Orientalism, Modernism, and the American Poem

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Exploring the intersections of Oriental influences and American modernist poetry, this work delves into how figures like Emerson, Fenollosa, Pound, and Snyder sought a natural poetic language. Kern argues that their quest aligns with the mythic Renaissance concept of the language of Adam, where signs and things converge. The analysis encompasses cultural studies of Orientalism, linguistic evolution, and the intellectual lineage of modernist poetry, revealing the complexities of these connections throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.