The Cantos of Ezra Pound: Elegiac Epic of Modern Western Civilization—Together with the Theme on "Resistance" and "Destruction"

As a pioneer of British and American modernist movement in poetry, Ezra Pound spent nearly half a century on the epic Cantos.The Cantos has long been considered as the most important work by many researchers, but ironically, the Cantos is neglected as an epic because of its obscure language. This paper attempts to convey the theme of "resistance" and "destruction" by analyzing the criticism of modern Western philosophy, politics, religion, etc in Cantos which is easily overlooked so that the readers can understand the value of Cantos more clearly as the elegiac epic of the decline of modern Western civilization.