Cultural Travel And Deviation In Mountains And Rivers Without End

Gary Snyder is an American writer who spares no effort to study Chinese Culture.Mountains and Rivers Without End which was regarded as Gary Snyder’s life work was mainly inspired by a hand scroll of Chinese landscape painting.Gary Snyder spent40years on meditating and writing this poem collection.The fusion of Chinese poems and painting elements covered in Mountains and Rivers Without End and Gary Snyder’s native consciousness formed the author’s ecological view.This thesis is to analyze the Chinese cultural travel and deviation in Mountains and Rivers Without End from the perspective of Edward W.Said’s Traveling Theory.This thesis is made up of three chapters besides the Introduction and the Conclusion.A brief introduction to Gary Snyder’s literary achievements and Edward W.Said’s Traveling Theory employed in this thesis is made in the first part.In addition,the literature review of Mountains and Rivers Without End and the questions discussed in this thesis are described in this part.Chapter One analyses the background of the development of Gary Snyder’s Chinese experience and its reflections in his works,including his learning and absorption of classical Chinese poetry,his obsession in Chinese landscape paintings,and his close relationship to Chinese Buddhism.The second chapter explores the cultural travel in Mountains and Rivers Without End,including the Chinese classical poetic elements,the Chinese landscape painting elements,and the Chinese Buddhism elements in this collection of poetry.The third chapter centers on the Chinese cultural deviation in Mountains and Rivers Without End:Gary Snyder’s ecological view,religious ideas,and the reasons of these deviations of Chinese culture in this collection of poetry.The Conclusion indicates that approaching the cultural travel and deviation in Mountains and Rivers Without End via perspective of Traveling Theory,we can have a better understanding of the close relationship between Chinese culture and Gary Snyder’s ecological view and religious ideas in this collection of poetry.