(Ego Scriptor Cantilenae): Deixis, Parentheses and Metonymy in ＂The Cantos＂

Through a study of the use of deixis and specifically pronouns in Ezra Pound's ”The Cantos”, this paper shows how the poem situates itself on both sides of a threshold in signifying practices. Through linguistic characteristics borrowed from the epic genre and verse as anchored in the poet as centre of enunciation, the text accompanies its statements and readings of history with a claim for authority. This claim is, however, circumscribed by the ambiguity and irony resultant from features borrowed from writing, prose and typing, including abbreviations and punctuation.The paper combines Wlad Godzich and Jeffrey Kittay's study of ”The Emergence of Prose” with Roman Jakobson's work on metaphor and metonymy and Otto Jespersen's on the pronoun. With Jakobson, it is shown how the negotiation of deixis constitutes a poetical exploitation of traditionally unpoetical features including pronouns and abbreviations and thus of the pole of language which is concerned with combination, i.e. metonymy.