ABSTRACT
In his brief introductory survey, KUNST provides good coverage of the American, West-Indian, and Japanese periods, with a chapter devoted to Hearn’s knowledge of French nineteenth-century writing and his several translations from the French. Noting that Hearn achieved no success in the major literary genres, Kunst shows how Hearn had to find alternatives to plot in attention to detail, and in incorporation of elements of dream and nightmare in his sketches and “tales”. He shows how, in translating, Hearn added freely and made the translated work his own. Though his extensive Japanese output made Hearn a translator in a wider sense, Kunst emphasizes that he was both an American writer, particularly one in the gothic tradition of Edgar Allan Poe and William Faulkner, and an immigrant American writer, who introduced other cultures to America. The usefulness of Kunst’s study is affirmed by a clear chronology and bibliography-though the latter needs to be updated.
