University of Northern Iowa UNI ScholarWorks Dissertations and Theses @ UNI Student Work 1991 "Ego, scriptor cantilenae": The Cantos and Ezra Pound Steven R. Gulick University of Northern Iowa Let us know how access to this document benefits ouy Copyright ©1991 Steven R. Gulick Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd Part of the Literature in English, North America Commons Recommended Citation Gulick, Steven R., ""Ego, scriptor cantilenae": The Cantos and Ezra Pound" (1991). Dissertations and Theses @ UNI. 753. https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd/753 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Work at UNI ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses @ UNI by an authorized administrator of UNI ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. "EGO, SCRIPTOR CANTILENAE": THE CANTOS AND EZRA POUND An Abstract of a Thesis Submitted in Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Philosophy Steven R. Gulick University of Northern Iowa August 1991 ABSTRACT Can poetry "make new" the world? Ezra Pound thought so. In "Cantico del Sole" he said: "The thought of what America would be like/ If the Classics had a wide circulation/ Troubles me in my sleep" (Personae 183). He came to write an 815 page poem called The Cantos in which he presents "fragments" drawn from the literature and documents of the past in an attempt to build a new world, "a paradiso terreste" (The Cantos 802). This may be seen as either a noble gesture or sheer egotism. Pound once called The Cantos the "tale of the tribe" (Guide to Kulchur 194), and I believe this is so, particularly if one associates this statement with Allen Ginsberg's concerning The Cantos as a model of a mind, "like all our minds" (Ginsberg 14-16).