Chinese Images in English Poetry: A Comparative Reading between Literary Fictionalization and Western Consciousness

Abstract

Abstract: English poetry has a longstanding tradition in creating images about China. The images, from the perspective of literary anthropology by Wolfgang Iser, cannot be freed from interrelated unity of opposites between fictionalization, imagination and facts. While fictionalization and imagination are essential to poetry, their foundation and destination have to be the facts about China and the subjectivity of the Western. If native Chinese poetics is applied into a comparative reading of the images of China in English poetry, especially by focusing on the subject-object relationship shown in literary fictionalization and the Western consciousness through an empirical study based on linguistic data in the poetry, the essential features of the issues can be exposed.

Key words: English poetry, images of China, literary fictionalization, imagination, Western consciousness, comparative reading

Zeng Fanjian, Liu Hanbo. Chinese Images in English Poetry: A Comparative Reading between Literary Fictionalization and Western Consciousness[J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2013, 33(2): 173-177.

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