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Reflections On The Literariness In The Post-Theoretic Era: The Dispersion Of Meta-Narration And The Plight Of Essentialist Poetics, Yanfeng Li

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In the context of the dispersion of meta-narrative and the break-up in modernity, the paradigm of essentialist thinking faces the increasing crisis of representation of knowledge. The history of "big theory" is coming to an end, and the "post-theory" emerges as a new paradigm of discourse and system of knowledge. Post-theory takes on an anti-essentialist, non-centralist, pluralistic and historized standpoint of knowledge to reconstruct the validity of legitimacy, opposing rigid essentialism, logocentrism and the logic of totality and identification. With the advent of post-theory, the discourse paradigm of essentialist literariness and the essentialist poetics are faced with the question over …

The Audience Awareness In The Self-Annotations Among Mid-Tang Poets Such As Bai Juyi And Yuan Zhen, Zhiyue Yu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In Mid-Tang dynasty, self-annotations to poems were frequently practiced in Bai Juyi (772—846), Yuan Zhen (779—831) and other poets. This act as an extension of literary creation became an important means to assist their poetic expression, and it showed strong audience awareness. This act was especially practiced when poets edited their works for an expected interpretation of their works in later reading. Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen's desire to be memorized by later generations appeared to be stronger than other poets of their age. Bai Juyi assumed a relatively lower expectation of his readers, so he made many annotations to …

The Distinction Of Han And Wei Dynasty's Poetry And Its Poetic Significance, Honglin Wang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Poetry critics from the Ming and Qing dynasties explored the different features of the Han and Wei poetries, which resulted in the distinction between the poetries of the Han and Wei dynasties. Their explorations also indicated that the stylistic principles of poetry began to take shape. Wang Shizhen first claimed that Cao Zhi's achievements were lower than Cao Cao's, while Hu Yinglin examined the differences between the Han poetry and the Wei dynasty poetry, maintaining that Han poetry was unadorned and elegantly simple while Wei poetry was embellished with rhetorical strategies. These claims about Han and Wei poetry influenced the …

The Function Of Generalization In Art History: Understanding Art Across Traditions, Davies David

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The paper considers how one might assess the adequacy of art-historical accounts that exemplify what Michael Baxandall terms the 'inferential criticism' of paintings, where the latter is an instance of what Wollheim called 'criticism as retrieval'. The problem is to reconcile the interpretive nature of such accounts, and their claims to provide us with trans-cultural and trans-historical understandings, with more general 'scientific' constraints on explanation. I draw a parallel with a problem in interpretive ethnography considered by Clifford Geertz, and sketch the latter's claim that the former involves 'generalising within cases' rather than 'generalising across cases'. I offer a 'pragmatic' …

Wen Yiduo's Translation And The Formation Of Metrical Poetics, Liming Chen

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Wen Yiduo translated English poems with different metrical forms, and consciously applied English metrical poetics in his poetry writing and the theoretical configuration of new Chinese poetry, as an attempt to resist the prevailing poetic trends during the May 4th New Poetry movement predominantly spoken vernacular in nature and to promote the modern Chinese poetics with contemporary metrics and prosody. Through an examination of Wen Yiduo's long neglected translation of Byron's "Isles of Greece," the paper demonstrates his metrical poetics was constructed in and by his practice of translation and creative writing. The paper argues that Wen's practice helped to …

On The Stylistic Construction Of Wang Guowei's History Of Traditional Opera In The Song And Yuan Dynasties, Yanlin Xu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Wang Guowei's pioneering work History of Traditional Opera in the Song and Yuan Dynasties is both a theoretical summarization of his studies on opera and a systematic exposition of his stylistic thoughts. Influenced by Western studies and inherited from Chinese academic tradition, the book reviews the classification, naming, features, origins of this genre and the debasing social attitude to it, and proceeds to highlight the genre with a strong consciousness of stylistics. It delineates the evolution of Chinese opera from the perspective of stylistics, and proposes that Chinese opera has integrated features of patterns, observable stylistic development from narrative to …

Reflections On The Post-Modernist Concept Of Literary History In A New Literary History Of America, Song Li

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Greil Marcus and Werner Sollers' New Literary History of America from Harvard University Press sets a new paradigm for literary history writing in the aspects of style, organization and methodology. It has the following major features. First, it holds a literary view of culture vision. Therefore, the connotation of literature is expanded greatly and the boundary between literature and culture is blurred. Secondly, it embodies the principle of dedifferentiation in post-modernism culture. Thirdly, it advocates a constructional view on literary history. Fourthly, it disassembles the meta-narrative of an ontological history and emphasizes on the micro-narrative of history transection. Lastly, it …

Singularities Of The Three-Body Problem, Or Chinese Logic In The Era Of Science Fiction Globalization, Jun Zeng

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

This paper aims to analyze the singularity event of why Liu Cixin's Three-body Problem can single-handedly upgrade Chinese science fiction literature to the world prominence in the era of science fiction globalization. The paper argues that the scientific imagination in The Three-body Problem starts at the scientific frontier of "singularity" and expands on the spectacle of singularity. In The Three-body Problem, the essentialism of identity politics is transcended, which allows for the conceptualization of internal diversity of the post-human and the establishment of a cosmetic sociology on the principle of the dark forest. Therefore, it is possible for an analysis …

The Clash Of Civilizations And The Culture Self-Consciousness: Science Fiction And Social Reality In The Three-Body Problem, Qi Chen

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

From the perspective of the relation between science fiction and social reality, the core question of Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem Trilogy is the clash of civilizations between human and Trisolaran, which causes the future possibility of the end of human history. The narrative perspectives of the trilogy are the intelligentsia narrative of Wang Miao (Book I), the heroic narrative of Luo Ji (Book II), and the narrative of "the last man" of Cheng Xin (Book III). If the future civilization of the human beings is likely to encounter the cosmic catastrophe caused by the clash of civilizations between human …

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 …

Self-Mirroring Through Broken Pieces: Jesus Among The Comfortwomen, Sunggu Yang

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Once again, there is an emotional eruption and political commotion in South Korea after the Japanese and Korean governments announced their diplomat “deal” on the Comfort Women on December 28, 2015. The official agreement includes a formal apology and a compensation of $8.3 million from the Japanese government. There is one important condition also included in the agreement; that this resolution should be “final and irreversible” this year onward. On the surface, the deal seems good—formal apology and some monetary compensation finalized. But then, why the emotional eruption and vehement opposition, especially from the Korean Comfort Women rights activists? In …

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 …