The Fifth Decad Of Cantos

This book is the first comprehensive study of Ezra Pound's Fifth Decad of Cantos (1937). It analyzes the genesis, structure and context of Pound's complex work, particularly how he transformed historical details into poetry. All ten Cantos of the Fifth Decad are treated broadly, making them accessible to scholars and students. In addition, this study provides an in-depth overview of the work's intellectual context - of Pound's economic ideas, his fascist allegiances, political ideals and his obsession with populist conspiracy theories. Finally the book outlines a future edition of the Fifth Decad.

First published in 1967, this is a study which tackles the central problem of meaning, within Ezra Pound's The Cantos. It deals with the question of important critical issues, as well as of interpretation and understanding. Students of modern poetry will derive great benefit from this vigorous and lucid analysis of Pound's masterpiece. Noel Stock's finding is radical: that The Cantos is not a really a poem at all, but rather notes towards a poem. It is a collection of fragments of varying quality - some of extraordinary power and beauty - but in no sense formed into a work of art.

"Still in progress, Ezra Pound's Cantos is probably the most famous of contemporary poems. Many students of the Cantos will be delighted to find that Noel Stock attempts to dispel the myth of major form which has plagued Pound scholars for so many years and led them into elaborate theories to defend the seeming 'grab-bag' appearance of the poem. He maintains that the Cantos is not really a poem at all, but notes toward a poem: a collection of fragments of varying quality, some of extraordinary power and beauty, but in no sense formed into a unified work of art. Refreshingly bare of the kind of pedantic jargon that its subject has so often invited in the past, Reading the Cantos performs a great service by putting its subject into nonformidable perspective."-- from the back cover.

The three volumes of Readings in the Cantos bring together, in a ground-breaking format, a number of critical readings by world-renowned scholars of the central modernist long poem, The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Each contributor approaches either a single Canto or a defined small group of Cantos in isolation, providing a clear, informative, and interpretive reading that includes an up-to-date assessment of sources and an idea of recent critical approaches. Together the contributors offer a remarkably diverse reading of The Cantos that at the same time demonstrates the coherence of Pound's text.