Classical Literature

doi:10.1017/9781108614719.002

Chapter 1 - Classical Literature

from Part I - Pound’s Texts

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 October 2019

Leah Culligan Flack

Edited by

Mark Byron

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Mark Byron: Affiliation:
University of Sydney

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Summary

In a 1949 essay entitled ‘The Hellenists’, Ezra Pound argued that ‘a revival and a much greater diffusion of Greek studies is necessary to the conservation of decency’, a statement that expresses his decades-long argument for the wider distribution of classical literature as an engine of social transformation. The revival and circulation of classical languages and literatures preoccupied Pound, even as he expressed fluctuating levels of disdain for classics as an academic discipline. In turn, classics scholars have sometimes returned Pound’s animosity, as was seen most prominently when University of Chicago classicist W. G. Hale responded to Pound’s ‘Homage to Sextus Propertius’ by concluding that if he were a Latin professor, ‘there would be nothing left but suicide’.

Keywords

classical reception studies Sophocles Elektra translation Women of Trachis

Type: Chapter
Information: The New Ezra Pound Studies , pp. 9 - 25

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108614719.002 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2019

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