These ideas first saw print in 1910, when they served as a series of lectures in London. Pound was then just 25, freshly fired from his first and only academic post, and already had four volumes of poetry in the bookstores. Nevertheless he wanted to make a name for himself as a maverick critic, so here he established a pattern of cultural beginnings and re-beginnings from Roman times through the dawn of the Renaissance. He began with the transition from Latin to the romance languages and proceeded to troubadours, Northern France, the Chanson de Roland, Dante and his precursors, El Cid, the Renaissance Latin poets, the plays of Lope de Vega and The Lusiads, all very good names indeed. The result is a new sorting of literary movements that no doubt startled those London literati who attended his lectures. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)