East and West in dialogue: Poetic language innovation in the May Fourth and Modernist movements

This thesis examines the importance of poetic language innovation in the theories and practices of Western Modernism through a comparison with similar preoccupations in the Chinese May Fourth movement. The May Fourth literary movement, closely associated with the political movement of the same name, occurred contemporaneously with Western Modernism, first emerging in the years after 1910. The prominent writers and critics of this movement promoted innovations in poetic language which proved every bit as foundational for twentieth-century Chinese language and literature as literary Modernism has done in the West. These movements have not been treated in parallel before in a full-length scholarly study, but there are striking resonances that are worthy of examination.; The thesis is divided into five sections. Chapter One concerns the role of the manifesto as an intiatory document in the May Fourth and Modernist movements, focussing on Ezra Pound's Imagist manifesto and Hu Shi's first two manifestos, "Some Modest Proposals for the Reform of Literature" and "Constructive Literary Revolution." Chapter Two is based on comparative readings of Lu Xun's "Diary of a Madman" ('Kuangren riji'), T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, and Pound's Pisan Cantos. These texts share a remarkably similar approach to the use of literary tradition, examined through a comparison of their poetic language innovations. Chapter Three considers the question of literary historicization with regard to the two movements. Here as in Chapter I the focus is on Pound and Hu Shi, for these two took great efforts to master the narratives about their literary movements.; The Introduction sets out the main issues of theoretical methodology relevant to this project, with sections covering "Dialogue, East and West," "Orientalism and Occidentalism," "Poetic Language," and "May Fourth and Modernism." The Conclusion addresses "The Question of Canon" in its first section, suggests, under a series of section headings, various areas for further comparative discussion, and concludes with a brief discussion of "Language, Literary History, and Identity."...