The author's Habilitationsschrift--Universität Hamburg. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [363]-388) and index.

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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The early twentieth-century avant-garde has cast a long shadow over the popular imagination as producers of manifestos, public scandals, and some of the most enduring art and literature of the last century. In this study, I examine the works of three poets who are not only considered leading avant-gardists, but who are foundational to how both popular consciousness and academic scholarship have understood the avant-garde’s theory and practice: Guillaume Apollinaire, F. T. Marinetti, and Ezra Pound. In particular, this study focuses on the recurring themes of prophecy and apocalypse in their work. These themes occur through reference to prophetic and apocalyptic literary or mythical figures, but also through stylistic innovations such as the use of literary personae or the attempt to synthesise diverse artistic forms. Focusing on these themes allows this study to re-engage the question of how these poets, and the avant-garde more broadly, regarded their practice as a social act. Using a comparative methodology in this thesis, prophecy is viewed not simply as a declamatory literary style that foretells the future, but as a particular kind of social relationship to an audience that is at turns mutually supportive and antagonistic. Similarly, apocalyptic thought is presented not merely as an expectation or belief in the end of the world, but as a specific method of imagining a new world that is, in spite of itself, dependent upon the social world of the present. Apollinaire, Marinetti, and Pound were major figures in the so-called ‘Pre-war Avant-Garde’ having established their reputations in the decade prior to World War I. While they each began formulating and proclaiming their views on aesthetics prior to the war, the experience of war had a profound impact on all three. Accordingly, this thesis examines a number of poems from Apollinaire’s two major collections: Alcools (1913) and Calligrammes (1918), the latter containing significant reflections on avant-gardism and war. Marinetti acted as a journalist in the Italo-Turkish war of 1911-1912, which inspired the work central to this study: his Futurist novel-in-verse Le Monoplan du Pape (1912). Pound, unlike Apollinaire and Marinetti, did not participate in World War I, and this study explores his sequence Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), a long rumination on art, war, and his engagement with Imagism and Vorticism, but also analyses poems from his collections Personae (1908), Ripostes (1912), and Lustra (1916). This study examines how the acute crisis of the war pressed each of these poets to reconsider their view of the poet-as-prophet in society. In doing so it explores the ethical or political implications of avant-garde aesthetics influenced by and as a response to war. This study also closely compares these poets’ works to the biblical literature from which they frequently derived prophetic and apocalyptic themes. Apollinaire, Marinetti, and Pound’s relationship to religion, particularly Christianity, spanned from ambivalence to hostility, but they each engage biblical literature in unique and unorthodox ways. While these poets all sought to be identifiably modern, this study demonstrates the ways in which they attempted to recover values from biblical literature that each felt was necessary to establish the independence and autonomy of contemporary art and literature. Therefore, this study’s comparative framework is intended to engage the conversation over the spiritual, religious, or transcendent values to which avant-garde art aspired. And drawing significantly from the social theories of art, religion, and culture developed by Max Weber and Pierre Bourdieu, this thesis contributes to the study of avant-gardism as a social, as well as aesthetic, phenomenon.

Thesis--Universität Göttingen. / Bibliogr. p. 287-310.

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.