Ezra Pound in Fascist Italy

FAIN: FA-54955-09

Catherine Elizabeth Paul
Clemson University (Clemson, SC 29634-0001)

My book studies Ezra Pound's prose of the 1930s to reinterpret his devotion to Italian fascism. Unlike previous discussions of Pound's adoption of Italian fascism, which focus mostly on his political and economic interests, my book reveals the importance of the cultural projects of Mussolini's fascist regime. By bringing Italian primary sources and new approaches to the cultural project of Mussolini's regime to bear on Pound's work (including unpublished material from the Pound Papers and untranslated periodical contributions), my book shows how Pound's writing came to embody the contradictions that come from involvement in Italian politics and culture.

Associated Products

Fascist Directive: Ezra Pound and Italian Cultural Nationalism (Book)
Title: Fascist Directive: Ezra Pound and Italian Cultural Nationalism
Author: Catherine E. Paul
Abstract: *Fascist Directive* reveals changes in Ezra Pound’s prose writing resulting from his excitement over Mussolini’s use of Italian cultural heritage to build and promote the modern Fascist state. Drawing on unpublished archival material and untranslated periodical contributions, Catherine E. Paul delves into the vexing work of perhaps the most famous, certainly the most notorious, American in Italy in the 1930s and 1940s, providing fresh understanding of Fascist deployment of art, architecture, blockbuster exhibitions, music, archaeological projects, urban design, and literature. Pound’s prose writings of this period cement a “directive” approach—declaiming his views with an authority that shuts down disagreement. Reading such important prose works as *Jefferson and/or Mussolini* and *Guide to Kulchur*, as well as the surprisingly propagandistic aspects of the *Pisan Cantos* in the context of Pound’s profound investment in Italian Fascist cultural nationalism, *Fascist Directive* reveals the importance of this approach to his larger artistic mission.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/title/fascist-directive-ezra-pound-and-italian-cultural/oclc/946463197&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry page
Secondary URL: http://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/products/74525
Secondary URL Description: publisher's website
Access Model: printed book; ebook
Publisher: Clemson University Press / Liverpool University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9781942954057
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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