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This study of Ezra Pound's Cantos considers quotations in the poem which are clearly marked as such, not for their content, nor for the relationship between new and old contexts, but for the oral qualities of the quoted material, and for the rhetorical effects of the fact of quotation itself. After cataloguing the principal means by which quotation is marked, the thesis assesses the notion (most clearly formulated by Walter Benjamin) that the great power of quotation lies in its interruptive power rather than in its value as authority in argument (Chapter 3). Such interruptive power, drawing attention as it does to the multiplicity of voices available in the text, reinforces our sense of The Cantos as an oral text. This chapter and the one following — which traces the connections between The Cantos and oral traditions and traditional techniques — suggests that the neglect of the oral qualities of quotation has led critics to consider the poem as deeply and irretrievably fragmented. Situating The Cantos in relation to other oral works shows not only the ways in which Pound draws on the tension between the aural and the visual elements of the poem and of language (speech and song in contrast to the written) but also the pervasive omnipresence of the heard: the play of ear against eye is a play of melopoeia against phanopoeia, and the text of The Cantos is most fruitfully to be seen as a score for the speaking voice. Such orality enables Pound to draw directly upon the resources and techniques of the classical rhetorical tradition, thereby enabling him in quoting the words of others to lend their words the authority of his own voice. The poem thus achieves a strong sense of a multiplicity of voices and effects unified by the presence of the poet himself, without compromising Pound's conviction (shared with Yeats and Williams and others of his contemporaries) that rhetoric is utterly to be distinguished from poetry, and kept separate from it. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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From the preface: The purpose of this thesis is exposition rather than criticism. Pound's position in the hierarchy of the 'New Criticism' would provide an extremely interesting subject; but I have rather tried to outline; the standards which he has laid down as being central in the technics of good poetry and to show how closely he has adhered to them in his own verse. I have limited the period to be discussed because all of the essential principles which he employs in his writing after 1920 are discernible in the body of his work published before that date.

The purpose of this thesis is to offer some explination of the manner in which Ezra Pound has created a metaphysical centre for The Cantos through absorption and integration of the Renaissance metaphysic of courtly and transcendent love and the pragmatic ethical philosophy of Confucius. It resolves no problems, either textual or critical, but rather suggests that the thirty-sixth Canto is central to the philosophy underlying the poem as a whole. From the central fourth chaper, the thesis attempts to give some idea of the nature of Pound's influence upon one other poet and how this influence has resulted in a new evaluation of the original Cavalcanti material. The short intoductory chapter outlines the nature of the problem of love as an ordering principle which provides a reconciliation of the disparate and seemingly opposing forces which shape human experience. This unity, it is stated, represents an attempt on the part of western man to integrate his dualistic response to the world of Process, an essentially eastern concept. Chapter two outlines the nature of Cavalcanti's poem and the philosophy of love which it contains. Apparently, this poem has yet to be interpreted with any degree of finality and I have necessarily had to work through the general concensus of critical opinion. The third chapter points to Pound's conception of the philosophy of Guido Cavalcanti's canzon and how Pound has interpreted the "guerdon" of the amour courtois tradition as the Confucian doctrine of li. Chapter four explores the connexion between Pound's conception and interpretation of Donna Me Prega and how, from the concept of individual compassion, Pound envisions a viable order for the society of western man, while continually maintaining the concept of the universe as Process. The fifth chapter deals with Robert Duncan's stated variation on Pound's view of Donna Me Prega and the philosophy contained therein, and offers some comments on the different possibilities of order, or lack of same, as expressed by Duncan. The conclusion discusses the metaphysical concept of love as a principle of unity in relation to some modern statements of epistemology and aesthetics, and concludes that Pound has expressed the sense of order and unity in a more universal and objective manner than has Duncan. The addendum of chapter seven suggests some possibilities for further research into these areas and concludes that Ezra Pound's consciousness of the Processal universe is essentially oriental, ie., an aesthetic response, while the concept remains largely an intellectual postulate in the western world. On the whole, the primary concern is for the explanation of the relationship among such elements as imagination, transcendent love, human social order, and the concept of the universe as an all-embracing Process of interacting elements. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Uppsala University, 1983. / Akademisk avhandling : Litteraturvetenskap : Uppsala : 1983. - Bibliogr. p. 161-166. -

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In this thesis I argue against the conventionally held belief that collage as a form is defined through the mutual differences existing between the inserted material fragment and those signifiers that surround it. Examining works by Pablo Picasso and then turning my attention to Ezra Pound's Cantos, I seek to establish, within the related frameworks of visual and verbal collage respectively, a structural model of these and other such works predicated upon the continuity, not the distinctiveness, of fragment and host-text. Collage, I hope to show, is necessarily organic in structure due to the unstable nature of the linguistic sign, a phenomenon of language that informs the thesis from beginning to end. Ultimately, I aim to present this model as a metaphor for perception generally, as both a delineation and demonstration of the way in which one comes to know the world.