1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910451598403321

Autore

Henriksen Line

Titolo

Ambition and Anxiety : Ezra Pound's Cantos and Derek Walcott's Omeros as Twentieth-Century Epics / / Line Henriksen

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Leiden; ; Boston : , : BRILL, , 2006

ISBN

94-012-0396-2

1-4294-8075-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (367 p.)

Collana

Cross/Cultures ; ; 88

Disciplina

811/.5

Soggetti

Epic poetry - History and criticism

Epic poetry

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1. Homer and Genre -- 2. Dante and Christian Epic -- 3. Epic Anxiety and Imperialistic Epic -- 4. Metonymic Epic -- 5. Caribbean Epic -- 6. Metaphoric Epic -- Works Cited -- Index.

Sommario/riassunto

This comparative study investigates the epic lineage that can be traced back from Derek Walcott's Omeros and Ezra Pound's Cantos through Dante's Divina Commedia to the epic poems of Virgil and Homer, and identifies and discusses in detail a number of recurrent key topoi. A fresh definition of the concept of genre is worked out and presented, based on readings of Homer. The study reads Pound's and Walcott's poetics in the light of Roman Jakobson's notions of metonymy and metaphor, placing their long poems at the respective opposite ends of these language poles. The notion of 'epic ambition' refers to the poetic prestige attached to the epic genre, whereas the (non-Bloomian) 'anxiety' occurs when the poet faces not only the risk that his project might fail, but especially the moral implications of that ambition and the fear that it might prove presumptuous. The drafts of Walcott's Omeros are here examined for the first time, and attention is also devoted to Pound's creative procedures as illustrated by the drafts of the Cantos. Although there has already been an intermittent critical



focus on the 'classical' (and 'Dantean') antecedents of Walcott's poetry, the present study is the first to bring together the whole range of epic intertextualities underlying Omeros , and the first to read this Caribbean masterpiece in the context of Pound's achievement.