Explores Ezra Pound's long fascination with Chinese literature and culture

Table of contents

Introduction / Zhaoming Qian 
Constructing the Orient: Pound’s American Vision / Ira B. Nadel 
Cathay: What Sort of Translation? / Barry Ahearn 
The Beauties of Mistranslation: On Pound’s English after Cathay / Christine Froula
Painting into Poetry: Pound’s Seven Lakes Canto / Zhaoming Qian
Pound’s Quest for Confucian Ideals: The Chinese History Cantos / Hong Sun
Ideogram, “Right Naming,” and the Authoritarian Streak / Peter Makin 
Confucius against Confusion: Ezra Pound and the Catholic Chaplain at Pisa / Wendy Stallard Flory
Confucius Erased: The Missing Ideograms in The Pisan Cantos / Ronald Bush 
“Enigma” at the Heart of Paradise: Buddhism, Kuanon, and the Feminine Ideogram in The Cantos / Britton Gildersleeve 
“Why Not Spirits?”—“The Universe Is Alive”: Ezra Pound, Joseph Rock, the Na Khi, and Plotinus / Emily Mitchell Wallace 
Poems / Patrizia De Rachewiltz, Yang Lian, Kim Jong-Gil 
Afterword: Kung Is to Pound As Is Water to Fishes / Mary De Rachewiltz 
Contributors 
Index 

Description

Ezra Pound and China, the first collection to explore the American poet's career-long relationship with China, considers how Pound's engagement with the Orient broadens the textual, cultural, and political boundaries of his modernism. The book's contributors discuss, among other topics, issues of cultural transmission; the influence of Pound's Chinese studies on twentieth-century poetics; the importance of his work to contemporary theories of translation; and the effects of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism on Pound's political and economic thought.
Richly illustrated, the book draws readers closer to the heart of Pound's vision. Ezra Pound and China will become an invaluable resource to students and scholars of Pound, cultural studies, translation theory, poetics, Confucianism, and literary transmission and reception.
Zhaoming Qian is Professor of English, the University of New Orleans.

"With Emily Mitchell Wallace's magisterial and beautiful study of Pound and Joseph Rock as its radiant center, Zhaoming Qian's gathering of enlightenments of Pound's involvement with Chinese culture is a work of high achievement. It refreshes Pound studies in a new and exciting way. Pound once said that he wrote the way he did "so that the best minds would be interested"---and here are fourteen of them, giving lucid evidence of his genius."
---Guy Davenport

- Guy Davenport

"An impressive body of new criticism on Pound and China... a strong, coherent collection."
---Reed Way Dasenbrock, The University of New Mexico

- Reed Way Dasenbrock, The University of New Mexico

"Documentary material of utmost importance to any discussion of Pound and China, EZRA POUND AND CHINA is a necessary addition to the shelves of Pound scholars."
---Tim Redman, The University of Texas at Dallas

- Tim Redman, The University of Texas at Dallas

. . . relevant to all Pound scholars and to anyone concerned with literary Orientalism.

- Choice

These three essays resurrect in fresh form the familiar schisms - authoritarianism and enlightenment, singularity and diversity, dogmatism and dialogue. We do not need to slip into the illusory consolation of contradictory affiliations: we need still to ask about the how of those affiliations.

- Modern Language Review