Abstract

Gary Snyder bases his American Buddhist poetics on the fundamental principle of interdependence or pratitya samutpada. He employs interdependence to link the wide-ranging interests that emerge in his poems, essays, and interviews: Buddhism, Taoism, and Native American religion; the classical aesthetics of Chinese landscape painting, poetry, and Japanese No drama; General Systems Theory, linguistics, ecology, and ethics; plus linguistics, Chinese and Japanese language, and language theory. Furthermore, interdependence is a key feature of his style---his poems center on key images, such as the net, spiral, mountains, and rivers images that recur in his work and encompass his references to vastly different time periods, cultures, and languages. ;This dissertation uses the principle of interdependence as a paradigm of organization. Rather than tracing a linear development of Snyder's thought and style, it considers the focal points of his syncretic perspective: his contact with a variety of Buddhist traditions and literatures; his cross-cultural language theory; his Buddhist ethical principles, especially as they relate to ecology; the role of the writer in regard to spiritual expression; his style, which is influence by Asian languages and esthetics; and his position as an American writer who has continued the nature writing of the Transcendentalists and extended the literary tradition of Ezra Pound. Finally, the dissertation explores the critical response to American Buddhist writing. ;Snyder has considerable knowledge of ecology, linguistics, Eastern religion, and ethics yet his poems present direct and immediate experiences of connection in an uncluttered style. They are remarkable in their ability to bring their topics to the reader without unnecessary mediation by the speaker. This dissertation explores the Buddhist perspective that permeates Snyder's work and determines the form of his writing. It approaches his literary works as jewels in the net of his poetics, each reflecting all others