Knowing the East: French and Western Modern Poets looking at Japan: syllabus
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Week 1
Introduction and overview : Orientalism and Modernism at the beginning of the 20th century, and the role of poetry and art
Week 2
Paul Claudel’s “Knowing the East” and his perception of Far-East culture
Week 3
Paul Claudel’s “Blackbird in the rising sun” and his perception of Japanese culture and religion
Week 4
Fenollosa and Pound’s translation-adaptation of Noh plays/ Yeats's essays on Noh
Week 5
The fascination of ideograms: Fenollosa’s essay on ideograms and its influence on Pound’s poetry ; Claudel and Michaux’s essay on ideograms
Week 6
Japanese writing and Haiku’s nature
Week 7
Translation of haiku and problems thereof
Week 8
Claudel’s “A Hundred movements for a fan”
Week 9
Introduction of haiku in 1920’s in France / Surrealists’ reception of haiku/ Rilke and haiku
Week 10
Bashô’s “Narrow road” and Post-surrealist poets’ reception of this text and haiku
Week 11-12
Poetics of briefness and fragments: comparison between some European brief poems and Japanese haiku
Lecture will be accompanied by DVDs showing aspects of Japanese traditional culture. In almost every lesson several texts will be commented on, and students will be asked to read them beforehand and prepare questions or to state what they feel. At the end students will be asked to translate into English and present some brief poems written in their native language. No preliminary knowledge is required.
