CHINESE INFLUENCE IN EMERSON, THOREAU, AND POUND

Although Chinese and Confucian influence on American literature is sporadic and tangential, its presence there has been consistent and conspicuous. Some major American authors have drawn from Chinese sources in their essentially literary endeavors. Emerson, Thoreau, and Pound are three impressive examples. This dissertation offers a general introduction of the subject, dwelling chiefly on Chinese and Confucian influence in American literary history from the mid-nineteenth century through the present.;Thoreau uses in his Walden Confucian quotations properly in the context of his book and so exhibits his perfect understanding of and agreement with the quintessential Confucian principle which these quotations reveal, namely, the Confucian emphasis on self-cultivation and self-improvement which, in the final analysis, Walden sets out to elucidate.;Pound's translation of The Book of Poetry (The Chinese Anthology Defined by Confucius), is a great success. But his obsession with his imperfect analysis of Chinese written characters made his translation of the Confucian "Four Books" a failure. Pound's Chinese translations left a palpable imprint of Chinese influence on his own poetry.;The whole Confucian ethical concept, with its emphasis on order, virtuous princely leadership, and even distribution of wealth a feature of which is slight taxation, served as the unifying theme of the Cantos. On the other hand, Confucianism may have reinforced Pound's racial prejudice and his preference for dictatorship over democracy.;Confucianism was a minor but not insignificant source to Emerson's system of philosophy. Emerson's belief in the goodness of man and the moral nature of the universe, his emphasis on self-cultivation, his faith in the power of character in social renovation, and his vision of the ideal scholar and poet--all these ideas, while they had their origin in American Puritanism and English and European thought, are traceable to his reading of Confucian classics as well. It is no exaggeration to state that Confucianism constitutes an integral ingredient of Emerson's philosophy.;The dissertation concludes with an overview of Chinese and Confucian influence in the three authors treated. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)...