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This first book-length study of Pound criticism investigates not just what critics have had to say about Pound but also why they have asked the questions they have asked.Forty-five years after his death, and more than seventy years after his indictment for treason, Ezra Pound remains a deeply controversial figure. Today it is hard to imagine a poet sparking national debate, but Pound did just that. His receipt in 1949 of the first-ever Bollingen Award for Poetry started a hue and cry that spread to every US periodical that made even a pretense of following "e;cultural"e; issues: even Time weighed in. It took two years for things to simmer down, and when they finally did, literary study looked profoundly different. Everyone engaged in the study of poetry today, professors and students alike, works in an environment shaped by that national crisisof conscience. The present book considers this untold story, and investigates not just what critics have had to say about Pound but also why they have asked the questions they have asked. It is routine for reception histories to distinguish between professional studies and more popular responses; this book encourages us to consider why we make that distinction and what the costs of doing so might be. Unprofessional responses to Pound have often beenideologically and politically embarrassing for Pound scholars, who have in response policed the distinction between professional and popular readings with extraordinary vigilance. As a result, the history of Pound's reception unfolds as a kind of drama - perhaps the last ongoing theater for McCarthyite cultural-political anxieties. Michael Coyle is Professor of English at Colgate University and has published widely on Pound. Roxana Preda is Leverhulme Fellow in American Literature at the University of Edinburgh and President of the Ezra Pound Society.

Examines both academic and popular assessments of Conan Doyle's work, giving pride of place to the Holmes stories and their adaptations, and also attending to the wide range of his published work.

The first thorough study in English of the reception of Doeblin's novels, written by one of the foremost Doeblin scholars.

An examination of the most significant literary criticism on Wilde at the turn of the century.

The first book to trace the critical reception of the great African American woman writer, attending not only to her fiction but to her nonfiction and critical writings.

Tracks the genesis and evolution of Twain's reputation as a writer, revealing how and why the writer has been "under fire" since the advent of his career.

The story of the critical reception of Crane's great Civil War novel from its publication to the present, with particular attention to the effects of later wars on that reception.

Traces Hemingway's critical fortunes over the ninety years of his prominence, telling us something about what we value in literature and why scholarly reputations rise and fall.

A contextualizing overview of the polarized critical reception of Willa Cather, one of the pre-eminent US authors of the twentieth-century.

An examination of the past half-century's critical reassessments of one of the most-studied American poets.

Survey of reception of German poet Hoelderlin in French criticism and literature, with particular attention to Heidegger and his followers.

How and why Fitzgerald's novel, initially called a failure, has come to be considered a masterwork of American literature and part of the fabric of the culture.

An examination of how Faulkner's work has been analyzed, elucidated, and promoted by a massive body of scholarly work spanning over seven decades.

An accessible and highly readable guide to the story of Melville criticism as it has developed over the past century and a half.

This book traces the attempts of successive generations of philosophers and literary critics to expound the works of Schiller and deal with the linguistic and systematic problems they present.

A comprehensive look at the academic criticism of Jane Austen from her time down to the present.

Survey of the criticism devoted to Kafka's The Castle, his final novel.

Wide-ranging survey of the critical reaction provoked by Mann's Doctor Faustus.

A study of the controversy-filled scholarship on Poe from the time of his death to the present.

Overview of the critical history of the German novella.

A study of the literary criticism of the famous and influential German play fragment Woyzeck.

Examines the major divisions in criticism of this major African American writer, paying particular attention to the way each critical period defines Baldwin and his work for its own purposes.

A pathbreaking consideration of the intertwined critical responses to Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass, giants of abolitionist literature.

A study of the journalistic and academic reception of the writings of one of the great American writers of the late twentieth century.