Orientalism, Modernism, and the American Poem

by Robert Kern

Overview

Orientalism, Modernism, and the American Poem is a critical and historical interpretation of "Oriental" influences on American modernist poetry. Kern equates Fenollosa and Pound's "discovery" of Chinese writing with the American pursuit of a natural language for poetry, what Emerson had termed the "language of nature." Through analysis and contextualization, Kern sheds light on the three contemporary nexuses of his search: the cultural study of Orientalism and the West, the evolution of Indo-European linguistic theory, and the intellectual tradition of American modernist poetry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521496131
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/26/1996
Series:	Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture , #97
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.26(w) x 9.29(h) x 0.94(d)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: the European hallucination; 2. Emerson and the language of nature; 3. Character assassination: representing Chinese in nineteenth-century linguistics; 4. Otto Jesperson and Chinese as the future of language; 5. Language in its primary use: Fenollosa and the Chinese character; Interchapter: Pound, Emerson, and the poetics of creative reading; 6. Modernising Orientalism/Orientalising modernism: Ezra Pound, Chinese translation, and English-as-Chinese; 7. Seeing the world without language: Gary Snyder and Chinese as American speech.

Editorial Reviews

"...kern does provide an excellent discussion of Western perceptions of poetry and languages over the past three centuries...Kern has certainly provided an excellent basis for further study." Colin A. Clarke, American Studies International

"...a valuable contribution to modernist scholarship." Paideuma

From the Publisher