Words Like Fire
Prophecy and Apocalypse in Apollinaire, Marinetti and Pound

James P. Leveque

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Studies In Comparative Literature 50

Legenda

  October 2021  •  228pp

ISBN: 978-1-781884-43-0 (hardback)  •  RRP £75, $99, €85

ISBN: 978-1-781884-44-7 (paperback, forthcoming)

ISBN: 978-1-781884-47-8 (JSTOR ebook)

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The avant-garde in the early-twentieth century planted its flag on the ruins of the day’s pieties, with religion a particularly urgent target. Movements such as Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism often represented religion in blasphemous, prurient, or sacrilegious ways: but the invocation of spirituality and scripture were also indispensable to their transcendent, revelatory experience. Examining the contemporaneous, and cross-national, careers in poetry and artistic propaganda of Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), F. T. Marinetti (1876-1944), and Ezra Pound (1885-1972), Leveque frames the early avant-garde as an attempt to rediscover the necessity of prophecy and apocalyptic thought. By engaging common themes of spiritual orientation, religion furnished a sense of legitimacy or distinction for writers presenting themselves as preachers of the End Times, or visionaries of 'new heavens and a new earth.'

James Leveque is a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Advanced Study of the Humanities, University of Edinburgh.

Bibliography entry:

Leveque, James P., Words Like Fire: Prophecy and Apocalypse in Apollinaire, Marinetti and Pound, Studies In Comparative Literature, 50 (Cambridge: Legenda, 2021)

First footnote reference: 35 James P. Leveque, Words Like Fire: Prophecy and Apocalypse in Apollinaire, Marinetti and Pound, Studies In Comparative Literature, 50 (Cambridge: Legenda, 2021), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Leveque, p. 47.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Bibliography entry:

Leveque, James P.. 2021. Words Like Fire: Prophecy and Apocalypse in Apollinaire, Marinetti and Pound, Studies In Comparative Literature, 50 (Cambridge: Legenda)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Leveque 2021: 21).

Example footnote reference: 35 Leveque 2021: 21.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

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