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Pound's Four Pages: “Literary Camouflage” and Postwar Anonymous Propaganda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2022

Marius Hentea
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Abstract

This essay examines Ezra Pound's behind-the-scenes control of the little review Four Pages, which ran for fifteen issues from 1948 to 1951. After his return to the United States in 1945 to face charges of treason, Pound was declared mentally incompetent and institutionalized in a mental hospital in the nation's capital. With his publishers attempting to rehabilitate Pound's public standing by spotlighting his purely “literary” efforts, Pound had to resort to anonymous publication to continue to have a say on contemporary matters. This essay shows how Pound essentially created and edited a little review to have a venue that pushed his social and political ideas at a time when doing so openly was problematic for legal and political reasons. The use of anonymity as a writer and editor was part of the wider “literary camouflage” that Four Pages engaged in to advance Pound's wider cultural and political agenda.

Type
Essay
Information
PMLA , Volume 137 , Issue 3 , May 2022 , pp. 424 - 441
Copyright
Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Modern Language Association of America

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