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Palgrave Macmillan

Pound and Pasolini

Poetics of Crisis

  • Book
  • © 2023

Overview

  • Analyses the Pasolini-Pound interview of 1967, developing a comparative study of their poetics and politics
  • Reorients critical debates on the writings, politics and reception of Pound’s Italian years
  • Provides close readings of Pasolini’s quotations of Pound in his work

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature (PMEL)

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Table of contents (6 chapters)

Keywords

About this book

In October 1967, Pier Paolo Pasolini travelled to Venice to interview Ezra Pound for broadcast on national television. One a lifelong Marxist, the other a former propagandist for the Fascist regime, their encounter was billed as a clash of opposites. But what do these poets share? And what can they tell us about the poetics and politics of the twentieth century? This book reads one by way of the other, aligning their engagement with different temporalities and traditions, polities and geographies, languages and forms, evoked as utopian alternatives to the cultural and political crises of capitalist modernity. Part literary history, part comparative study, it offers a new and provocative perspective on these poets and the critical debates around them – in particular, on Pound’s Italian years and Pasolini’s use of Pound in his work. Their connection helps to understand the implications and legacies of their work today.   

Reviews

“Sean Mark’s in-depth study of Pound and Pasolini, subtitled Poetics of Crisis, is a remarkable piece of scholarship, beautifully written, masterfully organised, and which reads almost like the plot of a detective novel … .” (Jonathan Pollock, Transatlantica Issue 2, 2023)

“Sean Mark’s Pound and Pasolini: Poetics of Crisis expounds incisively on Pasolini’s interview of Pound in 1967 to align two poets from opposite political camps, thus exposing the complex tension between poetry and ideology in both authors’ work. Mark’s acute and sophisticated readings result in a significant revision to our understanding of Pound’s and Pasolini’s respective poetics and places in contemporary culture. This is a distinguished and important book.” (Alessia Ricciardi, Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature and Director of Comparative Literary Studies, Northwestern University, USA)

“As Sean Mark’s magistral comparative study brings together the antithetical poles of 20th-century poetry, it illuminates both corpuses: the later Pound turns into a Pasolini character, and the poetic myth he provided allows Pasolini to reshape his religious communism. Pound and Pasolini kept their faith in human creativity and redemption and thus remain true ‘educators,’ their dialogue a source of inspiration in times of crisis.” (Jean-Michel Rabaté, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania, USA)

“Sean Mark’s fascinating study of Pound and Pasolini ranges from their actual contacts – most notably Pasolini’s 1967 interview with Pound – to detailed consideration of their contrasting aesthetic and political approaches, culminating in unexpected parallels in the methodology of the fragmentary and late work in The Cantos and Petrolio. Mark adds new dimensions to our understanding of both the Italian Pound and the American Pasolini, and sets an example of how contemporary comparative scholarship can work.” (David Ayers, Professor of Modernism and Critical Theory, University of Kent, UK)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, France

    Sean Mark

About the author

Sean Mark is Associate Professor in literature and translation at Université Catholique de Lille, France.

Bibliographic Information

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