The Limits of American Literary Ideology in Pound and Emerson (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture, Series Number 69)

In The Limits of American Literary Ideology in Pound and Emerson, Cary Wolfe analyses the dynamics and consequences of radical individualism and the sort of cultural critique it generates in Ralph Waldo Emerson and Ezra Pound. The main purpose of the book is to demonstrate that any form of individualism that is modelled on the logic and structure of private property will always reproduce the very contradictions and alienations that it set out to criticise and to remedy. Part of what makes this study unique and important is that it uses the ideology of individualism, still so powerful and seductive in contemporary America, to build a bridge between the two major figures from literary periods – Modernism and American Romanticism – which are often seen in stark opposition. In doing so, this study extends the critical paradigms and techniques of one of the most exciting new fields of cultural criticism (the so-called 'New Americanist' criticism) to cover a period (Modernism) and a type of writing (poetry) that it has largely ignored. This study analyzes the power, allure, and consequences of radical individualism and the kind of cultural critique it generates in the major figure of American Romanticism, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the central figure of American modernism, Ezra Pound. Both writers set out to criticize and heal the dissociation of ethics, economics, and politics that they saw as the alienating cultural consequence of capitalism. But because their vision of the inalienable individual was modeled on the structure and logic of private property, they reproduced the very contradictions and alienations that they set out to critique and overcome in their ambitious cultural projects. If what we now call postmodernism is any indication, we have yet to come to terms with the risks, matched only by the atavistic hankering, involved in asking the question, what does it mean to be American? Cary Wolfe. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 229-281) And Index.