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.

Promotional Information

An exploration of the role of 'Oriental' influences on American modernist poetry.

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