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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

Pound scholars have tended to assume that questions of state power, and of the relationship between the state and the individual, only become central to his work during the inter-war period. The present thesis, however, argues that these questions are a major concern in Pound's writing during the years immediately preceding the First World War, and that questions of state power significantly colour Pound's imagist and vorticist work. Chapter one reads Pound's translation of the Anglo-Saxon Seafarer as a contribution to the radical Edwardian debate about the expansion of the state's bureaucratic power and the threat it might pose to individual autonomy. I also consider the way Pound's translation links state power to the division of labour. Chapter two reassesses Pound's instigation of the imagist movement, against the backdrop of his concurrent fascination with the First Balkan War, an episode all but ignored in previous Pound scholarship. I argue that Pound interpreted the Balkan states as undertaking on the battlefield the very same modernizing struggle that he saw himself as embarking upon in the field of letters. Chapter three argues that as Pound's pursuit of the ‘new' intensifies, his identity as an American—as, in his words, ‘a citizen of a free State, a member of the sovereign people'—takes on a dual significance. Poetically, America's perceived national youthfulness and virility become important tropes for novelty and modernity in his poetry. Politically, though, Pound casts the unfolding national, political and nascent imperial project of the United States as a metonym for modernity itself, scoffing at the Italian Futurist's ‘automobilism' as essentially provincial, and proposing instead his own ‘American Risorgimento'. Methodologically, this thesis strives to combine close readings of Pound's poetry and prose, seen within its original publication context (that is, largely in little magazines), with careful reference to the broader historical context. Please note: For the purpose of online publication, all copyrighted material reproduced in the examination copy of this thesis (except that considered ‘fair use') has been removed. The redacted material is collected in a supplementary volume.

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

Zugl.: Greifswald, Univ., Diss.

No description available.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 343-368).

Thesis--University of Florida. / Description based on print version record. Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 194-198).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1989. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.