In his studies of borrowing from distant poetic traditions, Serrano uncovers the heterogeneity of influences and intentions in the most canonical of texts: Mallarme (1842-98), Segalen (1878-1919), Wang Wei (701-61), the Classic of Poetry (8th century BCE), Buhturi (821-97), and the Qur'an (7th century CE). Revealing, among other things, that Mallarme was really a Chinese poet, that ancient Chinese poets discovered the workings of film imagery, and that the Qur'an's apparently disjointed narrative is profoundly lyrical, Serrano overturns accepted notions of how to read individual works and brings the methodologies from the study of one literature to bear on the reading of another with surprising results.