The Cantos Historical Context

This Study Guide consists of approximately 59 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Cantos.

The Cantos Historical Context

This Study Guide consists of approximately 59 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Cantos.
This section contains 855 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy The Cantos Study Guide

Pound wrote his The Cantos over a long period of time—the first canto was published in 1917 and the final installment to be published during Pound's lifetime appeared in 1968. Needless to say, these years were turbulent; they constitute the majority of the last century. But Pound's poem is especially steeped in history: his own description of the poem as he formulated it was "a poem containing history." History, therefore, both formed the raw material for the poem and impinged upon its construction and creation.

When Pound first thought of writing his "tale of the tribe," he was living in London and had gained a great deal of fame as a literary impresario and provocateur. From the time that he arrived in London —1909—he had set himself the task of wresting art and literature from the nineteenth century into the twentieth. To achieve this end, he did...

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This section contains 855 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy The Cantos Study Guide
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The Cantos from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.