Taylor, Janet2024-08-152024-08-1519761976https://hdl.handle.net/1828/19872This thesis will suggest, by citing and describing five examples, that "the female," as a symbol, as an abstraction or as an historical reality, is an important aspect of Ezra Pound's poetry. I examine woman and sexuality in Mauberley, in which there is a gradual realization of the connection between artistic stultification and sexual frustration. This connection between woman and aesthetics is also discussed in Chapter Two, which traces Pound's metaphor of "the female chaos" in his poems, essays and letters. Largely under the influence of De Gourmont, Pound sees "the female" as a chaos which the artist must order into form, The third chapter is an analysis of two of Pound's historical personae, Bertrans de Born and Sextus Propertius in relation to their respective mistresses. Both "Near Perigord" and Homage to Sextus Proper­tius seem to state the opposition between female passivity and male activity and between love and political expediency, but this apparent polarization is complicated by various, interwoven concerns. The final two chapters of the thesis discuss the female mythologi­cal figures of the Cantos, beginning with the ambivalent benevolent' and malevolent forces represented by Helen, Diana and Circe in the earlier Cantos. The last chapter is concerned with Pound's assertion of the value of the fertility goddesses and cults in Canto XLVII and in The Pisan Cantos. The goddesses Aphrodite, Demeter, Persephone and Gea Tella are a vital part of the attempt to regain composure and hope in The Pisan Cantos. The thesis ends with a discussion of Pound's belief in the Eleusinian Mysteries of Demeter, especially in relation to the "lynx" passage of Canto LXXIX.120 pagesAvailable to the World Wide WebThesis