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Full-Text Articles in Chinese Studies
On Beauty: Its Naming And Reference, Hongxiang Li
On Beauty: Its Naming And Reference, Hongxiang Li
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
What is beauty? This is the first and an everlasting question in aesthetics. However, there is no clear definition about beauty so far in aesthetic history because of the confusion of name and reference. Beauty is often interpreted as the beautiful thing or the beautiful attribution of thing. This paper aims to delineate the problematic of the naming and reference of beauty by putting the problem back to the context of Plato's time and tracing the process of the formation of this philosophic concept. The paper falls into three sections, which first problematizes the naming of beauty and the reasons …
Truth / Method: The Gadamer-Ricoeur Debate, Jin Qiu, Fenggang Du
Truth / Method: The Gadamer-Ricoeur Debate, Jin Qiu, Fenggang Du
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
There exist remarkable differences between Gadamer's and Ricoeur's understandings of the concepts "truth" and "method." Ricoeur believes that Gadamer's hermeneutics brings about the disjuncture of hermeneutic truth, while Gadamer holds that Ricoeur's structuralist method cannot integrate the conflicts of interpretations into a unified ontology. This paper points out that both philosophers develop their theories of truth on the basis of Heidegger's hermeneutical ontology, but in different ways. Gadamer focuses on the truth of understanding disclosed in the event of hermeneutic dialogue, while Ricoeur emphasizes the truth of self-understanding mediated by hermeneutic reflection. Both philosophers keep similar distance from the absolute …
Culture Trauma, Morality And Solidarity: The Social Construction Of "Holocaust" And Other Mass Murders, C. Alexander Jeffrey
Culture Trauma, Morality And Solidarity: The Social Construction Of "Holocaust" And Other Mass Murders, C. Alexander Jeffrey
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Cultural trauma occurs when members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways. By constructing cultural traumas, social groups, national societies, and sometimes even entire civilizations, not only cognitively identify the existence and source of human suffering, but may also take on board some significant moral responsibility for it. Insofar as they identify the cause of trauma in a manner that assumes such moral responsibility, members of collectivities define their solidary relationships that allow …
Rethinking Camp: From Sontag's "Notes On Camp" To Camp Films, Wensi Li
Rethinking Camp: From Sontag's "Notes On Camp" To Camp Films, Wensi Li
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Susan Sontag's 1964 article "Notes on Camp" resurfaces to the reading public with the 10th anniversary of her death. As a term, "camp" became well known during the 1960s, yet its origin can be traced to the 17th century. As a notion of taste, the camp sensibility is active in all fields of nostalgic collections, avant-garde and independent art, rock music and fashion. As a genre of subculture, camp is closely linked with the development of the queer theory, the youth movement and the politics of homosexuality. Camp appreciation can also be seen in the film industry, which provides us …
Body, Aesthetics And Politics: On Eagleton's View Of Body, Wei Wang
Body, Aesthetics And Politics: On Eagleton's View Of Body, Wei Wang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Terry Eagleton's discourse on body tries to reconnect body with traditional political themes such as state governance, class contradictions and the mode of production. Researchers on the theoretical sources of his body discourse — the body of labor, the body of power, and the body of desire — often overlooks his ambitions to rebuild the rational and the political, and his commentaries on bodies under discipline, in carnival, in pain, or in terror. In this context, he emphasizes that the prevailing discourse of postmodern body is a product of failed politics of class and he accuses the discourse of over-emphasis …
Theorization And Pluralism: A Study Of Danto's Idea On The End Of Art, Bing Zhang
Theorization And Pluralism: A Study Of Danto's Idea On The End Of Art, Bing Zhang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
This paper argues that two key words to grasp Danto's idea on the end of art are theorization and pluralism, and these two terms explain the exposition of the end of art in Danto's philosophy. Danto's argument for theorization may be the essence of his idea on the end of art, which means that art has become a philosophy while pluralism has become the existence mode of art after the end of art. The diversity of art's existence is the result of the end of art.
Anti-Theory And Theory: A Study Of F. R. Leavis's Concept Of Criticism, Xiangchun Meng
Anti-Theory And Theory: A Study Of F. R. Leavis's Concept Of Criticism, Xiangchun Meng
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
F. R. Leavis's critical practice has been habitually and conveniently labeled as anti-theoretical. His debate with Rene Wellek in the 1930s on "literature vs. philosophy" was a proof to his aversion to rigid theory and abstraction. Leavis maintained that literary criticism in practice should engage itself with elements such as human nature, life, morality and reality, which led to the labeling of him as a "practical critic." What Leavis was against in the so-called "anti-theory" is essentially the routinization, dogmatism and abstraction in literary criticism practice, and Leavis held up to the empirical tradition of literary criticism, emphasizing on literariness …
Historical Totality: The Plight Of Re-Enchantment: A Critical Review Of Jameson's Major Code Of Narrative Politics, Kaiyan Zhang
Historical Totality: The Plight Of Re-Enchantment: A Critical Review Of Jameson's Major Code Of Narrative Politics, Kaiyan Zhang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
As one of the major codes in Jameson's cultural and political hermeneutics, "the totality history," while yielding much insight, has a tendency of re-enchantment (mystification). Jameson thinks that the individual perceptual experience is not true for the totality history, while the totality history can not be recognized and grasped by any individual, so his theory has obvious mystification tendency and intrinsic paradox. Meantime, Jameson's totality history view also encounters severe query and challenge in the post-modern context. Solving the plight Jameson faced is not to deny the existence of the historical totality, but to absorb Chinese and western philosophers' wisdom …
Art And Annotation: On The Relationship Of Visibility And Annotation In The Visual Arts, Majetschak Stefan
Art And Annotation: On The Relationship Of Visibility And Annotation In The Visual Arts, Majetschak Stefan
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Works of the visual arts in the tradition of European and American modernism have lost many of the features that were considered for a long time to be obvious characteristics of the artistic constitution of art works as such. In fact, it proved to be the case early in the modern period that there did not have to be any features or characteristics — neither material nor phenomenal — by means of which artistic artifacts could be distinguished from non-artistic objects. For works of art and humdrum everyday objects can in borderline cases appear identical to the eye of an …
Ihab Hassan: The Pioneer Of The Theorization Of Postmodernism, Juan Mao
Ihab Hassan: The Pioneer Of The Theorization Of Postmodernism, Juan Mao
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Ihab Hassan is a pioneer and key figure in the theoretical debate on postmodernism in the late half of the twentieth Century. In a relative stagnant period of literary criticism theory, he surveys various types of pioneer literature, proposes for the first time the theory of postmodernism, and elaborates on the characteristics and theoretical implications of postmodernism. He extends the theory of postmodernism further to the fields of culture and philosophy, and with it his influence has also spread from the United States to Europe and other parts of the world. Hassan defines the fundamental characteristics of postmodernism as "indetermanence." …
Literature And The Therapy Of Passion: Catharsis Against The Extreme Violence, Darmon Jean-Charles, Xi Xiao
Literature And The Therapy Of Passion: Catharsis Against The Extreme Violence, Darmon Jean-Charles, Xi Xiao
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Jonathan Littell's novel The Kindly Ones describes the process and details of the holocaust from the perspective of a Nazi officer and in doing so it depicts the protagonist as an ancient Greek tragic hero. This way of appropriating the antagonist to the empathy effect and literary catharsis and sympathy tries to achieve therapeutic purpose, but this way invokes much criticism. How can fiction interact with the (re) construction of emotions associated to mass extermination, especially when such emotions are reactivated from the point of view of an SS officer? After reexamining some of the questions raised by Jonathan Littell's …
The Genealogy, Objects And Subjects Of Visual Culture Studies, Qiong Wu
The Genealogy, Objects And Subjects Of Visual Culture Studies, Qiong Wu
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
The rise of visual culture studies in the 1970s and 1980s in the academic field benefited from postwar French New Theory and was linked with the Western critical reflection on modernity/post-modernity, and it has brought about some fundamental changes in the methodologies and problematic in many areas of humanities research. This paper attempts to delineate the development of visual culture studies in the West, and describes the basic issues concerning its genealogy, objects and subjects.
A Thematic Research Of Merleau-Ponty's Le Doute De Cézanne, Ying Zhang
A Thematic Research Of Merleau-Ponty's Le Doute De Cézanne, Ying Zhang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
This paper examines the theme of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Le Doute de Cézanne and tries to trace his early thoughts and question consciousness. Albeit a well-known essay, Le Doute de Cézanne is generally regarded as a phenomenological casual essay, but this label does not explain the paradoxes from the perspective of detail and structure of the essay. Merleau-Ponty argued for the discard of personal character, life experience and artistic inheritance in the research of Cezanne but also points out that Cezanne's life and his works shared the same adventure. The essay has also devoted many words to the life of Da …
A Study Of The Prototypes Of Romance, Limin Li
A Study Of The Prototypes Of Romance, Limin Li
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
As a genre, romance lasts for thousands of years, and it has fixed narrative modes, characters and situations. However, the genre cannot be long-lasting by its stable structure, characters and situations alone. By re-examining the definition, history, classification and stylistic evolution of the genre, and by way of the theories of structuralist narratology, the paper summarizes three romance prototypes, namely, structure prototype, character prototype, and situation prototype, and it proceeds to demonstrate that the changing of "satellites" which breaks the readers' expectation on romance provides the readers with reading pleasure. This explains the high popularity of romance since 12th century. …
More Than Being Alive: On Albert Camus' Works Of Absurdity From The Perspective Of The Consciousness Of Absurdity, Bo Zhang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
From the beginning of his writing career, Albert Camus had taken "the consciousness of absurd" as his fundamental guideline. Through a series of works, he explored how human-being with that consciousness lived in the absurd world and how they tried to redefine their meaning of life with their own forces. In L'Etranger and Caligula, Camus portrayed a picture of nihilism and despotism resulted from the consciousness of absurdity, while in La Mort heureuse and Le mythe de Sisyphe the same consciousness had led to the pursuit for happiness in the human world. This essay charts the trajectory of Camus' creative …
Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Greening Studies Of Postcolonialism, Fuguang Miao
Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Greening Studies Of Postcolonialism, Fuguang Miao
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Postcolonial ecocriticism develops in the ecocrtitical turn of postcolonialism, and as the new development of postcolonialism, it is grounded on postcolonialism and ecocriticism, starting with and ending in the study of postcolonialism. This paper starts with a retrospective analysis of postcolonialism and then it examines postcolonial ecocriticism's theoretical sources in terms of ecological thoughts, history of colonialization, ecological imperialism and postcolonialism. The paper proceeds to summarize three main tasks of postcolonial ecocriticism, namely, tracing the historical connection between racism and speciesism, exposing the paradox between development and conservation of environment, and interpreting animal and environment writings in literary discourses, so …
Schapiro, Semiotics And Iconography, Xin Gao
Schapiro, Semiotics And Iconography, Xin Gao
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
During the 20th century, a theory transformation brought about by semiotics has inserted profound impact on almost all the disciplines of humanities, including anthropology, literary theory and art history. Starting with the aim at theorizing these studies, the movement has evolved into a capitalized Theory during its development that shifts its focuses to the ethical and political functions of literature and art and sacrifices the aesthetic values of literary texts. When Meyer Schapiro introduced semiotic methods into his art history studies, he could avoid the hazard. His introduction of semiotics into art history study, by bypassing the essentialist or metaphysical …
Terry Eagleton's Borrowing From Aristotle's Metaphysics Thought, Zhike Yin
Terry Eagleton's Borrowing From Aristotle's Metaphysics Thought, Zhike Yin
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Terry Eagleton's attention to theology and metaphysical issues is not a theology turn, for his thoughts on theology is not fully explicable in religious sense. God, for him, is a substitution for "essence." He insists that the postmodernists who deny the essence are actually essentialists with masks. Eagleton believes that the ultimate reason for human being is man itself, that is, the essence of mall. Essence, for him, is not common feature but the nature, and the nature is the form. The paper therefore argues that Aristotle's teleology has greatly influenced Eagleton.
The Ethical Responsibility Of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenological Theory Of Literature: On The Promoting Agency Of Literary Language To The Formation Of The Individual, Wei Jia
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Merleau-Ponty had revised Husserl's phenomenology of speech and Saussure's structuralist linguistics and developed his own phenomenology of speech, gaining insight into the intersubjectivity between speech and individual. His phenomenological research also shows that literary speech as a deviant form of everyday speech can not only boost the historical formation of the individual but also inherit something profound from the history.
How To Understand The Interdisciplinary Of Cultural Studies: Taking Hoggart's Uses Of Literacy As An Example, Jia Yan
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Richard Hoggart's Uses of Literacy established the basic paradigm for the interdisciplinary nature of the cultural studies, and its essential principle is to start from the "living culture" of social life, to study literary texts, especially the texts of popular culture rather than to study the texts of "classic literary works" determined by some experts and scholars, and to find how the texts influence and shape the everyday life of people (especially the working class). This purpose of cultural studies has entailed its genetic relationship with literature, popular culture and sociology, and in essence constituted a new way of literary …
On Spectral Criticism, Yanbing Zeng
On Spectral Criticism, Yanbing Zeng
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
A critical approach or theory called "spectral criticism" has gradually risen in the West in the past two decades. Blanchot's reading theory is considered as the origin of this theory. In Blanchot's view, the act of reding has a spectral nature, which attributes to the spectral nature of the text. The spectral nature of the text in turn determines the nature of the history embodied in the text. Shakespeare's Hamlet is identified as a typical spectral work, whose spectral nature appears both as specters in the play and in the spectral nature of the work itself. The origin of spectral …
On The Psychoanalytical Practice And The Artistic Practice, Althusser Louis, Zhifeng Wu
On The Psychoanalytical Practice And The Artistic Practice, Althusser Louis, Zhifeng Wu
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Initiation à la philosophie pour les non-philosophes, published by Presses Universitaires de France (January 2014), is one of Althusser's most important works. The present article is Chapters 14 and 15 of the book. In these two chapters, Althusser outlined psychoanalytical practice and showed its difficulties. He also discussed the influences that the psychoanalytical practice had on the practice and theory of arts. For Althusser, the analysis produced prodigious effects in the ideology and the philosophy, which he described as a real "Copernican reversal." Before Freud, everything in the man is believed to work in his consciousness, and the essence of …
Intention And Language: On Hirsch's Linguistic Explication Of The Author's Intention, Hong Pang
Intention And Language: On Hirsch's Linguistic Explication Of The Author's Intention, Hong Pang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
American scholar Hirsch insists on taking the author's intention as the essential premise and the fundamental basis of interpretation, and the main force which maintains his opinions is the explication, exploration and construction in linguistic dimension. Firstly, he indicates that intention is prior to language through the diagnosis of "semantic autonomism" and "ontological linguistics," and shows his critical reflection on the important cultural event — the linguistic turn. In light of this, Hirsch proposes the notion of "speaking subject" and emphasizes that intention can not be completely divorced from language and should be specified and clarified by the role of …
Marxism's Assimilation With And Borrowing From Formalism In Fredric Jameson's Literary Criticism, Jian'gang Yang
Marxism's Assimilation With And Borrowing From Formalism In Fredric Jameson's Literary Criticism, Jian'gang Yang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Fredric Jameson is undoubtedly one of the most important theorists in the history of the dialogue between Marxism and Formalism, and it may be said that his literary criticism is, to a large extent, a dialectical synthesis of the two, by assimilating with and borrowing from formalism while taking a standpoint in Marxism. This method is adopted in the whole process of his theoretical construction and literary criticism practice. Marxist criticism, which is based on the dialectical thinking, is theoretically formulated as a kind of meta-commentary, and this meta-commentary views history, politics and literary form as a kind of trinity …
Spivak's Strategies Of Theoretical Construction For Subaltern Studies, Yihua Chen, Peiyuan Lin
Spivak's Strategies Of Theoretical Construction For Subaltern Studies, Yihua Chen, Peiyuan Lin
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Spivak is a one of the core members of Subaltern Studies. She redefined the key categories and concepts of Subaltern Studies from a subaltern perspective, redefining the critical approaches of early Subaltern Studies. The paper argues that Spivak's Subaltern Studies, in a stricter sense, should not be viewed as a branch of postcolonial studies or feminist criticism. Subaltern Studies delineates the trajectory by which Subalterns' experiences are eliminated and reveals the political significance of Subalterns' resistance, which opens new possibilities for the Subalterns to enter the field of knowledge production.
F. R. Leavis And Cultural Studies: From Leavis To Hoggart, And To Williams, Ruiqing Zhang
F. R. Leavis And Cultural Studies: From Leavis To Hoggart, And To Williams, Ruiqing Zhang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
The present paper aims to clarify the genetic historical relationships between F. R. Leavis's cultural criticism and the discipline of Cultural Studies. It attempts a general survey of Leavis's criticism on culture, connecting him with the early development of Cultural Studies represented by Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams in the 1950s, and examines the complexity, contradictions and struggles in the transition from Leavis to Hoggrat and to Williams. Through an analysis of Leavis's cultural criticism, Hoggart's Uses of Literacy and Williams' Culture and Society, the paper delineates the internal relationships of intertextuality. The development of Cultural Studies has been a …
From "Nature" To "Nature-As-Such": A Reflection On The Object Of Ecocriticism, Qian Wang
From "Nature" To "Nature-As-Such": A Reflection On The Object Of Ecocriticism, Qian Wang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
What ecocriticism studies is not "nature" as material and substantial environment but "nature-as-such" that appearances in literary works. "Nature-as-such" is a conception between abstract idea and physical reality which could be understood by the way how natural things are described in literary works, and it could be used to explain how natural things are experienced in the real world. The conception of "nature-as-such" leads eco-criticism to step out of the first and the second wave in criticism which takes nature either as substantial environment or cultural construction, and enables ecocriticism to explain the relation between man and nature on ontological …
The Pragmatic Path Of The Somatic Turn In The Western Aesthetics, Xiaohua Wang
The Pragmatic Path Of The Somatic Turn In The Western Aesthetics, Xiaohua Wang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Since the early 20th century, a somatic turn has presented itself as increasingly influential in the Western aesthetics. As the science of sensory recognition, it initiates a return to the body-subject and life-world. In this process, the contribution of pragmatism is prominent. Since Charles Peirce proposed the principle of practice, the perspective which values the body has been introduced. The endeavors of scholars like William James, John Dewey and Charles William Morris have all constructed the artistic-esthetic paradigm on the basis of body experience. From the 1980s onwards, scholars such as Richard Shusterman and Mark Johnson put forward and define …
On The Abstraction Of Modern Art And The End Of Art, Xiuyin Peng, Zhendong Wu
On The Abstraction Of Modern Art And The End Of Art, Xiuyin Peng, Zhendong Wu
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
This paper aims at analyzing the abstraction as a method in the creative process of modern art. The paper argues that the reasons for abstraction may be attributed to two aspects. One aspect is the heteronomy from social modernity, and the other is the autonomy of the development of art itself. Since the birth of modern art, the meta-narrative of abstraction has been overdrawn through repeated transformations, which results in the claim of "the end of art." However, from a perspective not limited to the idea of progressiveness of art, art has not reached its end yet. Instead, art is …
Ecological Sensibility In Contemporary Western Cinema And The Theory Of Ecocinema, Shaoyi Sun
Ecological Sensibility In Contemporary Western Cinema And The Theory Of Ecocinema, Shaoyi Sun
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
This paper aims at introducing and analyzing the theory and practice of ecocinema inspired by literary ecocriticism at the turn of the new century. Based on an examination of the main concepts and lines of thought of some prominent ecocinema theorists and thinkers in the West, the paper argues that ecocinema has acquired its own terminology and become independent of its literary predecessor. This is mainly demonstrated in four aspects. First, from the perspective of cinema as a visual medium, debates about ecocinema have centered on issues of cinematic representations, film genres, and visual languages. Secondly, from the perspective of …