A Deconstructive Reading of Taoist Influenced Chinese and American Poetry

In her article “A Deconstructive Reading of Taoist Influenced Chinese and American Poetry” Hong Zeng attempts to deconstruct the logos status of Nature in Chinese natural philosophy and explore the tragic potentiality of such philosophy and poetry under its influence. It also analyzes its aesthetic strategies used to overcome historical tragedy, and how such tragic potentiality in classical Chinese philosophy and poetry break out into the imagery of death and fragmentation in modern Chinese and American poetry under its influence, including poetry by such poets as Hai Zi, Gu Cheng, Robert Bly and Wallace Stevens, and how it sometimes leads even to the tragic lives of the poets, such as the suicide of Gu Cheng and Hai Zi. In such exploration, the paper defines the rarely explored affinity between Chinese natural philosophy and western tragic theories and western aestheticism, and discloses the tragic propensity beneath the deep-rooted myth of the serene, holistic vision of Chinese natural philosophy and poetry under its influence