The Spirit of Romance
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Spirit of Romance is a 1910 book of literary criticism by the poet Ezra Pound. It is based on lectures he delivered at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London between 1908 and 1909 and deals with a variety of European literatures. As with Pound's later, unfinished poem The Cantos, the book follows "a pattern, at once historical and atemporal, of cultural beginnings and rebeginnings".
Written as a contradiction to the nationalistic and normative literary studies of the time, in The Spirit of Romance Pound advocates a synchronous scholarship of literature in which one can weigh "Theocritus and Yeats with one balance". In his discussion, Pound provides partial translations of works from a variety of European authors, including Guido Cavalcanti and François Villon, many of whom had been forced outside the canon by earlier critics.
The Spirit of Romance was published by London-based J. M. Dent and Sons, upon recommendation from Pound's friend Ernest Rhys. A 1932 printing saw the addition of an eleventh chapter, and a "completely revised edition" followed in 1952. Though reviews were sparse when the book was first published, The Spirit of Romance has since become an important addition to literary scholarship.
