This class will provide students with an opportunity to explore one of the most famous, controversial, influential, yet least read texts in the canon of Anglo-American modernism, Ezra Pound’s Cantos. Was he a fascist? Yes. He says so. Repeatedly. Be ready to transcend “gotcha” criticism and start asking difficult questions about the relationship between high art, capitalism, humanism, warfare, and globalism. Be ready, too, for a reading experience like no other, one that will require patience, nonlinear thinking, and a lot of time fiddling with search engines and reference materials. The reward: an encounter with methods, ideas, and ethical dilemmas that will prepare you like nothing else for further work in modernist, avant-garde, and postmodern arts and letters. Required texts: Pound’s Cantos and Carroll Terrell’s Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Suggested preparatory readings (not required but useful): Pound’s Personae, Hugh Kenner’s Pound Era and/or Christine Brooke-Rose’s ZBC of Ezra Pound.

Texts:

• Pound, Ezra. The Cantos. New Directions Press, New York. [10 0811213269]
• Terrell, Carroll. A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Univ of CA Press, 1993. [10 0520082877]