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After World War II in Italy the cultural scene was in need of resuscitation. Artists searched for tools with which to revifify their works. Central to this, for many key figures in the fifties and sixties, was an engagement with English-language Modernism. This phenomenon has been widely recognised, but this thesis is its first sustained analysis. I draw together the receptions of three English-language Modernist authors – T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and James Joyce – who, as a triad, were instrumental in the radicalisation of the arts in Italy in the fifties and sixties. I show that their works were elevated as models of an experimental approach to language that was revisited by Italian artists – most notably by poets associated with the Neoavantgarde. The specific Modernist linguistic techniques which were adopted by the Italians that we will consider here are the mingling of languages and styles, the use of citations, and the perversion and manipulation of single words and idioms. The poets considered in most depth to exemplify this phenomenon are Edoardo Sanguineti, who was a major exponent of the Neoavantgarde, and Amelia Rosselli, who was more peripherally and problematically associated with the movement. Both poets desecrated the traditional language of poetry and energised their own poetry with recourse to Modernist techniques which they consciously and deliberately adopted from Eliot, Pound and Joyce. An unpicking of the mechanics of these techniques in Sanguineti's and Rosselli's poetry reveals that their texts necessitate an active mode of reading. This aligns with the intellectual ideas propounded by Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes and Umberto Eco, all of whom grounded their theories on readership in analyses of the linguistic experiments of Modernism. Sanguineti's and Rosselli's poetry fulfil the characteristics of Eco's “open” work, Barthes' “polysemous” work, and bring about Benjamin's “shock-effect” in the reader. These radical linguistic techniques, appropriated from the Modernists, contribute to each poets' overall poetic projects – they enact Edoardo Sanguineti's anarchic and revolutionary impulses, and stage Amelia Rosselli's thematic conflicts.

Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem westlichen Verständnis von chinesischer Schrift. Im westlichen Diskurs herrscht eine Auffassung vor, der zufolge die chinesischen Schriftzeichen eine „fast naturalistische Darstellung“ von Dingen seien, die unabhängig von der gesprochenen Sprache im Sinne „eines visuellen Objekts“ funktionieren soll. Dabei wird die Tatsache, dass auch sie wie alle anderen Schriftsysteme zur Wiedergabe der gesprochenen Wörter verwendet werden und dadurch funktionieren, ausgeblendet. Die Vorstellung der sprachunabhängigen chinesischen Schrift wirkt darüber hinaus auch auf die Kulturtheorien ein, die auf der Schrift basierend die chinesische bzw. asiatische Kultur zu charakterisieren und sie mit der europäischen zu vergleichen versuchen. Dabei ist zu beobachten, dass die angenommene sprachunabhängige Bildhaftigkeit oder Konkretheit der chinesischen Schrift zwar einerseits Grund für eine Aufwertung ist, wobei das aus ihr resultierende Denkmodell als ein alternatives des westlichen Denkens aufgefasst wird, dass aber letztendlich aus derselben Auffassung auch das negative Urteil entspringt, mit jener visuellen Konkretheit gehe ein ‚geringer Abstand zu den Gegenständen‘ einher und daraus folge eine Unfähigkeit zum abstrakten Denken bei dem, der sich dieser Schrift bediene. Die Frage, die vorliegende Arbeit durchzieht, lautet daher: Woher stammt dieser ‚Mythos‘ der chinesischen Schrift, der wiederum zurückwirkt auf das westliche Ostasienbild? Und warum bewahrt er sich so hartnäckig im westlichen Denken, dass seine Nachwirkung bis in aktuelle Theorien zu beobachten ist? Wie ist die ambivalente Einschätzung chinesischer bzw. ostasiatischer Kultur in ihnen zu verstehen, die aus derselben ideographischen Auffassung chinesischer Schrift stammt? Durch eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit der Rezeptionsgeschichte der chinesischen Schrift unter Berücksichtigung des abendländischen China-, bzw. Ostasienbilds wird versucht, darauf zu antworten. / This dissertation deals with the Western views of Chinese characters. In Western discourses the Chinese written language has generally been viewed as a naturalistic representation of things, close to visual images (pictographs) or as a means of conveying ideas (ideographs), unrelated to spoken language. The fact that they reproduce spoken language like all other writing systems has been underexplored. Under this assumption, cultural theories have defined Chinese or Asian cultures as essentially distinct from European cultures. However, the language-independency and concreteness of Chinese script provides reason for revaluation of those views that consider the Chinese (or Asian) ways of thinking as an alternative to Western thought: that which ultimately arises from the negative judgments that those with visual concreteness are farther detached from objects, and are, therefore, unable to exercise abstract thinking. Through a critical analysis of the history of discourses of Chinese writings, this work address the following questions: Whence comes the ‘myth ''of the Chinese character, which, in turn, reinforces the Western views of Asia: why it remains so persistent in Western views as observed in contemporary cultural theories; how the ambivalent appreciation of Chinese or East Asian-culture resulted from the same ideographic view of the Chinese written language.

This thesis defines ‘classical lyricism’ as any mode of appropriation of Greek and Latin monodic lyric whereby a poet may develop a wider discourse on poetry. Assuming classical lyricism as an internal category of enquiry, my thesis investigates the presence of Sappho and Catullus as lyric archetypes in Italian and North American poetry of the 20th century. The analysis concentrates on translations and appropriations of Sappho and Catullus in four case studies: Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912) and Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968) in Italy; Ezra Pound (1885-1972) and Anne Carson (b. 1950) in North America. I first trace the poetic reception of Sappho and Catullus in the oeuvres of the four authors separately. I define and evaluate the role of the respective appropriations within each author’s work and poetics. I then contextualise the four case studies within the Italian and North American literary histories. Finally, through the new outlook afforded by the comparative angle of this thesis, I uncover some of the hidden threads connecting the different types of classical lyricism transnationally. The thesis shows that the course of classical lyricism takes two opposite aesthetic directions in Italy and in North America. Moreover, despite the two aesthetic trajectories diverging, I demonstrate that the four poets’ appropriations of Sappho and Catullus share certain topical characteristics. Three out of four types of classical lyricism are defined by a preference for Sappho’s and Catullus’ lyrics which deal with marriage rituals and defloration, patterns of death and rebirth, and solar myths. They stand out as the epiphenomena of the poets’ interest in the anthropological foundations of the lyric, which is grounded in a philosophical function associated with poetry as a quest for knowledge. I therefore ultimately propose that ‘classical lyricism’ may be considered as an independent historical and interpretative category of the classical legacy.

ABSTRACT This study focuses on twenty-one particular texts published in 1925 as contemporaries of The Great Gatsby. The manuscript is divided into four categories—The Impressionists, The Experimentalists, The Realists, and The Independents. Among The Impressionists are F. Scott Fitzgerald himself, Willa Cather (The Professor’s House), Sherwood Anderson (Dark Laughter), William Carlos Williams (In the American Grain), Elinor Wylie (The Venetian Glass Nephew), John Dos Passos (Manhattan Transfer), and William Faulkner (New Orleans Sketches). The Experimentalists are Gertrude Stein (The Making of Americans), E. E. Cummings (& aka “Poems 48-96”), Ezra Pound (A Draft of XVI Cantos), T. S. Eliot (“The Hollow Men”), Laura Riding (“Summary for Alastor”), and John Erskine (The Private Life of Helen of Troy). The Realists are Theodore Dreiser (An American Tragedy), Edith Wharton (The Mother’s Recompense), Upton Sinclair (Mammonart), Ellen Glasgow (Barren Ground), Sinclair Lewis (Arrowsmith), James Boyd (Drums), and Ernest Hemingway (In Our Time). The Independents are Archibald MacLeish (The Pot of Earth) and Robert Penn Warren (“To a Face in a Crowd”). Although these twenty-two texts may in some cases represent literary fragmentations, each in its own way also represents a coherent response to the spirit of the times that is in one way or another cognate to The Great Gatsby. The fact that all these works appeared the same year is special because the authors, if not already famous, would become famous, and their works were or would come to represent classic American literature around the world. The twenty-two authors either knew each other personally or knew each other’s works. Naturally, they were also influenced by writings of international authors and philosophers. The greatest common elements among the poets and fiction writers are their uninhibited interest in sex, an absorbing cynicism about life, and the frequent portrayal of disintegration of the family, a trope for what had happened to the countries and to the “family of nations” that experienced the Great War. In 1925, it would seem, Fitzgerald and many of his writing peers—some even considered his betters—channeled a major spirit of the times, and Fitzgerald did it more successfully than almost anyone.