Assesses the relevance for the West of Eastern aesthetic and poetic principles in a discussion of over 200 poems in 17 languages, with parallel translations. The book draws on Far Eastern, Iberian and Latin American poetry - a contribution to the study of comparative poetics and poetic theory.

Introduction: Writing in other languages. Part 1 Lyra minima: a minimalist poetics - West to East (kharja to jue ju), ne plus ultra (tanka to haiku), systole and diastole, wind and water, where the twain meet; golden lamps in a green night - "la nina", metaphor versus symbol, cupido immitis uvae, down in the reeds by the river, orient and immortal fruit; structure, style and symbol - espana toda es concetos, beyond pity and terror. Part 2 Strange islands, gardens of desire: insulas extranas - isles of the blest, the magic mountain, hortus conclusus; the Isle of Venus (iconography of an archetype) - from mythos to praxis, the way to the centre, eros and gnosis, the iconographic perspective (I), the mythic-historical perspective, the iconographic perspective (II), the insula divina. Part 3 The horizons of silence: limits and thresholds - midsummer mirrors (bonfires of St John), to learn from stone, bis repetita placent, iconographic excursus, not frontiers but horizons; beyond chrysanthemums - the dream in the glass, Basho's pond, repercussae imaginis umbra, a new paradigm?.

`A fascinating study of some two hundred poems, both ancient and modern, in seventeen languages.' British Bulletin of Publications `A fascinating study of some two hundred poems, both ancient and modern, in seventeen languages...Throughout this work of comparative poetics and poetic theory the author draws on his deep knowledge of Far Eastern, Iberian, and Latin American poetry.' British Bulletin of Publications on Latin America, the Caribbean, Portugal and Spain `It is a series of linked meditations in essay form, of dazzling erudition, with a remarkable range of references that springs directly from Stephen Reckert's linguistic and intellectual voyaging, east and west, ancient and modern ... it has a welcoming door, that admits the reader to an echoing and beautiful palace.' Gareth A. Davies, University of Leeds, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, LXXIII (1996) `Professor Reckert has written a chrestomathic study using a methodology hardly encountered nowadays ... and fecund in its ample, wide-ranging citations, Beyond Chrysanthemums exceeds previous comparative studies of East-West poetry by its breadth of reference and its capacious sensibility. To read Beyond Chrysanthemums is to enjoy the experience of reading a wide variety of literature in the company of a superbly catalytic mind. Would that the world literature of the future be blessed with a cicerine as well informed and as delightful as the one the reader encounters in this book.' Eugene Eoyang, Indiana University, New Comparison 20 `a brilliant and provocative book ... Reckert is as interesting when he writes of the differences between Eastern and Western traditions as when he considers their similarities ... ... Reckert provides some fascinating Eastern analogues for Dante's Earthly Paradise. Beside Chrysanthemums is one of the masterpieces of literary scholarship of our time. In its importance, its erudition, and its capacity to make a permanent change in the way that we read literature, it will, I believe, rapidly establish itself as the equal of Ernst Robert Curtius's European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, ... is an intellectual autobiography as well as a creative work of criticism and literary history ... a brilliant, moving ... always exciting and enriching book. It is impossible to do justice to it - but you have to try.' Alan Deyermond, Queen Mary and Westfield College, Portuguese Studies