthéories poétiques qui visent à ordonner et donner un sens au monde chaotique du XXe siècle.Le mythe, subversif, permet donc l'articulation de nouvelles spiritualités et denouvelles expériences poétiques. Enfin, matériau vivant et modelable, dont la mention est à lafois un raccourci de récits anciens et un horizon élargi vers d'autres références et réécritures,le mythe est objet linguistique. En traduction, le mythe transfert les contenus thématiques,déplace les rythmes et fait circuler et s'entremêler les arts. En effet, retour fantasmé à uneorigine du langage artistique, le mythe est parfois fiction d'un art total où les figuresmythiques seraient à la fois objet linguistique, représentation imaginaire picturale etmanifestation musicale. De cette vision du mythe émane une poésie polyphonique et hybride,à l'image du centaure et des autres créatures monstrueuses présents dans l'oeuvre poétique deBunting, Eliot, Pound et Yeats.

This study concerns itself with the phenomenon of literary encyclopaedism, as especially evident in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, Philippe Sollers' Paradis and Ezra Pound's Cantos. The study focuses on developing the notion of an encyclopaedic literary mode and on establishing the existence of a genre of fictional encyclopaedias. It finds an encyclopaedic mode in literature to be one comprehending and imitating other literary modes, both mimetic and didactic. Further, the idea of a fictional encyclopaedia is developed through an understanding of the traits of the neighbouring forms of essay, Menippean satire and epic, and through an understanding of the paradoxes associated with the making of the non-fictional encyclopaedia. The fictional encyclopaedia thus comprehends and exceeds the following traits: 1. A tension, characteristic of the essay, between integrated autobiography and impersonal (and ultimately fragmented) exposition of the categories of knowledge. 2. A tension, characteristic of the Menippean satire, between tale and digression, between a single narrating subject and a multiplicity of transient narrating voices. The menippea also contributes a simultaneous preoccupation with the most sacred and the most profane subjects. 3. A totalizing drive characteristic of the epic, a desire--rivalling the urge to tell a story--to list or include all aspects of the culture in the epic past. The fictional encyclopaedia also translates into fiction the following paradoxes associated with the encyclopaedic enterprise: 1. The recognition, implicit in the drive to trace a complete and eternally-perfect circle of the arts and sciences, that encyclopaedic knowledge is always ultimately incomplete and obsolete. 2. The recognition, at the heart of the attempt to produce an objective and unmediated picture of the world, that encyclopaedic knowledge is ideologically shaped and textually mediated. The dominance of the encyclopaedic gesture in Finnegans Wake, Paradis and the Cantos allows us to account for the characteristic length, obscurity and "bookishness" of these works; they absorb the traits and tensions of essay, Menippean satire and epic while yet exceeding these traits in their fictional translation of the encyclopaedic paradoxes noted above. This translation manifests itself in each work as a characteristic parodic hesitation before the authority of totalizing predecessors; it manifests itself in the texts' fascination with images of a paradisiacal completion and timelessness, a tendency that is undercut by a repetitive, digressive or fragmented form which asserts the inevitability of time and incompletion. Further, the Wake, Paradis and the Cantos, in their overt and extensive intertextual activity, emphasize the textual boundaries of encyclopaedic knowledge. Nonetheless, in their foregrounding and valorization of speech rhythms, the works also repeat the challenge that the encyclopaedia brings to its own limited nature as written book. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This study examines Basil Bunting's development as a poet from his meeting with Ezra Pound in Paris in 1923, through his collaborations with Pound, Louis Zukofsky, and other members of the Objectivist circle in the 1930s, up to his meeting with Allen Ginsberg and Tom Pickard in 1960s Britain against a backdrop of social activism and modernist revival. In particular, it seeks to query the critical commonplace that Bunting was a sceptic interested solely in the autotelic form of poetry, and to argue that his revival at the time of the long poem Briggflatts in the sixties should be read historically - as a case study that shows the Poundian tradition of praxis and orality acquiring a newly communitarian, leftist emphasis in the context of post-war Anglo-American poetry. The study draws extensively on unpublished manuscripts and letters held at the Basil Bunting Archive, Durham University, the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas (Austin), and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

This thesis examines cultivation in the lives of Sarah and Columbia Bennett between the years 1852 and 1874. The Bennett women's letters convey an intimate sense of the agro-economic preoccupations (and gardening pleasures) of these slave-owning white women, and the centrality of cultivation in mid-nineteenth-century rural Louisiana within a landscape of country stores, plantations, and people. As the lives of the Bennett women illustrate, white women's gardening knowledge and practice formed a cornerstone of central Louisiana society. The Bennett women's gardening knowledge and skill were primary components in the creation of a self-sustaining plantation household. By cultivating produce and other foodstuffs for consumption, the Bennett women made possible the family's participation in the lucrative market for cotton and other cash crops, a market that also tied their household to plantation economies elsewhere in the transatlantic world.