Chinese Studies Commons^™

The Shaking Continent: A Metageographical Critique Of Eurocentrism, Yujun Xu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Eurocentrism refers to both a system of values and a space-time mindset. Modern space-time ideology and geographical knowledge are characterized by objectivity and neutrality, which is usually ignored by postcolonial criticism. However, the divisions of continents and the boundary between the west and the east tend to betray subjectiveness and randomness, which sheds light on the interests of culture and geopolitics. The deconstruction of Eurocentrism does not necessarily imply a replacement, but an alternative mindset.

The Literary Criticism Of Records Of History In The Song Dynasty, Xinke Zhang, Hong Li

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

There is plenty of literary criticism over time of Records of History as a fine example of the combination of literature and history. From a literary perspective, this paper discusses the contents and the significance of literary criticism of Records of History in the Song dynasty. Touching upon the political and cultural backgrounds, the paper analyzes the outreach as well as the cause and methods of literary reception in order to show the solid cultural foundation for Records of History’ literary criticism in the Song dynasty. With their narrative and characterization as core, the paper analyzes the main content of …

The Moon Festival And The Stories Behind, Haiwang Yuan

DLPS Faculty Publications

A presentation that traces the evolution of the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, or the Moon Festival with regard to the elements that were added to the myth of the moon fairy and other elements needed for the celebration of the festival such as the moon cake and examines the differences between the Western and Chinese view of and attitude toward the Moon in history through English and Chinese literature.

Advanced Technical Chinese Chn 413, Joanna Burkhardt

Library Impact Statements

No abstract provided.

Live Confucian: The Newsletter Of The Confucius Institute Of Pace University September 2016, Confucius Institute

Live Confucian

A newsletter of the Confucius Institute, Pace University.

The Confucius Institute at Pace Universi­ty is dedicated to providing Chinese lan­guage and cultural education, resources,and services to meet the needs of people from all backgrounds.

Toma Y Daca: Transculturación Y Presencia De Escritores Chino-Latinoamericanos, Huei Lan Yen

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

En la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, decenas de miles de trabajadores chinos emigraron a Cuba, Perú, México y Panamá en busca de una vida mejor. En los países donde residieron, los chinos y sus descendientes optaron por asimilarse contribuyendo de manera significativa al desarrollo económico de la sociedad de acogida mediante su participación laboral en la agricultura, el transporte y otras industrias. Asimismo, en el ámbito literario, artístico, religioso y político también aportaron al devenir cultural de estos países.

En Toma y daca: Transculturación y presencia de escritores chino-latinoamericanos, uno de los primeros estudios de la tradición literaria …

On "Shi" In Chinese Calligraphy: Time, The Body, And Origin, Xinqiao Qiu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The tradition of Chinese art has a tendency toward musicalization and hence toward time. Chinese calligraphy is the most typical art form that replaces music to shape our sense of time, as embodied by "shi", a concept of temporality in calligraphy. In Chinese calligraphy, "shi" is presented through the body, and thus temporality is embodied. The origin of the discourse of "shi" about Chinese characters can be traced back to Shuo Wen Jie Zi and Zhouyi in their discussions of creating Chinese characters, which have produced a great influence on the theory of calligraphy. As "shi" is a key concept …

Ruminating On Garbage: Exemplified By Kunal Vohra's Film The Plastic Cow, Chang Chia-Ju

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

This paper examines the way in which non-human animals are constructed as unwanted object through human language, culture and economic system, and how such construction in return affects the lives of the animals. The paper aims to think through the entangled interconnected relationship among animals, humans and environment on both the conceptual and material levels. It argues that animals are deeply enmeshed in capitalist system while the animal-garbage connection can be traced in etymological, cultural, and economic and ecological systems. In order to reflect on our culture, globalization, and modernity, an Indian documentary film, The Plastic Cow, by Kunal Vohra, …

The "Drama-Embedded Mode" Of Popular Novels Of The Ming And The Qing Dynasties, Pengfei Li

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The "drama-inserted mode" of the novel refers to the insertion of drama stories, diction, and other elements into the plot or the narration of the novel. In this way, these dramatic elements can be connected with the plot, the narration, or the theme of the novel, thus creating a unique aesthetic effect. The "drama-inserted mode", which can be seen as one of the "layer structures", is not only the narrative method of the novel, just like analogy, intermingled plots and repeated relation, but also the narrative structure of the novel. This skill has been frequently usedin the the world history …

The Origin And Evolvement Of Aesthetic Poetics From The Perspective Of Genealogy, Jianchang Xing, Hao Zhang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

This article is a genealogical investigation of the origin and evolvement of aesthetic poetics in China since the 1980s. Its prelude originated from the "imagistic thinking Debate" in the 1950s and 1960s, which was revived at the end of the 1970s. The outcome of this debate was a common recognition that the image, rather than concepts, features literature and art. The evolvement from image epistemology to affectionism paved the way to an aestheticism-based theory. However, the emphasis on the functions of aestheticism to appeal, to educate, to save, and to liberate indicates that the aesthetic poetics was a utilitarian literary …

A Study Of The Name And Connotation Of "Literature" In Early Modern China: From Zhu Xizu To The Zhou Brothers, Xuehu Chen

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The paper tries to analyze the modern name and connotation of "literature" and its emergence and evolution in early modern China. The establishment of literature in China bearing the Western name and connotation was marked by Zhu Xizu's paper On Literature, when professors of literature at institutions of higher learning at that time tried to define literature and its boundaries through academic papers whose influence reached out to the entire social community. Zhu's literary concepts mainly came from the Zhou brothers, who studied in Japan in the early 1900s. The Zhou brothers were among the first advocates for literature in …

A Summary Of The Fifth Youth Forum Academic Conference Held By The Chinese Association Of Literary And Art Theory, Yan Xing, Wenjie Na

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

No abstract provided.

Body, Life-World, And The Reconstruction Of Literary Theory, Xiaohua Wang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Since the end of the 20th century, literary studies have gradually become conventionalized and entered into the so-called "post theory" period. What caused this situation? An easily acceptable answer is that there is a "stoppage" in the connection between literature and the life-world. In our view, the underlying cause is the oblivion of man's embodied being. In order to investigate the cause, this article reviews the primitive linkage of the life-world and the body in Husserl's phenomenology, analyzes the "ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy", demonstrates the symptom of "poetics of amnesia" which separates the body and the life-world, and …

A New Exposition Of Su Ting's Comments On Li Bai With A Comment On Li Bai's Early Literary Explorations, Qinghai Liu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The meeting with Su Ting in Chengdu proved to be an important event in Li Bai's early literary life when Li Bai was encouraged and directed. Before the meeting, Li Bai's writing was more of a local literature than of a literary master starting a new literature. Su Ting was then lauded as "Master Pen" (Da Shoubi), and his appreciation of Li Bai's literary talent, to the extent that he compared Li Bai to Sima Xiangru, was influential on Li Bai's late writing. Especially, Su Ting's comments on the relationship between rhetoric (Ci-cai 辞采) and vigor of style (Feng-gu 风骨) …

A Review Of The Academic Conference On "Hearing And Culture", Zhiping Yang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

No abstract provided.

A Techno-Political Poetics Built On The Body: On Brian Massumi'sb Parables Of The Virtual, Yunfan Yao

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Centered round his elucidation of the concepts of "body" and "the virtual," Massumi proposes a critique toward the understanding of the process of subjectivization dominated by the symbolic operations in his work Parables of the Virtual: Movement, Affections and Sensations. He assumes that contemporary capitalist power mechanism does not abide by the logic of subjectivization that is mediated by the symbolic order; instead, with help of technology, the capitalist power can control the human-beings by intervening the intensity and direction of human affections. The hope of escaping the control relies on the objectification of human beings during the evolution of …

Aesthetics Of The Sublime And Its Connotations And Properties In Postmodern Literature, Qi Chen, Quansheng Hu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

This paper explores Kant's classification of aesthetics as the beautiful and the sublime, and with an interpretation of Lyotard's proposition that postmodern aesthetics is the aesthetics of the sublime, it suggests that postmodern sublimity lies mainly in viewing postmodern literature as an art for protest, highlighting how to tell a story instead of what a story is, and regarding the indeterminacy as the primary aesthetic principle as in the slogan of "Vive la difference," and it then achieves strangeness through radical experiment and eclecticism, and derives pleasure by adjusting expectations. The paper argues that postmodern literature, if judged by traditional …

Chuanqi & Zaju By Scholar Writers During The Republic Of China Period And Their Significance In Drama History, Dahuai Yao

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Before the New Culture Movement, the development of chuanqi & zaju was directed by reporter writers and adherent writers. Hereafter, they were gradually replaced by scholar writers. Influenced by such factors as national crises and individual plights, scholar writers wrote plays to call upon the struggling spirit, or express their own melancholy. As they had the most profound attainment on traditional drama during the Republic of China, scholar writers respected the essence of drama, and especially devoted more in melody, phraseology and structure. They had the highest achievement in the creation of chuanqi & zaju since the late Qing Dynasty …

Cosmopolitanism And Cultural Translation, Shaobo Xie

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The global present remains saturated with various forms of xenophobia, hostility towards cultural and ethnic others, us-versus-them feelings, and ethnocentric arrogance. It is in response to such an exigency, to which one cannot respond, that cosmopolitanism and cultural translation are being globally debated and embraced at various intellectual forums, academic conferences, and in various journal special issues. This paper explores the issue of cosmopolitan cultural translation through the lens of two world-famous novels: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Ngugi wa Thiong'o's The River Between. It illustrates how the cosmopolitan reader, by way of cultural translation, perceives or recognizes culture-specific …

English Scholarship On Modern Chinese Literature In The Past Fifty Years, Zhang Yingjin

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

This article is a condensed version of the general introduction to A Companion to Modern Chinese Literature and covers three agendas. First, it delineates the parameters of modern Chinese literature by discussing its three composite terms. Second, it reviews the academic institutionalization of modern Chinese literature, especially its development in North America. Third, it provides a framework of "history and geography" for A Companion to Modern Chinese Literature. The first section on "history and geography" tracks the historical development of modern Chinese literature in different geopolitical areas. The second section on "genres and types" reviews key major genres (poetry, fiction, …

How To Study Literature With "After Theory": Focusing On Eagleton's Event Of Literature, Yan Sun

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In The Event of Literature, Terry Eagleton tries to elucidate on the literary philosophical questions pertaining to the decline of theory, and calls for a return to literature itself by breaking through the delimitations of politico-cultural studies as in post-colonialist and post-modernist criticism. However, Eagleton does not revert to pure formal research in the "after theory" period as he does not believe formalism can save literary studies. For Eagleton who has a Catholic background, the authority of new religion lies in ethical rather than aesthetic claims. What Eagleton tries to bypass the fruitless debate over essentialism and revive Aristotelian ethnical …

Knowledge Reconstruction And Academic Reorientation In Postmodernist Context: A Genealogical Study And The Expansion Of Its Horizon Of The Historicization Of Contemporary Literary Studies, Xiuming Wu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Since the 1990s, in the context of globalization and postmodernism, a reorientation is emerging in contemporary literary studies from intellectual interpretation to knowledge reconstruction. The reorientation both promotes contemporary literary studies as a discipline and helps to contextualize and theoretically endorse the historicization of the studies. The reorientation is an emerging phenomenon, which is further complicated by the ambiguity of the concept of "historicization." Unlike the earlier endeavor of "rewriting of literary history," this reorientation, in terms of its scope of research and its conceptual evolution, is both influenced externally by Western Marxist theories through such theorists as Fredric Jameson …

Literature Ecology In The 1980s And The Publication Of Anthologies, Yong Xu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

This paper explores the dialectical relationship between the publication of anthologies and the literature ecology in the 1980s. Anthology publication is linked to editors, writers and readers, and reflects literary environment of a particular era. The significance of anthology publication to literature ecology in the 1980s lies in two aspects, the first being the reflectivity and reactions almost all the literary periods and the second being the construction of the anthologies to literature ecology in the 1980s. The roles of various anthologies such as annual literary anthology, anthologies of controversial works, and anthologies of different literary schools present different ways …

On Narrative Of Literary Folklore, Dongwei Mei

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

As an interdisciplinary study of folklore and narratology, folk narrative is an indispensible component in the construction of Chinese narratology and an important dimension in the study of literary folkloristics. However, due to the ambiguity of the term and the lack of consensus of its academic parlance, "folklore narrative" has incurred much inconvenience to relevant studies. From the perspective of literary folkloristics, when the folk culture as a phenomenon in narratological text of fictions is to be defined, it is more appropriate to replace folklore narrative with the narrative of literary folklore. Narrative of literary folklore focuses on the narrative …

On The Sublime Visual Image Of Chinese "Mountain-Like Altars": A Response To Professor Wu Hung's Theory, Zhaorong Peng

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Like the ideas of "monad" or "oneness" which speak to the mutual presence of the "physical", "mental", and "spiritual" in the Western hermetic sense, China has developed the idea of "tian ren he yi" (the unity of Heaven and man). The definition of this idea is rather complicated, because "tian" means not only "nature" but also imperial power. Firstly, this idea refers to the harmony between nature and human beings. Secondly, it reveals ancient shamanic belief of the king being the axle between the heaven, human beings, and the earth, who possessed the rightful imperial power. In comparison with monad …

Some Theoretical Categories In Sanskrit Poetics, Xi-Nan Yin

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Sanskrit poetics contain many unique theoretical categories like rasa, dhvani, vakrokti, poetic atman, camatkara and guna. These categories are of a long history with genuine Indian nature and they are still holding implications for contemporary poetics and comparative studies. The paper singles out seven categories to demonstrate how connotative and unique ancient Indian literary theory, i.e. Alankarasastra or Sanskrit poetics could be.

Space: A Keyword For Art History Research, Juan Mao

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

A key concept in the discussion of postmodernism and globalization, the idea of "space" has a profound impact on many fields, such as urban research, urban planning, philosophy, literature and culture. Like "Time", "space" is fundamental to people's understanding of the world. As a product of history and cultural activities, it is also a keyword for studies of art history. Therefore, it is necessary to understand and interpret the idea of "space", which may offer a new way to construct the history of contemporary art.

The Polar Opposites In The Criticism Of Li Yu Over Three Centuries, Mingqi Zhong

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Since his lifetime, Li Yu has been receiving both positive and negative critical judgements. The primary reason for this was Li Yu's extremely complicated personality that had multi-layered polar opposites. It was also closely related to critical approaches and attitude. To avoid polar opposites in the criticism of Li Yu, we should avoid bias and emotional judgements, and adhere to the principle of prioritizing historical examination over moral evaluation. We should also comprehensively examine Li Yu's profile in the light of the development of his personality. It is necessary to distinguish and investigate Li Yu's behavior, thoughts and writing in …

Toward The Future: A New Interpretation To Liang Qichao'sThe Future Of New China, Liyuan Jia

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Through a close reading of The Future of New China by Liang Qichao's (1873-1929), an important novel published in 1902, the paper analyzes the way Liang narrates time, which is revealed in the dialogue relationship between the text and its annotations. It argues that the novel is neither a pure narration of the future, nor a mere review of the present, but a constant movement between the two. This fundamental narrative feature of the novel explains why the author made many mistakes, unnoticed in existing scholarship, when dealing with the conversion between the Gregorian calendar and the Chinese calendar, as …

The Challenge Of Teaching Chinese Philosophy: Some Thoughts On Method, Andrew Lambert

Publications and Research

In this essay I offer an alternative perspective on how to organize class material for courses in Chinese philosophy for predominately American students. Instead of selecting topics taken from common themes in Western discourses, I suggest a variety of organizational strategies based on themes from the Chinese texts themselves, such as tradition, ritual, family, and guanxi (關係), which are rooted in the Chinese tradition but flexible enough to organize a broad range of philosophical material.