Chinese Studies Commons^™

Hong Mai's Experiences As Reflected In His Prefaces To Yijian Zhi, Dan Zhan

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Hong Mai's prefaces to Yijian Zhi (Record of the Listener) are of great significance in ways that they not only help readers understand his conscious construction of novel theory but also enable him to develop strong vitality from the process of compilation. The interaction between the perspective of a historian and that of an allegorist reveals his life experiences and rational thinking during the process of compilation. The stories in Yinjian Zhi are legendary in nature, and so is the process of compilation as reflected in his series of prefaces. To a certain extent, this "double legendary nature" is a …

Narrative Reliability And Literary Authenticity, Shouyi Jiang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Narrative reliability focuses on specific textual strategies, while literary authenticity highlights the overall effect of presentation. In terms of rhetoric, the former reflects the rhetorical strategy of the implied author through the narrator, so that the latter can be guaranteed on the narrative level. In terms of cognition, narrative reliability relies on the reader's perspective mechanism, for which literary authenticity serves as the potential basis. Considering the factor of the real author, new situations regarding the narrative reliability of the implicit author's rhetoric and the reader's cognition will arise, which leads to the diversification of literary authenticity. Given that the …

Somaesthetics And The Justification Of Body-Mind Monism: An Account From The Perspective Of Marx's Historical Materialism, Yingmin Fang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Although body-mind monism is the philosophical basis of somaesthetics, it is not readily justifiable within the intellectual history of Western philosophy and aesthetics. Western philosophers such as Ludwig Feuerbach and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, rooted in essentialist thinking, veered between affirming and negating body, thus failing to adhere to body-mind monism. The transcendence of the essentialist predicament was realized through Marx's theory of historical materialism, and a way to justify body-mind monism is thus introduced. From the perspective of Marxist historical materialism, the nature of body-mind relation as a theoretical preposition is translated from the essentialist understanding of a theoretical problem to …

"Pure Pleasure", "Absolute Beauty", And "True Self": A Study Of The Metaphysical Dimension Of Aesthetics, Xuguang Liu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Human aesthetic behavior has a metaphysical state: the subject, in its "true self" state, pursues "absolute beauty" through "pure intuition", and then obtains "pure pleasure". Albeit ideal, this formulation is a principle generally found in various Chinese and foreign aesthetics. It lays foundations for aesthetic behavior at the metaphysical level, guides specific aesthetic practices, and becomes an object of art. As the logic premise of modern aesthetics, this principle has significantly influenced various modern aesthetic theories.

The May Fourth Movement And Tradition: Cultural Undertaking Behind Fierce Rebellion, Xudong Gao, Tongwen Shi

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

This article primarily examines the cultural undertaking of the May Fourth Movement through analyzing the inner drive for its participants' fierce rebellion against Chinese tradition. In contrast to China, some Jewish and Islamic countries, having been confronted with more severe national crises since modern times, have preserved their religions and cultures. Therefore, the reason for the fierce revolt against tradition during the May Fourth Movement was deeply rooted in Chinese culture. Because Confucianism prioritized national revitalization over beliefs, traditional scholar-officials were motivated by an intense sense of mission and angst to rebel against tradition. The "new culture" created by the …

Mythological Narrative Of The Clouds And Its Tragic Characteristic, Chunlian Chen

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In Aristophanes's The Clouds, Socrates is a Promethean figure. While Prometheus steals fire from heaven in order to rescue human beings from extinction, Socrates attempts to educate Athenian citizensin rational conduct with his method so as to save their morality from the impact of the Sophistic movement. However, just like the fire that Prometheus has brought to mankind, which has both good and bad sides, the Socratic method could also be dangerous. His moral education is doomed to fail because people have desires and cannot live with their reason only. In The Clouds, Aristophanes continues to explore the theme that …

Qian Zhongshu's Old-Style Poetry: A Case Study Of His Collected Poems And On The Art Of Poetry, Zhixi Qian

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Amongst modern Chinese scholars' writings in the traditional style, Qian Zhongshu's Collected Poems has the deepest affinity with the prevailing poetry schools in the late Qing period. In his early years, Qian learned extensively from the Qing poets, and later narrowed down on the Tong-Guang style while taking in the influence from the School of Poetry Revolution as well as the late Tang style. Qian excels in seven-character metrical poetry, and his ingenious prosody can be traced back to the poetry by the Jiangxi School, or even Du Fu's. Qian delved deep into the transformations of poetics from the Tang …

The Cataloguing Method In The Book Of The Later Han Dynasty And The Anthologization Principles During The East Han Period, Yamei Shi

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The cataloguing method in Fan Ye's Book of the Later Han Dynasty started the mode to categorize literary works on the basis of writing styles (genre) with author's names. This mode was not constructed by Fan Ye from his understanding of the concepts of literary styles and related written materials during the Southern dynasties; instead, it was a description of the configurations and concepts of literary styles during the Eastern Han Dynasty based on his mastery of related historical materials. Therefore, this mode was historically characterized. The historical specificities implied in the method encompass, the compiling status of various writing …

Three Faces Of Genre: Exploring Theoretical Approachesto Western Film Genre, Lin Gui

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Theoretical studies of Western film genre started in the late 1940s, and have become significant for Western film studies. The theoretical construction has mainly been based on the Hollywood film industry and genre. After more than half a century, a lot of achievements have been made in genre studies. As a multi-dimensional phenomenon, genre includes various systems and conventions that formulate these systems, which further complicated genre studies. This article attempts to classify and summarize the findings of Western film genre theory with three theoretical approaches: cultural genre theory, artistic genre theory, as well as political and economic genre theory. …

Regarding The Naming Of Things: Another Approach To Onomatology, Hong Yan

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Onomatology of things develops into a modern discipline through scholars such as Aoki Masaru and Yang Zhi Shui in the past decades. This new discipline is distinct from traditional onomatology in that it is guided by positivism and distances itself from the exegetical tradition of Confucian classics study, and its scope of study has expanded to cover such areas as everyday cuisine, clothing, and handicraft that had traditionally been considered as "trivial enquiries." Its methodological connection with the tradition lies in its philological and textual approaches with an emphasis on the study of "things." The discrepancy between traditional methodologies and …

Representation And Thought In Images: A Study Of The Relationship Between Words And Images From An Artistic Perspective, Yanqiu Zhao

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The inbuilt thought of images comes from the meaning of things represented by images and also from the initiation of artist's subjectivity. The meaning of image emerges from the interaction between image and audience. The prescriptive nature of image's presentation becomes the source to generate image's meaning, while the interpretation of the audience actualizes the implicit meaning. In images, visuality is always dominant from which meaning is generated and the audience captures the meaning and keeps the visuality. The initiation of subjectivity into image is artists' conscious action, as is reflected in their observation, conceptualization, and performance. Artists can foreground …

The Art That Can Not Be Reduced: Sociologists Of Art On The Specificity Of Art, Wenchao Lu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In the history of sociology of art, the sociologists such as Marxist, Bourdieu and Becker used the sociological method to study arts, and developed our understanding of arts. But they did not pay attention to the specificity of art, what they did was just as the colonialism of sociology in the field of art, and reduced art into general social factors. This caused the criticisms of some sociologists of art. Wolff claimed that we cannot reduce art into economic base or ideology, and we should pay attention to its aesthetic and formal factors; Heinich argued that art was a value …

The Modernity And Dilemma Of Art Revolution, Xiaofeng Zeng

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Considering "art" as a dynamic discourse, this paper contextualizes the concept in the period of the late Qing dynasty through the May Fourth period in connection with its competitive and interactive notions. The emphasis will be laid upon issues such as the establishment of literary beauty, literature independent of arts, the relationship between picture and art, and the value crisis of Chinese painting. Rooted in the social current swinging between reform and revolution during the late Qing dynasty and the May Fourth period, the formation and disciplinization of "art" in the modern sense embodied a modern appeal of anti-traditionalism, which …

The Origins Of Yao Xie's Poetics And The Construction Of The "Siming School" Of Poetry In East Zhejiang, Chen Li, Yazhong Ma

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Yao Xie's early poetry activities in the Zhenhu Poetry Club of Ningbo reflected that Yao Xie, Li Zhi and Ye Yuanjie were all influenced by Wu Dexuan and had similar views in terms of poetics. Thus, a possible path to explore the origins of Yao Xie's poetics is to consult Li Zhi's Poetry Remarks by Baihua Hermit, then to trace to the theories of Wu Dexuan, Song Dazun and Yao Nai, and finally to refer to the works on poetics by other members of the Zhunhu Poetry Club, particularly Chen Jin's Answering Questions in the Bamboos. This reveals the generative …

Ezra Pound's Poetry Translation And Stylistic Innovation, Liming Chen

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Ezra Pound's (1885-1972) literary career consists of two mutually enhancing constituents: translation and creation, which, as a whole, serve as an experimental field that has enriched his imagistic and vorticist poetics, including his poetics of translation. These three dimensions are closely related to his (un)intentional creative transforming and misreading of classical Chinese literature and philosophy. Pound's poetry creation and free translation show strong stylistic consciousness and strategies, but this has largely remains largely unexplored by academic research. His stylistic strategies take such forms as English haiku, the defamiliarization or foregrounding of ideograms, and the stylistic collage, and these innovations not …

Inheritance Or Critique: On The Relation Between The Origin Of German Tragic Drama And The Birth Of Tragedy, Yunfan Yao

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

While Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin both acknowledged that tragedy and trauerspiel are two different genres, they had contrasting elucidation of the characteristics and significances of trauerspiel. According to Nietzsche, trauerspiel was an unsuccessful mimesis of tragedy. However; Benjamin saw in trauerspiel a kind of special value. This difference was a result of their different understandings of the concept of ursprung. Nietzsche considered ursprung as an attempt to integrate Apollonian and Dionysian spirits, while Benjamin presented the structure of ursprung as a destructing force against monolithic sovereignty. Despite this contradiction, Benjamin accpeted Nietzsche's view and took Socrates as a symbol …

Millet's Seeding: Form And Subject In The 1920s Evolution Of New Literature, Yunhao Chen

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Jean-François Millet, a French painter in the 19th century, was first introduced to China via New Youth (1919) as a representative of "Ibsenism". Millet was so influential in Chinese literary circles of the 1920s that he played a key role in the aesthetic enlightenment in parallel with the evolution of new literature. Millet's seeding in Chinese literary field witnessed the shifts from the "Renaissance" spiritual pursuit to the self-consciousness of the literary form, and from the construction of pure literature to the birth of artistic subjects in the late 1920s. During this process, Millet and the new literature formed a …

Second Nature And Modern Art: On Lukács' Response To Hegel's "End Of Art", Kaihua Lu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

To comprehend Hegel's argument that "Art is a thing of the past", one needs to learn Hegel's basic judgment of modern society which is derived from his concept of "second nature". Young Lukács, however, in light of Hegel, gives his own negative version of "second nature" and his judgment of the relation between the modern world and modern art in respect of lyric poetry and novel. Therefore, it is the interaction between the concept of second nature and the concept of modern art that helps us to make sense of why Lukács took a course against Hegel, though he had …

Chinese Language Teacher Professional Growth: A Case Study, Yufei Guo, Wenjing Wang, Huiwen Li

Chinese Language Teaching Methodology and Technology

Chinese language teachers grow with certain characteristics in their professional development. Knowing these characteristics can reveal a teacher’s developmental needs which can inform the teachers and the teacher development facilitators. This case study examines the professional development of one Chinese language teacher that works in a high school in the United States. The Five-Stage Theory is employed to direct the examination of the teacher’s growing path. Findings cover the challenges, efforts to cope with the changes, successes, and failures.

Etymologies Of Chinese Hànzì And Japanese Kanji: Explanations On Liùshū 六書 And Rikusho 六書, William P.M. Funk

Chinese Language Teaching Methodology and Technology

This paper outlines Liùshū 六書 interpretations of Chinese character etymology to help co-create a better approach for educators in supporting character literacy development in students of the East Asian languages that utilize Chinese writing. The Liùshū 六書 Rikusho 六書approach to character instruction can be interpreted as a strategy to spark interest in western learners providing more detailed explanations that deal with the pictographic and compound nature of Chinese character formation. All non-English words are italicized or bolded, Chinese based terms are in Mandarin Pīnyīn 拼音, and Japanese terms are written in Romaji ローマ字 representing their differences phonetically to integrate foreign …

Learners’ Perspectives On A Long-Term Tandem Chinese Language Partner Program, Jun Xu

Chinese Language Teaching Methodology and Technology

Tandem language learning is important in enhancing learners’ language proficiency and fostering cultural knowledge. However, learners’ perspectives on tandem learning programs have received little attention, and no research exists concerning learners’ perspectives on long-term tandem language learning. Based on an anonymous online survey, this article examines how learners perceive a face-to-face tandem Chinese language partner program after participation for three years. The results indicate that, whereas the participants acknowledge the benefits of the participation of the language partner program, they identify challenges regarding logistics and task design. The implications of the findings are also discussed.

A Comparative Study Of The Chinese Characters In The Graded List And The Ebcl List, Qi Zhang, George Xinsheng Zhang, Yuanhui Gao

Chinese Language Teaching Methodology and Technology

This study scrutinizes the Chinese characters in two reference works compiled as part of two projects: the Graded list and the EBCL list. Situated in the character-based theory, the characters compiled in both are examined in depth from the perspective of character complexity, character structure, semantic and phonetic radical transparency, frequency of character and frequency of word formation. The results show that the two lists share similarities in terms of distribution of characters of different structures, level of semantic radical transparency, and frequencies of character and word formation. The character complexity of the Graded list is higher than that of …

Teaching Proficiency Through Reading And Storytelling, Haiyun Lu

Chinese Language Teaching Methodology and Technology

Human beings are wired for stories (Brown, P258). Throughout our existence, stories have been an integral part of our meaning making, and informational transportation. Stories are embedded in our biology. We do not just tell stories and hear stories, we experience stories emotionally and cognitively, and we feel stories physically in the body. Stories have been used in every aspect of human life, and have always been part of language teaching as well. Researches have shown that narrative films and readings help to develop empathy, perspective taking, understanding ourselves and others and increase literacy. TPRS is a fun and effective …

Table Of Contents, Huiwen Li

Chinese Language Teaching Methodology and Technology

Table of Contents for Volume 2, Issue 2 of Chinese Language Teaching Methodology and Technology

Conflicts Over Local Beliefs: "Feudal Superstitions" As Intangible Cultural Heritage In Contemporary China, Ziying You

All Faculty Articles

This article addresses conflicts over local beliefs in both discourse and practice in contemporary China, especially in the process of protecting local beliefs as China’s national intangible cultural heritage (ICH) in the twenty-first century. These local beliefs were stigmatized as “feudal superstitions” in revolution- ary China and were revived in public since the reform era started in 1978. With influence from UNESCO, the project to protect ICH has spread all over China since 2004, and many local beliefs are promoted as China’s national ICH. Drawing on my ethnographic case study of “receiving aunties (Ehuang and Nüying)” in Hongtong County, Shanxi …

論自然書寫與浮城觀, Wai Lap Cheung

Dissertations from all years

也斯與葉輝寫過大量關於城市的書寫，關注度也很高，然而他們的自然書寫則鮮有人去討論、分析，及至本土的自然書寫也出現同樣情況。其實，本土的自然書寫並非新奇事，早在三十年代，就有人以生物學的角度描寫香港的自然，歷史不比城市文學短。

自然書寫作為一種對土地和生態的記錄，其中蘊藏著有與城市共同，也有與城市不同的意識，故此本文首先會將本土自然書寫的發展脈絡梳理，再以吳明益揉合外國理論所得，對於自然書寫的準則分析香港自然書寫的發展方向，再透過香港的「浮城」觀，解讀兩代作家在自然書寫中展露的傾向，最後就藉這個傾向，來看浮城的未來。

Love’S Extension: Confucian Familial Love And The Challenge Of Impartiality, Andrew Lambert

Publications and Research

The question of possible moral conflict between commitment to family and to impartiality is particularly relevant to traditional Confucian thought, given the importance of familial bonds in that tradition. Classical Confucian ethics also appears to lack any developed theoretical commitment to impartiality as a regulative ideal and a standpoint for ethical judgment, or to universal equality. The Confucian prioritizing of family has prompted criticism of Confucian ethics, and doubts about its continuing relevance in China and beyond. This chapter assesses how those sympathetic to the Confucian vision of the good life might respond. It first explores Confucian conceptions of love …

Li Zehou: Synthesizing Kongzi, Marx, And Kant, Andrew Lambert

Publications and Research

To understand the details of Li Zehou’s work, it is helpful to first locate it within the social and historical contexts to which Li was responding. Specifically, his work can be understood as a contribution to the struggle to establish the intellectual foundations of a Chinese modernity. As China transitioned away from the long-lived dynastic system that had ended early in the twentieth century, there was intense debate in China about what forms of social and political order should take its place. Marxism emerged as the governing ideology after the Communist revolution, but this did not settle the outstanding social …

月下香爐, Wing Yu Tam

Dissertations from all years

小說主要描述成長於傳統家庭的年輕人靜兒面對爺爺死亡的心理變化與成長。她的家人自其從小就紛爭不斷，她的愛恨分明與敏感的性格使其成長後盡量逃離家人。如成長後，她選擇在大學宿舍安然度過幾年光陰，更一度去了外國交流。而在其往外國交流前，爺爺在家附近的街市罹難。家人出於傳統的死亡禁忌，以及想保護孩子不被傷害的本意，再也禁止提及有關爺爺死亡的事。在道教儀式下舉行的葬禮，同時令靜兒感到衝擊，對爺爺感到陌生。有關他的死亡很快地發生，又很快地以這樣的方式完結，她感到可怕。這一切致使靜兒不能面對他的死亡，把爺爺從生活的記憶裡抹除。然而她經常出現自己遇車禍的輕度妄想，也不斷質疑自己的冷血。在男朋友的陪伴和影響下，她嘗試主動面對爺爺的死亡，在未來的生命中不斷發掘爺爺真實的樣子。同時，當她接受了曾經傷害她的爺爺，她認為自己也能面對到其他家人。最後她回家去，看見滿有瑕疵家人也有軟弱的一面，她的心態開始變化，不再逃避。

A Palimpsestuous Writing: Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, Xiaoqing Liu

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior is one of the most successful Asian American literary works. Rather than reading the book as an autobiography of an Asian American girl growing up in Chinatown in America, I view it as a multifarious telling and writing of the stories of Asian American women in their interrelated relationships living in both the past and present in their hyphenated lives between China and America. With her palimpsestuous writing strategy, Kingston reexamines what it means to be an Asian American woman. She not only uncovers what is forbidden, hidden, unspoken, wronged, or covered in the …