Japanese influences in Western Literary Modernism as literary self-validation and its orientalist implications : Ezra Pound, W.B. Yeats, Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, Vladimir Nabokov, and Japan

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines Japanese influences in Western literary modernism as a recurrent pattern of literary self-validation, and it does so by modifying Harold Bloom’s concept of the Tessera. Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism and its implications on the Japanese influence tradition in Western literary modernism is also examined by outlining five different traits of it and applying them to the authors and to their works. In addition, Vladimir Nabokov’s “hidden connection” with Japan, as posited by Akikusa, is investigated in-depth, and through this investigation, he is placed at the terminus of a tradition of Japanese influences in Western literary modernism which has previously not been done. In the final reflections section, a theory is presented pertaining to the fluid ontology of literary influences in general and there the author concludes that they can be perceived as a type of literary mirror which he terms the mirror theory.