Principles of Poetry - Paperback

by Sakutaro Hagiwara (Author), Chester C. I. Wang (Translator), Isamu P. Fukuchi (Translator)

This work comprises the first complete English translation of Shi no Genri, one of the most important attempts at a theory of literature written in the modern period. Hagiwara Sakutaro (1886-1942) was not only an original poet but also a perceptive and lonely literary critic. This book, in his own words, "is not a collection of fragmentary writings, but a thoroughly systematic and organized discourse" on poetry and other related arts. He sees the future of Japanese poetry as being tied to the characteristics of Japanese language, and even to the destiny of Japan.

Author Biography

Chester Wang is retired as the East Asian Studies Bibliographer at the University of Wisconsin. A native of China, he received his doctorate in history at the University of Chicago and subsequently taught at Roosevelt University and the University of Southern California. He recently published an English translation of Fung Youlan's Xin Zhi Yen under the title of A New Treatise on the Methdology of Metaphysics (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1997); and a Chinese translation of H.G. Creel's Confucius and the Chinese Way under the title of Kongzi yu Zhongguo Zhi Dao (Taipei: Web, 2003). He is currently working on a Chinese philosophic text.