The American Quest for a Supreme Fiction

FAIN: FA-10914-74

James E. Miller
University of Chicago (Chicago, IL 60637-5418)

To trace the "American quest for a Supreme Fiction," beginning with the now unread early traditional epics, through Whitman's radical departure from the conventional structures, to recent examples in experimental forms, and including: Ezra Pound's Cantos, T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land (original version), Wallace Stevens' long poems including "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction," and Allen Ginsberg's Howl! and The Fall of America.