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Chapter 8 - Illusion and Disillusion

The Making of Lafcadio Hearn

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2019

By
S. Frederick Starr
Edited by
T. R. Johnson
T. R. Johnson
Affiliation:
Tulane University, Louisiana
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Summary

New Orleans was central to the career of Lafcadio Hearn, the city where the young writer grew adept at explaining one culture to another – in this case, the downtown Creole culture of New Orleans to North American audiences – a skill that would serve him well when he moved to Japan. For Hearn, New Orleans signified the opposite of the mainstream US cultural values of materialism, commerce, progress, and efficiency – ideals he associated with the father who abandoned him. Instead, the city embodied the feminine, the exotic, the sensual, and a tropical lassitude that, for Hearn, became the opposite of modernity and in turn the essence of beauty.

Keywords

CincinnatiJapanAdrien RouquetteGeorge Washington CableBuddhismSt. Bernard ParishFilipino LouisianamodernityHarper’sNew Orleans Times-Democrat
Type
Chapter
Information
New Orleans
A Literary History
 , pp. 96 - 112
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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