Middlebury

ENAM0466A-F20

Imagism and Ideogram

Imagism and Ideogram: Modernism and the Chinese Character
T.S. Eliot called Ezra Pound “the inventor of Chinese poetry for our time” for his collaborative translations in Cathay (1915) which launched a craze for China and the “ideogram.” In 1919, Pound published Ernest Fenollosa’s The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry; Imagism’s co-founder Amy Lowell quickly followed with her own collaborative translations in Fir-Flower Tablets (1921); and in “The Cinematic Principle and the Ideogram” (1929) Sergei Eisenstein used the ideogram as a basis for montage theory. In this course we will explore recent scholarship on the “trans-Pacific” influence on Modernism with an emphasis on Tang poetry and the Japanese haiku. Readings will also include Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Witter Bynner, Florence Ayscough, Yone Noguchi, Apollinaire, Judith Gautier, Victor Segalen, Richard Wright, Gary Snyder, Li Bai, Du Fu, and Wang Wei, among others. 3 hrs. sem. (Rec)
Course Reference Number (CRN):
92585
Subject Code:
ENAM
Course Number:
0466
Section Identifier:
A

Course

ENAM 0466

All Sections in Fall 2020