American Literature / Unit 14 AML 1306 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Pound's *Cantos* and the Difficulty
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The idea
Pound worked on the Cantos for half a century, assembling history, economics, Chinese characters, Greek and quotation into a poem without a narrative spine. It is the period's most extreme demand on a reader and the clearest case of modernist difficulty as a method.
In practice
Fifty years, and no spine.
Where people slip
The difficulty is a method, and it costs readers.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
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