Ezra Pound's Eriugena

Close reading of Pound’s ongoing conversation with Eriugena demonstrates the importance of expanding the parameters of the critical debate. Byron’s fluid and engaging prose proves that conscientious and original scholarship of Anglo-American literary modernism’s central figure need not be stuffy or turgid. A good resource for Pound enthusiasts as well as specialists. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. -- J. Williamson, Pearl River Community * CHOICE *
Deftly orchestrated, rich in archival discoveries, substantial in its preoccupations (philsophical, theological and aesthetic), and argued with agility and nuance, Mark Byron's understanding of a somewhat neglected figure in the Poundian pantheon is powerfully rewarding. The range of learning here is impressive in its understanding of the Carolingian history from which Eriugena emerges as a figure of controversy. . . A powerful foray into aesthetic and intellectial history. . . One of the best lessons we have for reading the machinations of the poetry. -- Ian F.A. Bell * Journal of American Studies *
[Written] with a honed instinct and what can only be called Herculean labor ... To anyone who has doubted the reach of Pound’s Latin or his grasp of philosophical nuance, the evidence Byron presents will come as a revelation. -- Ronald Bush, St. John's College, Oxford, UK * Make It New (periodical of the Ezra Pound Society) *
For any student of Pound’s use of Eriugena but also of The Pisan Cantos, this is essential archival material. Byron’s commentary is enlightening in discussing the thematic patterns in Pound’s notes and in relating them to the poet’s writings and thoughts ... Byron has done a remarkable job of making sense of Pound’s notes, and his edition is invaluable for anyone wanting to delve deeper into Pound’s appropriation of Eriugena and its importance to the genesis and development of The Pisan Cantos ... [The] book fills a crucial gap in Pound studies. -- Peter Liebregts, University of Leiden, Belgium * Make It New (periodical of the Ezra Pound Society) *
Ezra Pound’s Eriugena productively illuminates, through exacting archival work, precisely how the modernist became drawn to one such Neoplatonic source and how his readings of that source’s mystical and theological philosophy changed in the context of his own shifting career and political situation. Mark Byron offers an intriguing glimpse into Pound’s enthusiasm for an important but understudied influence on his composition of The Cantos, the ninth-century CE Irish itinerant and then court theologian, philosopher, and poet Johannes Scottus Eriugena. As an installment in the Bloomsbury Press series Historicizing Modernism, this monograph exemplifies the series editors’ stated objectives to retrieve from the archive new appreciations for modernist masters and the period’s less studied figures. -- Eric Keenaghan * Journal of Modern Literature *