What Meaning Has in Charge: on Wordsworth, Pound and Prynne

• Main Author: Michael Kindellan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2013-09-01
• Series: Études Britanniques Contemporaines
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/ebc/544

This article is divided into two sections. The shorter first section treats William Wordsworth and Ezra Pound, and focuses upon some of the latter’s numerous oppositions to the theories and practices of the former. It suggests that amongst Pound’s principal criticisms of Wordsworth is what Pound sees as Wordsworth’s over-estimation of “meaning” as social convention. The second, longer section, tracks J. H. Prynne’s subsequent objections to Pound’s objections to Wordsworth. The description of Prynne’s possible disagreements looks for evidence firstly within various statements concerning translation (what he says about translation rather than in any translations per se), and secondly in several poems collected in the 1969 collection The White Stones.