Program Downloads:

RapalloProgram.pdf

RapalloParticipantsList.pdf

Topic:

"Ezra Pound, Language and Persona"

Language and Persona (or Mask) are at the center of Ezra Pound's work, from his first commercial volume, Personae (1909) to his last Drafts and Fragments of Cantos CX-CXVII (1968). The Anglo-Saxon Seafarer, the Chinese Exile, Propertius, and Confucius, are only a few of his major masks. ("Give a man a mask and he will tell you the truth," as Oscar Wilde famously put it.) Pound also gave voice to many goddesses and women, ancient and modern, introducing aspects of language and gender. Other masks are his parodies of style, from the vernacular to the Biblical, and his tireless exploration of languages, Western and Eastern. His heroes could be called "men made out of words."

Committee

• Massimo Bacigalupo, University of Genova, Italy
• Walter Baumann, University of Ulster, Ireland
• David Moody, University of York, England
• William Pratt, Miami University of Ohio

Papers should be timed for 20 minutes delivery and 10 minutes discussion, based on proposals already submitted. Anyone interested in coming to the conference should write to the Conference Secretary.

William Pratt
Department of English
Miami University
Oxford OH 45056 USA

Email address: prattwc@muohio.edu

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