Ezra Pound and His Classical Sources: The Cantos and the Primal Matter of Troy

This book uses Ezra Pound’s The Cantos as a lens to understand modernism’s ambition to revolutionize literature through mythical and scientific methods. Homer’s Odyssey plays a unique methodological and structural role in The Cantos. The Cantos translates, interprets, abridges, adapts, critiques, parodies, trivializes, allegorizes, and ＂ritualizes＂ the Odyssey. Partly inspired by Joyce’s use of different literary styles or ＂technics＂ in Ulysses, and partly inspired by medieval classicism and 19th century philology, Pound uses a plethora of methods to translate Homer and other classical texts. This book argues that The Cantos is a modernist vision of the Matter of Troy, a term used by medieval authors to designate the cycle of texts based on the Trojan war and its aftereffects, including the nostoi (returns) of the Greek heroes.

This is the first study to explore how medieval classicism and translation informs Pound’s mythical method and to systematically outline the variety and evolution of Pound’s Odyssey translations in The Cantos.

Jonathan Ullyot is a Professor at Seneca College and an Instructor at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies, Canada.