Ezra Pound (1885 - 1972) was an American poet and harsh critic following World War I. Pound was also a key contributor to the Modernist movement. One of Pound's most famous works is Instigations which is a series of essays critiquing a variety of writers and books.

"This volume covers the period from the end of the Neolithic era to the beginning of the seventh century of our era. This lengthy period includes the civilization of Ancient Egypt, the history of Nubia, Ethiopia, North Africa and the Sahara, as well as of the other regions of the continent and its islands."--Publisher's description

First published in 1919 by Ezra Pound, Ernest Fenollosa’s essay on the Chinese written language has become one of the most often quoted statements in the history of American poetics. As edited by Pound, it presents a powerful conception of language that continues to shape our poetic and stylistic preferences: the idea that poems consist primarily of images; the idea that the sentence form with active verb mirrors relations of natural force. But previous editions of the essay represent Pound’s understanding—it is fair to say, his appropriation—of the text. Fenollosa’s manuscripts, in the Beinecke Library of Yale University, allow us to see this essay in a different light, as a document of early, sustained cultural interchange between North America and East Asia. Pound’s editing of the essay obscured two important features, here restored to view: Fenollosa’s encounter with Tendai Buddhism and Buddhist ontology, and his concern with the dimension of sound in Chinese poetry. This book is the definitive critical edition of Fenollosa’s important work. After a substantial Introduction, the text as edited by Pound is presented, together with his notes and plates. At the heart of the edition is the first full publication of the essay as Fenollosa wrote it, accompanied by the many diagrams, characters, and notes Fenollosa (and Pound) scrawled on the verso pages. Pound’s deletions, insertions, and alterations to Fenollosa’s sometimes ornate prose are meticulously captured, enabling readers to follow the quasi-dialogue between Fenollosa and his posthumous editor. Earlier drafts and related talks reveal the developmentof Fenollosa’s ideas about culture, poetry, and translation. Copious multilingual annotation is an important feature of the edition. This masterfully edited book will be an essential resource for scholars and poets and a starting point for a renewed discussion of the multiple sources of American modernist poetry.

De la Broquière set off for the Holy Land in 1432 for the purpose of spying out the possibilities of a new crusade to be led by the Duke of Burgundy. He returned overland, through the Turkish Empire, alone. His observations of the land, the people, the rulers, the food and the customs make fascinating reading. There is also a long section on the organization and tactics of the Ottoman Army, and the ways that the Europeans can use to defeat it. De la Broquière is a highly competent spy and a very observant tourist.

"Unequivocally a modern, Francois Boucher (1703-70) defined the French artistic avant-garde throughout his career. Yet the triumph of modernist aesthetics - with its focus on the self-critical, the autonomous, and the intellectually challenging - has long discouraged art historians and other viewers from taking Boucher's playful and alluring works seriously. Rethinking Boucher revisits the cultural meanings and reception of his diverse oeuvre, inviting us to revise the interpretive cliches by which we have sought to tame this artist and his epoch."--BOOK JACKET.

Although the novel, V oyages el avantures de] aques Masse, caused some thing of a stir during the first half of the eighteenth century, its author, Simon Tyssot de Patot (1655-1738), remained largely unknown in his lifetime, and it is only in this century that he has been recognized as one of the countless soldiers in the vast army of philosophes that assaulted the bastions of religious, political and sodallife in Europe of the late seven 1 teenth and early eighteenth centuries. Tyssot was a Huguenot who lived most of his life in Holland where he pursued a career as professor of mathematics in the sodal and cultural 1 Tyssot and his work seem to have been first brought to the attention of modem writers by the German critics during their investigation of the type of desert island or robinsonade literature that preceded and followed Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. The earliest reference I have found occurs in A. Kippenberg, Robinson in Deutschland bis zur Insel Felsenburg (1713-43), Hanover, 1892, pp. 66-67. Tyssot's name and work appear to have been first linked with the development of socialism in A. Lichtenberger, Le Socialisme au XVIIIe siecle, Paris, 1895, p. 44. Tyssot's Voyages et avantures de]aques Masse was discussed for its literary merits in A. LeBreton, Le Roman au dix huitieme siecle, Paris, 1898. LeBreton did not know that Tyssot was the author.