Abstract

This dissertation is a study of contemporary American haiku poetry as a conjunction of the Emersonian tradition in American literature with the Japanese haiku tradition. ;I begin by exploring the relationship between the transcendental philosophy of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman and Asian philosophy. I suggest that contact with Asian texts was not so much a formative influence on the transcendentalists as it was confirmation of tendencies they had begun to express before their exposure to Eastern thought--tendencies which I argue have come to characterize a major tradition in American literature. ;I cite affinities between Buddhism, especially the Zen sect, and characteristically "Emersonian" ideas such as the Edenic impulse, the Essential Self, divine immanence, the effacement of the subject/object dichotomy, and the possibility of an "original relation to the universe." ;I then trace the development of haiku in Japan, emphasizing the importance of the Zen perspective. I look particularly closely at the poetics of Basho and some of the modern theories of haiku expressed by poets such as Shiki and Seisensui. ;This is followed by a brief discussion of the influence of the haiku genre in American poetry up to the second world war, and the development of a true haiku tradition with the Beat poets and others in the 1950's. ;I then explore the beginning of the "haiku movement" in the 1960's as it was expressed through the theoretical debates in the haiku journals. I conclude with an in-depth analysis of the work of ten of the most important contemporary haiku poets--John Wills, Cor van den Heuvel, Gary Hotham, Anita Virgil, Lee J. Richmond, Raymond Roseliep, Alexis Rotella, George Swede, Marlene Mountain, and Bob Boldman. I relate their work to the concerns of the larger community of American haiku poets as well as to the issues previously discussed in connection with the transcendentalists and the Japanese haiku poets