Texts of <span class='italic'>The Cantos</span> and Theories of Literature

doi:10.1017/9781108614719.007

Chapter 6 - Texts of The Cantos and Theories of Literature

from Part I - Pound’s Texts

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 October 2019

Michael Kindellan

Edited by

Mark Byron

Show author details

Mark Byron: Affiliation:
University of Sydney

Book contents

Get access

Summary

The textual history of Pound’s Cantos is among the most complex of any work commonly (or indeed uncommonly) associated with Anglo-American modernism. Notwithstanding the intricate problems facing any scholar keen on tracing the development of Pound’s poem through its stages of composition and revision, the record of published texts alone presents serious obstacles. As Lawrence Rainey notes, written over a period of almost fifty years, published discretely in more than twenty-five magazines and at least as many different collected volumes across seven countries, ‘no reader other than Pound could ever have traced all the parts of The Cantos’, nor even does any library in world contain copies of every published version. For numerous reasons owing both to the poet’s personal temperament and to the social nature of literary production, non-identical changes were made to different in-print versions.

Keywords

textual error print culture manuscript drafts textual ontology ideogrammic writing textual materialism transhistorical imagination bibliographic codes

Type: Chapter
Information: The New Ezra Pound Studies , pp. 88 - 103

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108614719.007 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Bush, Ronald, The Genesis of Ezra Pound’s Cantos (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).CrossRef Google Scholar

Bush, Ronald, and Ten Eyck, David, ‘A Critical Edition of Ezra Pound’s Pisan Cantos: Problems and Solutions’, Textual Cultures 8.2 (2013), 121–41.Google Scholar

Byron, Mark, ‘Textual Criticism’, in Ezra Pound in Context, ed. Nadel, Ira B., 136–47 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).Google Scholar

Davenport, Guy, ‘A Collation of Two Texts of The Cantos’, The Pound Newsletter 4 (April 1955): 5–13.Google Scholar

Eastman, Barbara, Ezra Pound’s Cantos: The Story of the Text (Orono: National Poetry Foundation, 1979).Google Scholar

Fang, Achille, ‘Materials for the Study of Ezra Pound’s “Cantos”’, PhD dissertation (Harvard University, 1958).Google Scholar

Froula, Christine, To Write Paradise: Style and Error in Pound’s Cantos (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

Greetham, D. G., Textual Transgressions: Essays Towards the Construction of a Bibliography (London: Routledge, 2011).Google Scholar

Greetham, D. G., Theories of the Text (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).Google Scholar

Grieve, Thomas, ‘Annotations to the Chinese in Section: Rock-Drill’, Paideuma 4.2/3 (Fall and Winter 1974), 361–508.Google Scholar

Hejinian, Lyn, The Language of Inquiry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).CrossRef Google Scholar

Hickman, Miranda B., ‘“To Facilitate the Traffic” (Or, “Damn Deluxe Edtns”): Ezra Pound’s Turn from the Deluxe’, Paideuma 28.2/3 (1999), 173–92.Google Scholar

Kindellan, Michael, The Late Cantos of Ezra Pound: Composition, Revision, Publication (London: Bloomsbury, 2017).Google Scholar

Kindellan, Michael, ‘Ownership and Interpretation: on Ezra Pound’s Deluxe First Editions’, in Reconnecting Aestheticism and Modernism: Continuities, Revisions, Speculations, ed. Coste, Bénédicte, Delyfer, Catherine and Reynier, Christine, 187–201 (London: Routledge, 2017).Google Scholar

McGann, Jerome J., The Textual Condition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

McGann, Jerome J., ‘Ulysses as a Post-Modern Text: The Gabler Edition’, Criticism 27 (1985), 283–305.Google Scholar

Nikolova, Olga, ‘Ezra Pound: Cantos Deluxe’, Modernism / Modernity 15.1 (January 2008), 155–77.CrossRef Google Scholar

Olson, Charles, Mayan Letters, ed. Creeley, Robert (London: Jonathan Cape, 1968).Google Scholar

Pound, Ezra, Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir (New York: New Directions, 1970).Google Scholar

Pound, Ezra, Letter to Eva Hesse, 20 June 1951, Eva Hesse Archiv, Munich.Google Scholar

Pound, Ezra, Letter to James Laughlin, March 1949, New Directions Publishing Corp. Records, circa 1932–1997 (MS Am 2077), Item #1371, Houghton Library, Harvard University.Google Scholar

Pound, Ezra, Letter to James Laughlin, 17 May 1956, New Directions Publishing Corp. Records, circa 1932–1997 (MS Am 2077) Houghton Library, Harvard University, Item 1371.Google Scholar

Pound, Ezra, Letter to Mary de Rachewiltz, 11 January 1955, Ezra Pound Papers, YCAL MSS 43, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Box 62, Folder 2739.Google Scholar

Pound, Ezra, Letter to Norman Holmes Pearson, 9 February 1955, Normal Holmes Pearson Papers, YCAL MSS 899, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Box 78.Google Scholar

Pound, Ezra, Letter to Norman Holmes Pearson, 15 February 1956, Normal Holmes Pearson Papers, YCAL MSS 899, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Box 78.Google Scholar

Pound, Ezra, ‘Totalitarian Scholarship and the New Paideuma’, ed. Fox, Douglas, Germany and You 7.4/5 ( 25 April 1947), 95–6, 123–4.Google Scholar

Qian, Zhaoming, ed., Ezra Pound’s Chinese Friends (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).Google Scholar

Rabaté, Jean-Michel, Language, Sexuality and Ideology in Ezra Pound’s Cantos (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1986).CrossRef Google Scholar

Rainey, Lawrence, Ezra Pound and the Monument of Culture: Text, History and the Malatesta Cantos (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).Google Scholar

Rainey, Lawrence, ed., A Poem Containing History: Textual Studies in The Cantos (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997).CrossRef Google Scholar

Reck, Michael Ezra Pound: A Close-Up (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967).Google Scholar

Shillingsburg, Peter L., Scholarly Editing in the Computer Age: Theory and Practice, 3rd ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996).CrossRef Google Scholar

Stock, Noel, The Life of Ezra Pound (New York: Penguin, 1974).Google Scholar

Stoicheff, Peter, The Hall of Mirrors: Drafts & Fragments and the End of Ezra Pound’s Cantos (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995).Google Scholar

Tanselle, Thomas G., A Rationale of Textual Criticism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992).CrossRef Google Scholar

Taylor, Richard, ‘The History and State of the Texts’, in A Poem Containing History: Textual Studies in The Cantos, ed. Rainey, Lawrence, 235–65 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997).Google Scholar

Taylor, Richard, ‘The Texts of The Cantos’, in The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound, ed. Nadel, Ira B., 161–87 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999).Google Scholar

Taylor, Richard, ed., Variorum Edition of ‘Three Cantos’ by Ezra Pound: A Prototype (Bayreuth: Boomerang Press / Norbert Aas, 1991).Google Scholar

Thorpe, James, The Principles of Textual Criticism (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1972).Google Scholar

Yao, Steven G., ‘Translation’, Ezra Pound in Context, ed. Nadel, Ira B., 33–42 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).Google Scholar