the Odysseys of H.D., James Joyce, Osip Mandelstam, and Ezra Pound /
First Statement of Responsibility
Leah Culligan Flack, Marquette University.
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Place of Publication, Distribution, etc.
Cambridge, United Kingdom :
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
Cambridge University Press,
Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.
2015.
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item
xvii, 228 pages ;
Dimensions
24 cm.
SERIES
Series Title
Classics after antiquity
INTERNAL BIBLIOGRAPHIES/INDEXES NOTE
Text of Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
CONTENTS NOTE
Text of Note
Introduction : making Homer new -- Part I. High modernism and Homer. 1. 'To have gathered from the air a live tradition' : Pound, Homer, modernism ; 2. 'The reading of Homer was transformed into a fabulous event' : Mandelstam's modernist Odyssey ; 3. 'Damn Homer, Ulysses, Bloom and all the rest' : 'Cyclops, ' disorder, and Joyce's monster audiences -- Part II. Late modernism and Homer. 4. 'ACTUALITY gets in front of Olympus' : Pound's late visions and revisions of Homer ; 5. 'What song is left to sing? All song is sung' : H.D., Homer, modernism -- Conclusion -- Appendix: Russian text of Mandelstam's poems.
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SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
"This comparative study crosses multiple cultures, traditions, genres, and languages in order to explore the particular importance of Homer in the emergence, development, and promotion of modernist writing. It shows how and why the Homeric epics served both modernist formal experimentation, including Pound's poetics of the fragment and Joyce's sprawling epic novel, and sociopolitical critiques, including H.D.'s analyses of the cultural origins of twentieth-century wars and Mandelstam's poetic defiance of the totalitarian Stalinist regime. The book counters a long critical tradition that has recruited Homer to consolidate, champion and, more recently, chastise an elitist, masculine modernist canon. Departing from the tradition of reading these texts in isolation as mythic engagements with the Homeric epics, Leah Flack argues that ongoing dialogues with Homer helped these writers to mount their distinct visions of a cosmopolitan post-war culture that would include them as artists working on the margins of the Western literary tradition"--