The Modernist Face in/as World Literature
Abstract
Abstract When Ezra Pound envisioned a “one image poem,” the quintessential image he set out to frame was that of a face. He wrote the poem anchored in this image, “In a Station of the Metro,” as a haiku. At the heart of one of the defining moments of literary modernism one thus finds, on the one hand, a renewed effort to wrestle with the representation of a face and, on the other hand, an attempt to do so on a global arc. Starting from a reading of Pound’s poem, the Introduction to this Special Issue argues for the need to assess the role the face at the intersection of world literature and global modernism.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Modernist Literature and Criticism
Comparative and World Literature
Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Journal of World Literature
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 1–24
- Publication date
- 11 February 2026
- Language
- EN