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Music and musical culture in Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot

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Version 2 2023-11-28, 10:07
Version 1 2023-06-10, 01:33
thesis
posted on 2023-11-28, 10:07 authored by Jane Pendry

This thesis explores how the cultural models of the past illuminate connections between literature and music, and offer a culturally and historically secure basis of rhythmic, melodic and harmonic novelty against which to frame the innovations of fresh, modernist ideas. Ezra Pound returns to the music of the troubadours to find a dynamic engagement with the musical rhythm of words, and frames The Pisan Cantos using a verbal polyphony which is structured from the motifs, ideas, reminiscences and sounds from history and his own past. T.S. Eliot uses the rhythms of popular music – ragtime and the cake-walk, particularly in his early work – to undermine poetry’s feminised social norms, and develops his distinctive poetic voice in The Waste Land and Four Quartets through an interpretation of the musical ideas he encounters in the music of Wagner, Stravinsky and Beethoven.

Deeply influenced by the effects of the First World War, concepts of time – past, present, future – and timelessness resonate throughout Pound’s Pisan Cantos and Eliot’s Four Quartets. Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps sheds light on Pound’s use of recurrent motifs, his destabilisation of rhythm, his use of patterns woven from history and memory, his awareness of birdsong, and his understanding of the musical structures which infuse troubadour poetry. Eliot engages with the form and construction of Beethoven’s A minor String Quartet (Op.132), transforming and re-interpreting the motif of ‘time’ to confer unity on his cycle of Four Quartets, as well as dislocating metre and accent, and adapting traditional forms to find a new voice. Engaging with the traditions of music, Pound and Eliot re-interpret the traditions and language of poetry.

History

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  • Published version

Pages

316

Department affiliated with

  • English Theses

Qualification level

  • doctoral

Qualification name

  • phd

Language

  • eng

Institution

University of Sussex

Full text available

  • Yes

Supervisor

Alistair Davies and Helen Tyson

Legacy Posted Date

2021-10-28

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