美国文学简史（十五）

Chapter 5 The Modern Period
The 1920s
I. IntroductionII. BackgroundIII. Features of the literature

Imagism
I. BackgroundII. Development: three stagesIII. What is an “image”?IV. PrinciplesV. SignificanceVI. Ezra PoundVII. T. S. EliotVIII. Robert FrostIX. e. e. cummings

美国文学简史之意象派

Ezra Pound

Works
♦ Cathay ♦ Cantos ♦ Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

Point of View♦Confident in Pound’s belief that the artist was morally and culturally the arbiter and the “saviour” of the race, he took it upon himself to purify the arts and became the prime mover of a few experimental movements, the aim of which was to dump the old into the dustbin and bring forth something new.
♦To him life was sordid personal crushing oppression, and culture produced nothing but “intangible bondage”.

♦ Pound sees in Chinese history and the doctrine of Confucius a source of strength and wisdom with which to counterpoint Western gloom and confusion.
♦He saw a chaotic world that wanted setting to rights, and a humanity, suffering from spiritual death and cosmic injustice, that needed saving. He was for the most part of his life trying to offer Confucian philosophy as the one faith which could help to save the West.

Style: very difficult to readPound’s early poems are fresh and lyrical. The Cantos can be notoriously difficult in some sections, but delightfully beautiful in others. Few have made serious study of the long poem; fewer, if anyone at all, have had the courage to declare that they have conquered Pound; and many seem to agree that the Cantos is a monumental failure.

ContributionHe has helped, through theory and practice, to chart out the course of modern poetry.

The Cantos– “the intellectual diary since 1915”

Features:♦ Language: intricate and obscure♦ Theme: complex subject matters♦ Form: no fixed framework, no central theme, no attention to poetic rules

本文为节选，来源：沪江英语

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