Chinese Studies Commons^™

A Supplement To Kant's Antinomy Of Appreciative Judgment, Junfeng Cao

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The antinomy of appreciative judgment proposed in Kant's Critique of Judgment is a unique way of representing the inherent contradiction in aesthetic experience, and it embodies Kant's dialectics in its developmental form. After an elongated process of complex reasoning, Kant believed that he had elaborated clearly the antinomy but actually his solution did not achieve the desired purpose. The present paper starts with Kant's standpoint and way of thinking, and tries to supplement his elaboration of the antinomy of appreciative judgment. The re-examination of Kant's antinomy of appreciative judgment may cast some light for contemporary aesthetics.

Contributions Of Kantian Aesthetics To The World And Its Significances To China, Jishan Lin

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

For quite a long time, Chinese aesthetics circle approaches Kant's aesthetics with a strong ideological political stance, which has led to gross misunderstanding and distortion of Kant's aesthetics and resultant failure in evaluating Kant's contributions to the world and the significances to China. The most significant contribution of Kant's aesthetics is that it starts with the modern aesthetic dilemma of empiricism and rationalism aesthetics and departs from there to break through the subjecthood-centred thinking in the aesthetic history. Kant's aesthetics reaches the solution to the focal aesthetic problem of "how pleasant feeling can share the nature of the ration," which …

Chinese Drama Writing And The Evolution Of The Drama Genre, Changji Li

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The researches on Chinese drama style and the drama writing have much to be desired in the scholarship on ancient Chinese drama studies. This paper approaches the genre of Chinese drama from the perspectives of genetic and typological relationships, and it proposes that Chinese ancient drama form matures as the result of literati's integrating folk arts into the drama writing. In terms of narrative methods and structure, the paper analyzes the essential features of drama-prose style (xiwen) from the Southern Song to Yuan Dynasties, the plot-content style (guanmu) in the variety drama (zaju) and the legend style (chuanqi) in the …

Is Modernity A Mirror Or A "Flower"?: On The "Vision" Of Rojas's The Naked Gaze: Reflections On Chinese Modernity, Wei Lin

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The essential issue of visual culture is to position the self and the world through vision. Rojas's subject of research is the literature and arts in the late Qing Dynasty to modern period, and he attempts a visual interpretation of Chinese modernity through constructing a three-dimensional visual system, in which the self-mirroring subjects, audience and object co-exist. He maintains that the body, as a visual object, is both a mirror-like screen, and the unreal image in the mirror, which provides the subject of visual desire as the other with a concrete channel of presentation. Through the interrelationship between time and …

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 …

On The Reference Of Directional Positioning In The Han-Dynasty Stone Carvings, Qing Wang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In the Han-Dynasty stone carvings, the objects positioned at the centre of the planar graph are designated as the reference of directions, with the left on the surface standing for the east and the right for the west. This is the opposite to the direction positioning practice in modern graphics or cartography. This principle of direction positioning was not confined to the stone carvings alone, but was a general rule applied in almost all of the Han rituals such as the sword-wearing ritual of kings, the formation of marching armies, the ceremonial formation of vehicles and horses, and even the …

Three Dimensions Of Kant's Laws Of Nature, Youfeng Hu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In his critical philosophy, Kant defined the duality of nature and held nature to be a thing-in-itself that was unknowable in the metaphysical sense. From the perspective of epistemology, however, Kant confined nature into the phenomenal field, claiming the priority of man over nature through the artificial legislation for nature. The inconsistence between nature in phenomenal sense and in the thing-in-itself sense was obvious. In his Critique of Judgment, Kant reconsidered the interconnection between the two different concepts of nature through his re-explanation of nature from the teleological perspective, and he eventually put forward the proposition that nature generates itself …

文苑 (重刊號第14期), 第十八屆嶺南大學學生會中文系系會 (流觴)

文苑

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The Tokugawa Samurai: Values & Lifestyle Transition, Kathleen A. Mcgurty

Student Publications

The Tokugawa period of Japan was a time of great prosperity but also great strife among the social classes. Of the most affected peoples of the Japanese feudal system was the samurai, who had so long been at the center of military and even political power. For hundreds of years, these highly revered peoples had lived a consistent life based off of virtues passed on through a code, and have also lived comfortable lives due to special powers that were reserved for them.

However, with a lack of warfare and increasing Western influence on the political, social, and military system …

The Literariness Of Theory: A New Perspective On Writing Textbooks Of Literary Theory, Yang Liu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Toward the second decade of the 21st century, literary theory textbooks should absorb the recent developments in literary theory around the world. In contrast to the two existent measures of aniti-theory and the politicization of theory, "the literariness of theory" may be more instructive in the writing of college literary theory textbooks. Literariness has gradually entered the academic field of humanities and liberal arts, and it has helped to form a legitimate discourse for the discipline of literary theory. This discourse is mediated through situations which have the contents such as narrative, fiction, imagination, metaphor, language, dialogue, suspense, anecdotes and …

The Paradigm Shift Of Literary Theory And Its Discourse Renovation, Wenfang Yao

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The literary theory discourse has undergone extensive innovation in recent decades in two main ways: using the existent concepts and inventing new concepts. When inventing new concepts, two methods are seen to be reinvesting existent concepts with new meaning and changing the meaning of the existent concepts. These transformation mechanisms are corresponding to Kuhn's theorization of paradigm and Foucault's theorization of discourse. The discourse innovation is required for the paradigm shift in literary theory, and it embodies the prescriptive features of the literary theory paradigm such as the age, society, economy, geography, and language, giving new content and form to …

The System Of The Press And The Emergence Of Chinese Contemporary Literature, Jun Zhang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The way the system of the press intervenes in the emergence and development of Chinese contemporary literature (1949-1976) requires convincing research from the academic circle. In fact, the system of the press affects the existence of contemporary literature in the three progressive aspects. Initially, the socialist ownership of the press turns the old-new and left-right dichotomies into the imbalanced state dominated by "the literature for the new people." Then, the agency dilemma of the press leads to the competition between the different literary discourses and interests in the internal integration of contemporary literature. Finally, the operation principles of the sectionalist …

The Sociology Of Texts And The Institutionalisation Of Literary Languages, Zima Peter·V.

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

This paper is divided into three parts. The first part is based on one of the basic insights of the Russian Formalists, namely that the literary text is linked to society by language, an insight that is absent from traditional sociologies of literature. The second part defines the literary text as a universal linguistic experiment that is at the same time a model of society at a particular historical moment. The third part deals with the question how literary languages are institutionalised by individual writers or groups of writers in manifestos, collective works and experimental texts. The basic aim is …

On Steinberg's Appreciation Of Jasper Johns: A Reflection On The Criticism Of Avant-Garde Art, Xiaolin Qiu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The stylistic difference between the avant-garde art and the traditional proves to be a big challenge even to art critics. The pressure posed by the title of art critic may propel the critics to produce a pioneering theory or an over-interpretation. Over-interpretation may be exemplified by Leo Steinberg's appreciative analysis of Jasper Johns. After a close examination, the paper claims that Steinberg had not really stepped out of the dominating shadow of formalism. The essential reason for his failure lies in the fact that Steinberg failed in grasping the essential nature of self-authorization in modern art, and the paper maintains …

On The Marginalization Of Natural Beauty In The Western Aesthetics Under The Context Of Modernity, Zedong Zhou

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

This paper aims to analyze from the perspective of modernity the causes of the marginalization of natural beauty in modern and contemporary Western aesthetics, after pointing out that aesthetic studies have been increasingly focusing on arts instead of nature as its object. The marginalization of nature in aesthetics is closely related with modernity, as the philosophical foundation of modernity is the rationalization of subject-centeredness. The highlighting of the subjecthood under the Enlightenment rationality was significant in defying God's sovereignty, but with its development and its turn to instrumental rationality, Enlightenment rationality had gradually evolved into a form of power or …

On The Temporality In Shklovsky's Literary Thoughts, Yanshun Liu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Shklovsky maintained that literary works are for the high-quality reading pleasure, which is embodied in the moving and spontaneous time-course. He then started with the effect of reading on the automation and the breaking of "attention," trying to distinguish between literary language, everyday language and scientific language, and proclaimed that the pleasure of reading literary works is intuitive and fresh. When reading literary language, the pleasure of reading was not only strengthened in intensity but also prolonged in duration, and reading experience was understood as a process of the internal time consciousness. In his later years, he proposed the mobile …

Reflection On The Discursive Evolution Of The Socialist Realism In The Soviet Union, Qichao Zhou

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Literary criticism is a form of discursive practice. Socialist realism is a key concept in the process of contemporary literature both in the Soviet Union and in China. The delineation of the trajectory along which the concept evolves may help the reflection on its historical function. In terms of the effects of the discursive practice, "the open system" of socialist realism is de facto "openness in conservatism," which does promote the "spiritual liberation" in the circles of literary criticism and literary creation. The open system can also be understood as "open conservatism," and it was indeed meant to be the …

Restraining In Theory: A Review Of The Debate Between Derrida And Searle, Qing Feng

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The paper tries to reflect on the debate between Jacques Derrida and John R. Searle, in which Derrida tried to deconstruct Searle's speech-act theory with his usual style of approaching other theories with his preconceived ethical-political view. Searle, on the other hand, reproaches Derrida for his purposeful obscuration in his act of deconstruction and his ignorance of Anglo-American philosophy of language. The debate revealed the political intention of deconstructive criticism, but it has also brought Searle's linguistic theory to the attention of literary theorists.

Speech, Rituals And Chanting In The Shang And Zhou Dynasties: An Exploration Into The Tradition Of Chanting In Han Chinese Culture, Guoan Zhang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Based on the critical interpretation of oracle bone scripts and bronze inscriptions from the Zhou Dynasty, the paper attempts to delineate the rituals and chanting in the Shang and early Zhou Dynastes. The paper proposes that the original meaning of "word" (言 yan) in the oracle bone script was imaged from the buccal reed talk, and that the communicative function of the buccal reed was the basis for the derivation of the meaning "speech" (言语 yanyu) from the character "yan". The features of "conveying language in music" and "confirming music with language" in the buccal reed performance were the primary …

The "Village Opinion" Society And The Fundamental Concept Of Literary Values In The Sixteen-State Period, Danjun Cai

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

This paper investigates the fundamental concept of literary values in the Sixteen-State Period (304-439) in the Northern area in China. Different from the situation of the southern area where scholars mainly gathered in the towns, the scholars in the Northern area mostly lived in the village of clan community. The social environment of "the village opinion" (xiang lun) had decisive impact on the formation of humanistic values. The impact manifested mainly in two aspects. On the one hand, the formation of the village opinion in the society was inseparable from the village election since the Han and Wei Dynasties. As …