Imagism讲稿.doc

Imagism Firstly, let’s look at the definition of Imagism in The Cambridge Handbook of American Literature edited by Jack Salzman. Imagism: A poetic movement in England and the US from 1909 to 1917. Ezra Pound was a leading spokesman for the movement, and with F.S. Flint wrote an Imagist “manifesto” published in Poetry magazine in 1913.Among the tenets they put forth were a free choice of subject matter (often focusing on single, concentrated moments of experience), conciseness of diction, clarity of images, and rhythm composed “in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.” There are three culture origins of Imagism: Oriental classical poetry, symbolism, and Bergson’s Intuitionism. Oriental classical poetry included Chinese classicial poetry, Japanese Haiku and Tanka. Firstly, the influence of oriental classical poetry: Chinese Classical Poetry The characteristics of Chinese classical poetry such as picture-like characters, using of images, short and concise, abundant connotation influenced the imagists. Here is an example: 天净沙.秋思 马致远 And the imagists translated lots of Chinese poems into English. Pound translated lots of Chinese poems into English, and here I chose one sentence, just for fun, because I don’t think that Pound translated it very well. 抽刀断水水更流，举杯消愁愁更愁。 Drawing sword，cut into water，water again flows, Rise up，quench sorrow，sorrow again sorrow. Japanese Haiku and Tanka Japanese lyric verse form having three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables, traditionally invoked an aspect of nature or the seasons. The imagists learned from the conciseness and neatness of Haiku. Secondly, the influence of symbolism: Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In the 1880s, the aesthetic was articulated through a series of manifestoes and attracted a generation of writers. In England, Symbolism was spread by Arthur Symons and William Butler Yeats, and was critically abs