Many gods and many voices

by Louis Lohr Martz

In Many Gods and Many Voices distinguished scholar Louis L. Martz addresses works by Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, H.D., and D.H. Lawrence, with brief treatment of the relation of Pound's Cantos to Joyce's Ulysses. Martz argues that a prophetic tradition is represented in the Cantos, The Waste Land, Paterson, and H.D.'s Trilogy and Helen in Egypt, along with Lawrence's The Plumed Serpent and the second version of Lady Chatterley's Lover. Martz's premise is that biblical prophecy, with its mingling of poetry and prose, its abrupt shifts from violent denunciation to exalted poetry, provides a precedent for the texture of these modernist works that will help readers to appreciate the mingling of "voices" and the complex mixture of elements. Examining their interrelationships and their common themes, Many Gods and Many Voices offers fresh insights into these modern writers.