What Lineage Extraction: Image and the Book Object in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictée

Abstract

Just as American ideals of economic modernization were bound up in ideas about China, the movement toward aesthetic modernization also looked toward East Asia. Ezra Pound’s study and subsequent reproduction of ancient and medieval Chinese poetry into the modern English-language Cathay is emblematic of this trajectory. This thesis traces the use of image in contemporary American poetry back to its transcontinental past, focusing on Theresa Cha’s Dictée as a model of avant-garde reflections on objecthood.