Cross-Cultural Ezra Pound

This volume gathers fourteen essays by authors from eight different countries who offer new interpretations on Ezra Pound’s poetics, as well as new perspectives on his critical reception globally. It covers Pound’s work from his beginnings as a young poet in Philadelphia in the early1900s through his most productive years as a poet, critic, and translator, to the first critical treatments of his work in the 1940s and 50s, as well as translations of his poetry into other languages during the last half century. Although in our era such terms as “cross-cultural thinking,” “globalism,” “transnationalism,” and “internationalism” remain fluid and often stir controversy, especially in relation to modernism, the place of Pound as a prominent modernist figure worldwide remains unquestioned. Without attempting to be comprehensive, these essays provide a clear picture of the reach of Pound’s engagement, including the international scope of his literature, his translations, his editorial work on behalf of others, and the diverse historical, social, ideological, interdisciplinary, and theoretical contexts in which he can be read and interpreted. Divided into four categories, Cross-Cultural Ezra Pound considers his early influences, his collaborative, transnational, and interdisciplinary methods, questions of modernist translation (concerning both Pound’s translations and translations of his poetry), and cross-cultural readings of his literary stature.