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Modernism’s Medieval Imperative: The Hard Lessons of Ezra Pound’s Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

Ezra Pound, modernism’s greatest impresario, was also a frustrated medievalist. Accepted into the University of Pennsylvania at the age of fifteen on the strength of his facility in Latin, he transferred to Hamilton College after poor grades in his sophomore year. There he cultivated an interest in Anglo-Saxon and Romance languages, especially Provencal. He also developed a serious interest in Dante: by the age of twenty he had already decided to write a modern epic modeled on the Commedia. After graduating from Hamilton, he returned to Penn to do graduate work in medieval Romance topics. Although he dropped out without starting his doctorate, when he arrived in London in 1909 he got a job lecturing on medieval literature at the Regent Street Polytechnic. These lectures became the basis for his first critical book, The Spirit of Romance, published in 1910. His early poetry abounds in medieval themes, parodies, translations, and recreations. In 1920, even after he had firmly established himself internationally as a leading modernist poet and thinker, he still sought the long-delayed doctorate. Unfortunately, the University of Pennsylvania refused his request to receive the degree based on his published work. After 1920, Pound devoted himself to The Cantos, the long-projected