The Poetics of Fascism: Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Paul de Man

by Paul Morrison

Morrison examines the legacy of the modernist poetics of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, as it relates to current theoretical orthodoxies, and traces its influence on the current crisis in post-structural literary theory. Morrison reads the politics of post-structural theory in relation to the socio-cultural arguments espoused in the poetry and prose by Pound and Eliot, and reveals a continuity between that theory and high modernism's tendency towards fascism. Without reducing the political implications of poetry to mere caricature and without slighting the force and fact of literary mediation, Morrison has produced a book that will reshape the discussion of the social dimension of modernism. He concludes with a provocative analysis of deconstruction and the work of Paul de Man, and makes a case for a new post-structural theory that can accommodate history.

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Aleksandar]

An utter waste of time. The title of the book is completely misleading, as the book deals with the poetics of fascism only tangentially, and is rather a treatise on post-structuralism. The book serves no purpose, it is theorizing for the sake of theorizing, which is essentially a common disease of all works that are in the post-modernist tradition, or any post-something position, for that matter. Fortunately, the book is quite short (though the language is academic and quite specialist), so it is a relatively fast read. Offers no added value to the study of any of the three authors covered in the book, nor on poetry and fascism, at all.