Ezra Pound and His Classical Sources by Ullyot, Jonathan;

Long description:

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This book uses Ezra Pound's The Cantos as a lens to understand modernism's ambition to revolutionize literature through mythical and scientific methods. Homer's Odyssey plays a unique methodological and structural role in The Cantos. The Cantos translates, interprets, abridges, adapts, critiques, parodies, trivializes, allegorizes, and ""ritualizes"" the Odyssey. Partly inspired by Joyce's use of different literary styles or ""technics"" in Ulysses, and partly inspired by medieval classicism and 19th century philology, Pound uses a plethora of methods to translate Homer and other classical texts. This book argues that The Cantos is a modernist vision of the Matter of Troy, a term used by medieval authors to designate the cycle of texts based on the Trojan war and its aftereffects, including the nostoi (returns) of the Greek heroes.

This is the first study to explore how medieval classicism and translation informs Pound's mythical method and to systematically outline the variety and evolution of Pound's Odyssey translations in The Cantos.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: The Cantos and the Matter of Troy
Chapter One: The Spirit of Romance and the Debt to Philology
Chapter Two: Odysseus Among the Dead: Primitive Homer
Chapter Three: Protean Homer
Chapter Four: The Lotophagoi: Confusion and Renewal
Chapter Five: Erotic Circe
Chapter Six: Pisan Wreck
Chapter Seven: How to Read Pound's Leucothea
Conclusion: Eternal Disorder