Neither a Borrower: Forging Traditions in French, Chinese and Arabic Poetry (Studies in Comparative Literature, 7)

In his wide-ranging studies of poetic borrowing, Serrano uncovers the heterogeneity of influences in canonical texts from the Arabic, Chinese and French: Buhturi (821-97) and the Qur’an (7th century ce), Wang Wei (701-61) and the Classic of Poetry (8th century bce), Stephane Mallarme (1842-98) and Victor Segalen (1878-1919). Serrano brings methodologies developed for the study of one literature to bear on the reading of another, and often with surprising results. He shows, among other things, that Mallarme was really a Chinese poet, that ancient Chinese poets discovered the workings of film imagery, and that the Qur’an’s apparently disjointed narrative has a profound lyrical continuity.