The mask of evil

This book offers 1) a critical analysis both of purported «influence» and of the consequences for Brecht's work of genuine response to Chinese and Japanese forms and thought. 2) a comparative study of that response from the perspective both of Western reaction to East Asia (Meyerhold, Eisenstein, Pound etc.) and of the disjunctions and comparabilities between Western and Eastern modes of expression 3) following a contrastive description of the social context of aesthetic form, a definition of the position of Brecht's work as «critical dialectics».