Ezra Pound And Chinese Culture

As a well-known modern poet and outstanding critic and translator, Ezra Pound (1885-1972) is one of the most influential figures in 20th century, who occupies a pivotal position in both British and American literary world. The literary movement "Imagism" was also started and advocated by Pound who, during his life time, translated and published an enormous variety of Chinese classical poems, bringing the Chinese traditional poetry into the western modern culture and thus stimulating the development of American new poems. Conversely, Pound also benefited greatly from translating Chinese poems. By doing so, he gradually mastered the skill of handling the mood of the literary works that Chinese poets usually fulfilled, and managed to use them in his own poem writings as an end. He firmly believed that Chinese poetry would "provide American new poems with great value and practical quality." So it is fairly significant to promote the study on Pound by systematically analyzing the relationship between Pound and Chinese culture, especially his motivation of accepting Chinese classical poems.This thesis begins with the reception aesthesis and concerns much about the relationship between Pound's Imagism theory and the Chinese culture, particularly Chinese classical poetry. To start with, the paper makes a brief introduction to the basic reception aesthetics and analyzes the reasons from the perspective of such theory why Imagism could come into being in British and American literary world. Apart from it, the paper also studies the Imagism theory and its origin and portrays the inner connection between Imagism and Chinese classical poetry by comparing their respective theories, then probes into the association between Pound and Chinese culture to analyze why pound showed his great interest in Chinese culture, which of course gives prominence to the influence of Confucian culture with Confucius as its representative upon Pound's thought and his works. By taking the Cathay as its object of study, the paper then systematically analyses the motivation that Pound translated the Chinese classical poems and his reader-centered theory and practice of translation. Finally, the paper proceeds in all cases from the view of Pound's imitation of Chinese classical poems to illustrate the influence of it upon the content and style of theCantos, Pound's masterpiece.The conclusions of the thesis are as follows: l.The great changes of the western world at the end of 19th century and early 20th century are the objective conditions why the Imagism could come into being whereas the correspondence between the Imagism theory with Pound as its prime mover and the Chinese Imagism theory is rightly the fundamental reason why Pound showed his persistent love to Chinese culture. 2.The long-standing and well-established Chinese culture spread in western world cultivated Pound's great interest in it and the broad and profound Confucian thought definitely made Pound not only get to know the oriental civilization contending with western Christian culture, but obtain the effective "medicine" to cure the western spiritual crisis. 3. The cruel and absurd First World War changed Pound's world view, and the Three Principles advocated by Imagists trained Pound's style and sensitivity of accepting a unique culture, besides, the concrete, restrained and graceful appreciation of the beauty originated from Chinese classical poetry made Pound greatly carried away, all of which resulted in Pound's aesthetic judgments in the Cathay, another masterpiece by him. 4. The translation theory treating the translators as its main body is the first important principle that Pound followed to translate Chinese classical poetry, thus the reoccurrence of the particular intention and emotion along with the reconstruction of the artistic conceptions turned out to be the main characteristics that Pound owned to translate the Chinese poems into English. 5. The objective of Pound's translating Chinese classical poetry was not only introducing a completely new style so as to...