David Moody
CONTACT
- Tel 44 1904 433330/3355
- Email adm5@york.ac.uk
- Fax 44 1904 433372
CURRENT RESEARCH
Engaged in writing a two volume critical biography of Ezra Pound - life, works, contacts, contexts, the lot …. ("There are the alps", as Bunting said.) Volume I was published by Oxford University Press in October 2007.PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
Hon. Member T. S. Eliot Society; Fellow of the English Association; member Editorial Board of Paideuma: Studies in American and British Modernist Poetry; member steering committee Ezra Pound International Bi-Annual Conference.SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Books
Virginia Woolf (1963; repr. 1966, 1970).
Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice (1964; repr. 1971, 1974,
1978, 1981).
Ed. The Waste Land in Different Voices (1974)
Thomas Stearns Eliot: Poet (1979, 1980; 2nd, ed. 1994, repr. 1997).
Ed. The
Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot (1994).
Tracing T. S. Eliot's Spirit: Essays on his Poetry and Thought (1996,
p/b 2008).
Ezra Pound: Poet A Portrait of the Man & His Work. Volume I. The Young Genius 1885-1920 (2007).
- 'The first volume of this grand opus is a significant event.' - Andrew Motion, The Guardian Book of the Week
- 'Moody's fine biography... makes the young Ezra Pound newly impressive and newly appealing.' - Kevin Jackson, Sunday Times
- '[Moody] marshals Pound's staggering output of poetry, prose and correspondence to excellent effect, and offers clear, perceptive commentary on it.' - The Economist
- 'an authoritative and discriminating account, built on thoroughgoing research . . . the young genius has at last found a biographer who is up to the job.'– Michael Alexander, The Tablet
- 'Any biographer of Pound needs a clear head, a cool and dispassionate style, and first-rate literary-critical powers . . . David Moody has all three'.– Paul Dean, The New Criterion
- 'Moody knows more about Pound's poetry than probably anyone else alive, and supplies careful, detailed readings of all the early books.' -Charles McGrath, The New York Times
- 'Moody shows a masterful command of Pound’s work and its progression, from A Lume Spento in 1908 to Hugh Selwyn Mauberley in 1920 . . . he treats his subject and the facts with great respect and precision . . . His mastery of his subject is impressive, and Pound’s life story does not fail to fascinate.'– Mary Dixie Carter, Philadelphia Enquirer
- 'the fullest, most intelligent, biography of Pound'– Rebecca Beasley,Review of English Studies
- 'This is a long, slow book, but as the detail accumulates one’s respect for it deepens.'– Frank Kermode, New York Review of Books
- 'Moody must now be considered among the best readers of modernist poetry . . . If you wish to understand why Pound is so important, Mr Moody is the indispensable guide.' – Tim Redman, Dallas Morning News
Essays
'Telling it like it's not: Ted Hughes and Craig Raine', Yearbook of English Studies 17 (1987) 166-78.'"H.D. Imagiste": an elemental mind', Agenda: HD Special Issue XXV.3-4 (1987/8)77-96.
'"The Adams Cantos": History Set to Music', in Ezra Pound and America, ed. Jacqueline Kaye (1992), 79-92.
'Bel Esprit and the Malatesta Cantos: A post-Waste Land conjunction of Pound and Eliot', in Ezra Pound and Europe, ed. Richard Taylor and Claus Melchior (Amsterdam,1993), 79-91.
'The Cantos of Ezra Pound: "To build light"', in Platonism and the English Imagination, ed. Anna Baldwin and Sarah Hutton (1994), 308-18.
'"EP with two-pronged fork of terror and cajolery": The construction of his anti-Semitism (up to 1939)', in Jewish Themes in English and Polish Culture, ed. Irena Janicka-Swiderska, Jerzy Jarniewicz and Adam Sumera (Lódz, 2000), 149-69. Also in Paideuma 29.3 (2000) 58-84.
'The Pisan Cantos of Ezra Pound', in A Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry in English, ed. Neil Roberts (2001), 469-80.
'Directio voluntatis: Pound's economics in the economy of The Cantos', in Ezra Pound e l'economia, a cura di Luca Gallesi (Milano, 2001), 73-110. Also in Paideuma 32.1-3 (2003) 187-203.