The exoticized other: Positive images of the Chinese in twentieth-century American poetry.

摘要

This dissertation studies the formation of a positive image of the Chinese in selected aspects of twentieth century American poetry. Focusing exclusively on the Chinese immigrants and their culture, I examine both translations and original poetry in English. Part I deals with the "Angel Island" graffiti-poems composed by anonymous immigrants from China during 1910 to 1940. I explain the background against which the Angel Island poets migrated to America and why they wrote in a classic style though they were mostly untutored. I offer original translations that emphasize the power of the poems in correcting negative stereotypes of the Chinese, bringing forward several works that other editors of the Angel Island poetry relegated to appendix. Part II of this dissertation presents two moments where positive images of the Chinese were shaped in quite different manners. First, I compare Edgar Lee Masters's 1930 book-length poem Lichee Nuts to his Spoon River Anthology (1915) and examine many poems in detail. Then I consider Witter Bynner's views on translation as expressed in his Jade Mountain anthology of 1929, comparing his translations of Chinese poems to ones by Ezra Pound and by Amy Lowell. Part III is a comparative examination of American translations of the poetry of the Chinese T'ang poet Han Shan. It suggests the limitations and strengths of the translations done by beat poet Gary Snyder in 1966, native American poet Red Pine in 1983, and Peter Stambler in 1996.; My analysis of these works demonstrates that in opposition to the overwhelmingly negative stereotypes from popular American culture, positive images of the Chinese did also manifest themselves in American high culture formations such as books of poetry or translations of poetry. Those positive images are valuable for their corrective power over the crude negative stereotypes and for their instructive usefulness to an American society that needed a cultural alternative. But we have to be aware at the same time that positive images in their own way are no less stereotypical; either they have homogenized, exoticized and idealized the Chinese, or they have offered a view of Chinese culture that has transformed, misunderstood and manipulated it. With various subtleties involved in Western positive representation of the Chinese made visible, I conclude that positive images and negative stereotypes of the Chinese form a complex and contradictory mode of representation that reflects an equally complex and contradictory American social psyche.