Kong Fuzi, commonly Latinized as Confucius, was a Chinese philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period who is traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages. Confucius's teachings and philosophy underpin East Asian culture and society, remaining influential across China and East Asia to this day. His philosophical teachings, called Confucianism, emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice, kindness, and sincerity.
Thomas Stearns Eliot was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor. Considered one of the 20th century's major poets, he is a central figure in English-language Modernist poetry. Through his trials in language, writing style, and verse structure, he reinvigorated English poetry. He also dismantled outdated beliefs and established new ones through a collection of critical essays.
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a collaborator in Fascist Italy and the Salò Republic during World War II. His works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and his 800-page epic poem, The Cantos.
Imagism was a movement in early-20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. It is considered to be the first organized modernist literary movement in the English language. Imagism is sometimes viewed as "a succession of creative moments" rather than a continuous or sustained period of development. The French academic René Taupin remarked that "it is more accurate to consider Imagism not as a doctrine, nor even as a poetic school, but as the association of a few poets who were for a certain time in agreement on a small number of important principles".
The Analects, also known as the Analects of Confucius, the Sayings of Confucius, or the Lun Yu, is an ancient Chinese book composed of a large collection of sayings and ideas attributed to the Chinese philosopher Confucius and his contemporaries, traditionally believed to have been compiled and written by Confucius's followers. It is believed to have been written during the Warring States period, and it achieved its final form during the mid-Han dynasty. By the early Han dynasty the Analects was considered merely a "commentary" on the Five Classics, but the status of the Analects grew to be one of the central texts of Confucianism by the end of that dynasty.
Basil Cheesman Bunting was a British modernist poet whose reputation was established with the publication of Briggflatts in 1966, generally regarded as one of the major achievements of the modernist tradition in English. He had a lifelong interest in music that led him to emphasise the sonic qualities of poetry, particularly the importance of reading poetry aloud: he was an accomplished reader of his own work.
Thomas Ernest Hulme was an English critic and poet who, through his writings on art, literature and politics, had a notable influence upon modernism. He was an aesthetic philosopher and the 'father of imagism'.
The Cantos by Ezra Pound is a long, incomplete poem in 120 sections, each of which is a canto. Most of it was written between 1915 and 1962, although much of the early work was abandoned and the early cantos, as finally published, date from 1922 onwards. It is a book-length work, widely considered to present formidable difficulties to the reader. Strong claims have been made for it as the most significant work of modernist poetry of the twentieth century. As in Pound's prose writing, the themes of economics, governance and culture are integral to its content.
Dorothy Shakespear was an English artist. She was the daughter of novelist Olivia Shakespear and the wife of American poet Ezra Pound. One of a small number of women vorticist painters, her art work was published in BLAST, the short-lived but influential literary magazine.
The Egoist was a London literary magazine published from 1914 to 1919, during which time it published important early modernist poetry and fiction. In its manifesto, it claimed to "recognise no taboos", and published a number of controversial works, such as parts of Ulysses. Today, it is considered "England's most important Modernist periodical."
Italian fascism, also known as classical fascism or simply fascism, is the original fascist ideology as developed in Italy by Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini. The ideology is associated with a series of two political parties led by Benito Mussolini: the National Fascist Party (PNF), which ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, and the Republican Fascist Party (PFR) that ruled the Italian Social Republic from 1943 to 1945. Italian fascism is also associated with the post-war Italian Social Movement (MSI) and subsequent Italian neo-fascist movements.
The Waste Land is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the October issue of Eliot's The Criterion and in the United States in the November issue of The Dial. It was published in book form in December 1922. Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruelest month", "I will show you fear in a handful of dust", "These fragments I have shored against my ruins" and the Sanskrit mantra "Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata" and "Shantih shantih shantih".
Stephen Romer, FRSL is an English poet, academic and literary critic.
A Lume Spento is a 1908 poetry collection by Ezra Pound. Self-published in Venice, it was his first collection.
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".
The expatriate American poet Ezra Pound recorded or composed hundreds of broadcasts in support of fascism for Italian radio during World War II and the Holocaust in Italy. Based in Italy since 1924, Pound collaborated with the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini and expressed support for Adolf Hitler. Written at first for EIAR, and later for a new radio station in the Salò Republic, a Nazi puppet state in northern Italy, the broadcasts contained deeply antisemitic and racist material. They were transmitted to England, central Europe, and the United States, mostly in English, but also in Italian, German, and French.
Jefferson and/or Mussolini: L'Idea Statale Fascism as I Have Seen It is a book by the American ex-patriate poet and fascist collaborator Ezra Pound. It was first published in 1935 by Stanley Nott Ltd in London.
If This Be Treason ... is a 33-page booklet published privately in Italy in early 1948 by Olga Rudge, mistress of the American poet Ezra Pound. Pound, who lived in Italy with his wife from 1924 to 1945, was indicted in absentia for treason in 1943 by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia after he made hundreds of radio broadcasts, pro-Axis and deeply antisemitic, on behalf of Fascist Italy during World War II and the Holocaust in Italy. The title phrase had previously been used in a speech by Patrick Henry in 1765.
Frank Vigor Morley was an American mathematician, author, editor and publishing executive. As had his two older brothers, Christopher and Felix, Morley attended Haverford College and then studied at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Morley worked in book publishing in London and New York and played a significant role in the early history of the publishing firm Faber and Faber, where he became a close friend of the poet T. S. Eliot.
The Vienna Café was a coffee house and restaurant at 24–28 New Oxford Street, London. Located opposite Mudie's Lending Library and near the British Museum Reading Room in Bloomsbury, it became known in the early 20th century as a meeting place for writers, artists, and intellectuals. Regular visitors included Ezra Pound, H. G. Wells, and W. B. Yeats.
