Jenny Woodley
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780813145167
- eISBN:
- 9780813145471
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813145167.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter explores the NAACP's response to black art and literature during the 1910s and 1920s. This was the era of the Harlem Renaissance, an explosion of black artistic creativity. It was also a ...
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This chapter explores the NAACP's response to black art and literature during the 1910s and 1920s. This was the era of the Harlem Renaissance, an explosion of black artistic creativity. It was also a time when the nature and purpose of that creativity were much debated. James Weldon Johnson and W. E. B. Du Bois in particular had much to say about the role of the arts and, in the case of the latter, about the relationship between art and propaganda. The NAACP could be criticized for overstating the importance and value of art and literature to ordinary African Americans, but it was not alone in hoping that a demonstration of black artistic talent could begin to chip away at racial prejudice.Less
This chapter explores the NAACP's response to black art and literature during the 1910s and 1920s. This was the era of the Harlem Renaissance, an explosion of black artistic creativity. It was also a time when the nature and purpose of that creativity were much debated. James Weldon Johnson and W. E. B. Du Bois in particular had much to say about the role of the arts and, in the case of the latter, about the relationship between art and propaganda. The NAACP could be criticized for overstating the importance and value of art and literature to ordinary African Americans, but it was not alone in hoping that a demonstration of black artistic talent could begin to chip away at racial prejudice.
Catherine E. Paul
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781942954057
- eISBN:
- 9781781384053
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781942954057.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
Chapter Seven brings the findings of these chapters together to resolve how Ezra Pound’s modernism changed as a result of his engagement with Mussolini’s regime. Here we come quickly to the question ...
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Chapter Seven brings the findings of these chapters together to resolve how Ezra Pound’s modernism changed as a result of his engagement with Mussolini’s regime. Here we come quickly to the question that Pound’s investment in Fascism raises: Can a poet be a traitor? I use H.D.’s End to Torment to analyze the relationships between Pound’s politics and poetry at the end of World War II. Her response to his arrest and incarceration, and to his anti-Semitic wartime broadcasts, can stand in for that of many other readers, at that time and since. I connect claims made in those broadcasts to the workings of the Pisan Cantos, written during his captivity at the Disciplinary Training Center in Pisa. These poems are widely considered some of the most aesthetically rich of his Cantos, and by showing their powerful links to his broadcasts—some of the ugliest forms his anti-Semitism took—I show how his literary work was transformed by his engagement with the cultural projects of Mussolini’s regime and became for him a kind of propaganda art. Because of these relationships and transformations, Pound’s poetry offers an important locus for considering the relationships between art and politics of the twentieth century.Less
Chapter Seven brings the findings of these chapters together to resolve how Ezra Pound’s modernism changed as a result of his engagement with Mussolini’s regime. Here we come quickly to the question that Pound’s investment in Fascism raises: Can a poet be a traitor? I use H.D.’s End to Torment to analyze the relationships between Pound’s politics and poetry at the end of World War II. Her response to his arrest and incarceration, and to his anti-Semitic wartime broadcasts, can stand in for that of many other readers, at that time and since. I connect claims made in those broadcasts to the workings of the Pisan Cantos, written during his captivity at the Disciplinary Training Center in Pisa. These poems are widely considered some of the most aesthetically rich of his Cantos, and by showing their powerful links to his broadcasts—some of the ugliest forms his anti-Semitism took—I show how his literary work was transformed by his engagement with the cultural projects of Mussolini’s regime and became for him a kind of propaganda art. Because of these relationships and transformations, Pound’s poetry offers an important locus for considering the relationships between art and politics of the twentieth century.
Catherine E. Paul
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781942954057
- eISBN:
- 9781781384053
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781942954057.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
In 1938, American poet Ezra Pound published Guide to Kulchur, a book so radically different from his earlier writing that readers might not have believed that it was written by the same firebrand ...
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In 1938, American poet Ezra Pound published Guide to Kulchur, a book so radically different from his earlier writing that readers might not have believed that it was written by the same firebrand aesthetician who had advocated in 1913 that poets go in fear of abstractions. But Guide to Kulchur was only the latest example of a new kind of prose that Pound had been writing—fiercely invested in politics and the mobilization of cultural heritage to its service. Pound’s new modernism came as a direct effect of his investment in fascism. Since the last monographic treatment of Pound’s fascism, scholars of literature, history, art history, urban design, and music have uncovered important aspects of the fascist regime’s use of culture to foment Italian national identity. These studies reveal the cultural, mythical, rhetorical, and intellectual aspects of that regime—more than enough new knowledge to require a reappraisal of perhaps the most famous, certainly the most notorious, American in Italy in that era, and perhaps the entire twentieth century. Unlike previous discussions of Pound’s adoption of Italian fascism, which focus mostly on his political and economic interests, this 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 prose work (including unpublished material from the Pound Papers and untranslated periodical contributions), Paul shows how Pound’s modernism changed as a result of involvement in Italian politics and culture. At the same time, it uses the familiar figure of Pound to provide an entry for scholars of Anglo-American modernism into the diverse and complex realm of Italian modernism.Less
In 1938, American poet Ezra Pound published Guide to Kulchur, a book so radically different from his earlier writing that readers might not have believed that it was written by the same firebrand aesthetician who had advocated in 1913 that poets go in fear of abstractions. But Guide to Kulchur was only the latest example of a new kind of prose that Pound had been writing—fiercely invested in politics and the mobilization of cultural heritage to its service. Pound’s new modernism came as a direct effect of his investment in fascism. Since the last monographic treatment of Pound’s fascism, scholars of literature, history, art history, urban design, and music have uncovered important aspects of the fascist regime’s use of culture to foment Italian national identity. These studies reveal the cultural, mythical, rhetorical, and intellectual aspects of that regime—more than enough new knowledge to require a reappraisal of perhaps the most famous, certainly the most notorious, American in Italy in that era, and perhaps the entire twentieth century. Unlike previous discussions of Pound’s adoption of Italian fascism, which focus mostly on his political and economic interests, this 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 prose work (including unpublished material from the Pound Papers and untranslated periodical contributions), Paul shows how Pound’s modernism changed as a result of involvement in Italian politics and culture. At the same time, it uses the familiar figure of Pound to provide an entry for scholars of Anglo-American modernism into the diverse and complex realm of Italian modernism.
