The Oriental Elements In Amy Lowell's Poetry

Under the influence of American modern poet Ezra Pound(1885-1972),Amy Lowell(1874-1925)came into contact with Imagism.She became her career as an Imagist poet and devoted herself to promoting Imagism.Due to her elder brother Percival Lowell(1855-1916),Lowell had a keen interest in the Orient since childhood,particularly Chinese and Japanese traditional culture.She drew inspiration from the Orient and displayed remarkable Oriental features in her poetic works.Classical Chinese poetry and Japanese haiku enriched the forms and contents of her writing,improved her cognition toward exotic images and terse poetic style.This thesis consists of six chapters.The first chapter gives an introduction to the research background,literature review,research significance and layout of the thesis.Chapter Two illustrates Lowell's encounter with the Orient,her views on Chinese and Japanese cultures and her introduction of the Oriental elements as a way of defamiliarization.Chapter Three displays Lowell's admiration for Li Po and the significance of the traditional Chinese elements in Li Po's poems to Lowell's poetry writing such as the images of Chinese women,the moon and a Chinese garden.Chapter Four demonstrates Japanese elements in Lowell's poetry from two perspectives: Lowell's description of geisha in the ukiyo-e printing and her imitation of Japanese haiku versification in her tentative poems.Chapter Five explores the influence of Chinese and Japanese cultures in Lowell's poetry upon American modern poetry and later poets,through which multiple elements have been brought to the Western modern poetry and social life.Hence she has brought the exotic cultures to the West and aroused a great deal of American contemporary poets' interests in China and Japan,Kenneth Rexroth(1905-1982)and Gary Snyder(1930-),to name a few.She presents the Oriental cultures and religions thoughts to the West,thus helping Westerners to re-recognize the Orient.The last chapter sums up the thesis and reiterates the significance of the Oriental elements in her poetry.