Chinese Studies Commons^™

Unfinished Subject: Empathy And Subject-Construction In Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep？, Simeng Miao

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? not only invites us to think about the problems of androids' identity, but also forces people into rethinking the existence of ourselves. As the subject, a man recognizing himself is firstly concerned with "identification/distinction." In the constructed world of the novel, the core of identification/distinction lies in the identification between a human being and an android. Empathy plays an important role in subject construction, which indicates that the subject can grasp others through bodily experience to achieve self-construction. However, it is merely imaginary to grasp the subjectivity of others through …

A New Discussion On Kuang Zhouyi's Ci-Poetry Criticism, Keqiang Sun

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Some new findings about Kuang Zhouyi's critical materials on ci-poetry enable us to review and re-evaluate Kuang's theoretical contribution to ci-poetry criticism which include his explorations into the ci-poetry in the Southern and Northern Song Dynasties and his theoretical explanation of the concept of "big." The paper claims that Kuang should be given full justice as an important ci-poetry scholar in the late Qing dynasty.

Aesthetics In Cross-Cultural Perspective, Davies Stephen

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In this paper I attempt reconcile two apparently opposed views: artworks are embedded in culturally relative art-historical contexts and cannot be fully understood without an awareness of these contexts, yet artworks trade in themes that are universally and perennially of human interest, such as war and peace, and shape these to cater to shared, biologically based perceptual systems. The first explains some of the difficulties we face in understanding and appreciating art cross-culturally. The second indicates why, nevertheless, a degree of cross-cultural artistic appreciation is possible. As well, our grasp of the challenges and possibilities of the media from which …

An Exploration Into The Logics Of Language Construction During The May Fourth Period, Wei Deng

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In his History of National Language Movement, Li Jinxi discussed the process of language construction in the May 4th period with a focus on the pronunciation while putting the vernacular movement into his narrative of the national language movement history. On the other hand, Hu Shi paid high attention to written language and tried to construct the national language with "vernacular literature," hoping to use "a literature of national language" to create "a national language of literature." Hu Shi's endeavor showed the general logic of language construction during the May Fourth period, that is, to construct a modern national language …

Deconstructing Utopian Imagination: The Allegory Of Solaris And Others, Dan Chen

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Utopia is a socio-economic sub-genre of science fiction. The question of how to imagine a utopia is actually an issue of how to write out the image of a utopia. In Stanislaw Lem's Solaris, there is a formal strategy of "double inscription," which turns the limitation of utopian genre into allegory and critical merits. Thus, it is possible to refute it from the inside of its anthropocentric totality and to divert the interpretation into the field of political ethics. As a result, the surface binary opposition between self and the other is nullified, and the imagination of a zero-degree Utopia, …

Event-Truth And Literary Criticism: On Badiou's Reading Beckett, Cheng Tan

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Alain Badiou rejects the conventional idea that Samuel Beckett was a playwright associated with the Theatre of the Absurd. He points out that, in Beckett's writing, there is ideological transfer from "solipsism" to "event." As has been shown in Beckett's later works, he devoted himself to his reflection about "event," thus creating a text of "truth." Badiou, through his idea of Inaesthetics, attempts to understand Beckett in Beckett's own way. From the inherent ideological structure of the text, Badiou constructs critical concepts for the text, and consequently makes the truth of text appear in the form of concepts. He succeeds …

How Consumer Phenomenon Enters Literary Writing, Changzhong Wang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Representation of consumer culture is universal in literary writing and consumption has contributed an extensive content for literary works. When writing about consumer culture, literary production becomes an integral part of the culture. The paper argues that the consumption of literary writing implies an essentially literary discourse instead of consumer culture discourse. Literary writing about consumption shows distinctive characteristics of discursive presence: common and widespread capacity, localized and fragmented modality, and penetrative and interspersed mechanism. In view of the features such as the value, attributes, discursive features, it may be argued that the narrative strategies in literary writing about consumer …

Literature And History: On Hayden White's Theory Of Tropology And Its Effect, Zilu Yang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The paper focuses on Hayden White's theory of tropology, and tackles the issue of trans-boundary between literature and history. White's discourse upon the poetry of history relies on the revelation of the mechanism of tropology. This paper demonstrates the four key concepts, namely, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony, comprising in the connotation of tropology. This quadruple structure points to a certain internal continuity in human consciousness, and constitutes the main mechanism of historical discourse in meaning-production. Classical historians establish the basic forms of writing by way of tropology, and then influence the three layers of writing, namely, weaving of a …

Liu Cixin'sThe Three-Body Problem And The Desire To The Future, Feng Wang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Science fiction is a description to the possible world of the future, and the future is a special time dimension which cannot be reached but can only be treated as a vision upon reality. Liu's The Three-Body Problem provides us with the possibility of the evil in the future. The description of the future reveals in words a future not yet experienced, and it does so in a way that treats the unexperienced as a world already in existence, and therefore it is more an interpretation than factual description. The interpretation of the future in such description operates on the …

A Bridge Across The Pacific: A Study Of The Shifting Relationship Between Portland And The Far East, Michael Todd Gagle

Dissertations and Theses

After Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931, both Japan and China sought the support of America. There has been a historical assumption that, starting with the hostilities in 1931, the Japanese were maligned in American public opinion. Consequently, the assumption has been made that Americans supported the Chinese without reserve during their conflict with Japan in the 1930s.

The aim of this study is to question the accuracy of that assumption in the case of Portland, Oregon. An analysis of newspapers and print material specifically focusing on Japan and China from before the conflict reveal that the general American opinion of …

Spiritual Formation Of Young Adults In China: A Case Study Of Protagonists In Boxers And Saints, Xu Bian

Seattle Pacific Seminary Theses

The thesis examines the spiritual development of young adult protagonists depicted in Boxers and saints by Gene Luen Yang using the framework of six spiritual components and the approach of critical content analysis. It shows that the six elements, journey, transcendence, community, religion, mystery of creation, and transformation, are involved regardless of different religions people are converted to. In addition, religions provide an avenue for spirituality to mature given that spirituality is an intrinsic and universal characteristic of human beings regardless of their religious beliefs or lack of them. Finally, spirituality is not superior to religions because of the two …

Confucian Thought And Care Ethics: An Amicable Split?, Andrew Lambert

Publications and Research

Since Chenyang Li’s (1994) groundbreaking article there has been interest in reading early Confucian ethics through the lens of care ethics. In this paper, I examine the prospects for dialogue between the two in light of recent work in both fields.

I argue that, despite some similarities, early Confucian ethics is not best understood as a form of care ethics, of the kind articulated by Nel Noddings (1984, 2002) and others. Reasons include incongruence deriving from the absence in the Chinese texts of a developed account of need, and doubts about whether the parent-child relationship in Confucian thought is best …

爐火升起, Ka Yan Wu

Dissertations from all years

文昇是一個在大牌檔工作了大半輩子的老員工。他性格忠厚，十五歲便入行工作，一直到三十五歲時，重遇了早年認識的大牌檔同行順哥。在那個經濟蓬勃的黃金時代，順哥藉炒賣樓房及股票而風生水起。這次重遇成為文昇一生的第一個轉折點——相信天道酬勤的他改變心態，與順哥合夥做生意，不料「九七」金融風暴把這一切覆滅，他一無所有。

在窮困潦倒時，文昇通過「假結婚」賺錢應急，因此認識了妻子碧英。可惜他的人生就如大牌檔的命運一樣一直走下坡，再無起色。到了文昇六十多歲時，政府因大牌檔生意慘淡而決定把地方收回。面臨著即將失業的危機，以及養育年幼兒子的負擔，他感到彷徨。

本文不僅是敘述這個普通員工的一生，更希望呈現透過他一生，反映香港時代的變化，以及大牌檔的興衰；借整理、回顧過去，表達我們身處在這個年代，面對一些本土事物、價值慢慢失去時，雖彷徨無力，卻仍持有堅韌的生命力繼續生活。面對時代的衝擊，不肯妥協的我們，該如何走下去？

Daoism And Disability, Andrew Lambert

Publications and Research

Ideas found in the early Daoist texts can inform current debates about disability, since the latter often involve assumptions about personhood and agency that Daoist texts do not share. The two canonical texts of classical Daoism, the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi, do not explicitly discuss disability as an object of theory or offer a model of it. They do, however, provide conceptual resources that can enrich contemporary discussions of disability. Two particular ideas are discussed here. Classical Daoist thinking about the body undermines normative assumptions about it that attributions of ‘disabled’ often depend upon; and Daoism vividly problematises the …

Women, Gender And Family In Chinese History, Kitty Lam

Religion and Philosophy in the Ancient World

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Neighborhood Size And Morphology In The Chinese Language, Long Nguyen

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The Neighborhood Size Effect (NSE), characterized as the effect in word determination based on changing one orthographic aspect of that word. The amount of words that can be created through such manipulation is called a neighborhood size (NS). Number of other factors such as frequency, how often a word appears and morphology, the combination of meaningful word units, have been suggested to have an overriding effect on NSE. In addition, there is a lack of research on NSE with non-alphabetical languages such as Chinese, which uses characters comprising of a multitude of semantic or phonetic markers. In this experiment, participants …

流年, Leung Chau

Dissertations from all years

同一片土地，兩個迴異的時代。兩個不同的故事，一個相同的結局。在這個城市裏，是時代呼應了我們，還是我們呼應了時代？反反覆覆，七百萬人過着一樣的人生。

流年似水，在這片土地上，每個人的「流年」都被關在同一個時空裏，大家不能掌控自己的命運。然而，這個封閉的小世界，卻是每個人心中追尋夢想的舞台。

夢起夢逝，最終都是南柯一夢，不能圓夢。

從《說文‧木部》分析中國古代農業及手工業的發展情況, Siu Fan Lo

Dissertations from all years

本文以《說文‧木部》的字為核心研究範圍，透過考證其字義，結合西方社會分工論中第二次社會大分工的概念，並以相關史料佐證，分析中國古代農業與手工業的面貌及發展情況。

《說文‧木部》收錄的字主要可分為農業類及手工業類，這兩大類之下可再細分為樹木名稱類、果實類、樹木結構類、農業工具類、交通工具類、軍事刑具類、建築類、日常生活類、傢具類、喪葬死亡類及祭祀禮樂類，總共十一類。這些字例能在一定程度上反映東漢或以前農業與手工業的面貌及發展情況，結合史料佐證，更完整地還原當時農業與手工業的面貌及發展情況。

探析「簋」的字形變化及其文化意義, Yim Ping Leung

Dissertations from all years

簋，常用卻鮮為人所熟知的字。據現代漢語，或廣東方言所理解的「簋」，已由盛飯器具引申為盛食物的用具，如九大簋，即粵俗所言的盛宴。可見「簋」作為飲食器具所反映的飲食文化，至今仍是影響我們。雖現時隸寫的「簋」仍循小篆發展而來，是一會意字，但其字形、字音、字義及文化都經過了相當繁複的發展，當中涉及古字、假借字，異體字等等的影響而成今天的「簋」。由其字形演變，亦可略見食器反映的相關文化。

「簋」的字源相當複雜，支流繁多，不同時期涉及不同的字形。「簋」由甲骨文的象形字，到金文假借至另一個會意字，另出現了為「簋」而創的形聲專字，影響後期小篆的字形發展，今變為从竹、从皿、从皀的「簋」字。其字源、字形、字音及其相關的異體字一直是眾學家研究的方向，有關的研究亦不少。雖然學界大致認同其字義是食具之義，但對其字形變化的解釋卻有所差異，亦沒有詳細述論現今「簋」字的形成之因。

故本文簡單從縱向的方法整理出不同學者對「簋」字形、字義、字音的解釋，分析他們的相同及相異之處，嘗試整理出較為合理，能貫穿「簋」的字形及文化之義的解釋；重點補充「簋」金文與小篆之間的戰國文字，以及食器「簋」的功用演變，嘗試以字形及文化解釋其後形成小篆「簋」的字形之因，清楚梳理「簋」的字例演變。略說「簋」與其異體字的字形、字音的關係。望能更進一步的補充「簋」的形，音，義，以及找出書寫現今「簋」字从竹、从皿、从皀之因。

「妒」與「療妒」、「靈」與「慾」 : 論《聊齋誌異》的〈江城〉、〈邵女〉與〈馬介甫〉, Yi Wang Chan

Dissertations from all years

清人蒲松齡所寫的《聊齋誌異》以幻寫實，以故事反映社會百態。當中以妒婦為題的故事不小，明顯描述的約有十八篇。從其「療妒懲悍」的歷程可見女性心理與行為的轉變，反映當代女性的精神面貌。過往多討論《聊齋誌異》中妒婦的形象、社會制度對妒婦的影響、療妒的手段與蒲松齡對妒婦的態度等，較少深入探討女主人公的心理轉變，尤其欠缺西方心理學理論分析。故此，女主人公的心理層面具探討價值。

本文將從四部分分析〈江城〉、〈邵女〉與〈馬介甫〉。第一部分將簡述妒婦的定義，以及妒與悍的關係。第二部分將分析「療妒懲悍」故事與清代社會的關係及其意義，以史實助證。第三部分將以誘因、施暴與療妒懲悍，剖析三篇故事的女主人「療妒懲悍」的歷程，以便下文討論妒婦的精神面貌與內心的慾望。最後，第四部分將採用佛洛依德 (Sigmund Freud) 本我 (id) 、自我 (ego) 與超我 (superego) 的理論及施虐狂 (sadism) 之說分析，以西方學說闡釋妒婦的心理及其行為轉變的原因，重新探討她們的想望與困境。