Was Ezra Pound the “midwife” of THE WASTE LAND? Surgeons, midwives, and “sage homme”

Abstract

This essay reveals a flaw in the critical consensus that regards Ezra Pound as the intellectual “midwife” of THE WASTE LAND, a metaphor used so frequently over the last century it has become a critical commonplace. By detailing the various ways that Pound’s use of reproductive language was drawn from a contemporaneous medical debate about midwifery – a hitherto unrecognized influence – this essay provides a fuller understanding of the rhetoric Pound used to discredit female writers and editors, while also highlighting the importance of feminist attention to the critical conversation itself.