Drawing on classical Chinese poetics and English criticism from the eighteenth century to the Romantic period, this book is an intercultural study of the poetics of nature imagery. It addresses the two interrelated issues of mental perception and poetic representation of nature and pays special attention to theories of integrating natural imagery and human sentiment.

By contextualizing several major premises covering a similar area of critical concern in two different traditions, it suggests the possibility of constructing a common poetics in a specifically demarcated area.