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Full-Text Articles in Chinese Studies
“Poetic Wisdom”Or “Poetic Knowledge”: On The Interlingual Transformation Of “Della Sapienza Poetica”, Weixuan Lin
“Poetic Wisdom”Or “Poetic Knowledge”: On The Interlingual Transformation Of “Della Sapienza Poetica”, Weixuan Lin
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
While the term “Poetic wisdom” as the translation of “della Sapienza Poetica” helps to convey the aestheticconnotation of the original, it shadows the meaning of “poetic knowledge” and its epistemological background. Since René Descartes's rationality denied the value of philology, Giovanni Battista Vico tried to use “della Sapienza Poetica” as his method to seek truth in philology, and as his determination to defend philology. When approaching “della Sapienza Poetica” from the perspective of “poetic knowledge," we can understand and justify many of the puzzling arguments in Vico's New Science and give due respect to the concept which lacks among Western …
Imaginations Of The Wei And Jin Dynasties In The Time Of Historical Fracture: Rereading Zong Baihua's "On The Tales Of The World And The Beauty Of The Jin People” In The Context Of The Second Sino-Japanese War, Lang Jin
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Zong Baihua's “On The Tales of the World and the Beauty of the Jin People”is the foundation for research on the aesthetics of the Wei and Jin dynasties. It expounds on the aesthetic spirit in the Wei and Jin dynasties with discourses of "consciousness of personality", which is often traced back to the period of the May Fourth Movement. In fact, this understanding is the result of reinterpretations in the new era. An overlooked fact is that this work was written during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and should be interpreted in the historical and cultural context of this period. The …
Urban Imagination And The Idea Of The Nation-State In Modern Chinese Literature, Yongdong Li
Urban Imagination And The Idea Of The Nation-State In Modern Chinese Literature, Yongdong Li
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Cities and nation-states are both substantive and conceptual. The study of urban imagination in modern Chinese literature needs to go beyond the model that builds on the concept of a uniform city and village. It requires an understanding of the limits in interpreting modernity and cultural perspective, and an emphasis on exploring the polysemy and fluidity of city images. Cities and nation-states constitute a “problem field,”in which the way of looking at and imagining cities are often marked by metaphors of the nation-state. Urban imagination and the idea of the nation-state are mutually illuminative. The expression of the idea of …
Testimony, Narrative, And History: The Plague And Some Issues Of Literature As Testimony, Dongfeng Tao
Testimony, Narrative, And History: The Plague And Some Issues Of Literature As Testimony, Dongfeng Tao
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Albert Camus's The Plague establishes a mode of“literature as historical testimony”and demonstrates a profound shift in the relationship between history and narrative, and it implies that literature ( narrative) is inevitably embedded in history. Literature as a testimony to the Holocaust does not record the Holocaust but also offers a new perspective to understand it. This actualizes the transformation of history as it changes the nature of historical knowledge. The history in The Plague is written in the mode of an allegory, and it establishes a profound metaphorical relation between the plague and the Holocaust. As both the plague and …
Socialist-Realist Art From The Perspective Of Gaze Theory: An Inquiry From Filmology To Iconology, Ying Lu
Socialist-Realist Art From The Perspective Of Gaze Theory: An Inquiry From Filmology To Iconology, Ying Lu
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
"Socialist-realist gaze," linking gaze and socialist realist literary thoughts, refers to the visual communication of heroic figures on the external points off the screen in shooting Chinese revolutionary films. Such gaze, being invisible and with shared sight, returns to Jacques Lacan's gaze theory because of its intersubjective functioning. During its generation and function, socialist-realist gaze breaks the limitation of pictorial space, extends the boundary of screen as a "quilting point," and connects characters and audiences with ideological truth. As a performative image behavior, it arouses and strengthens the empathy between the viewers and the hero.
“Birth Of New Things From Old Things”: The Dialectics Of Ding Ling's “Transformation” In The Left-Wing Literature Movement During The 1930s, Shujie Wu
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Written in the summer of 1931, Ding Ling's Flood is considered to represent her turn to the left-wing. This was the result of Ding Ling's transformation in thought and the construction in the organized movement of the League of Left-wing Writers. With the dialectical materialist method of creation, Feng Xuefeng reinterpreted Flood, turning it into a practice of the "November Resolution". This established new space of discourse and path of practice for the cultural struggle of left-wing writers in the new situation.
A Study Of The Relationship Between Zhou Zuoren And Takeuchi Yoshimi As An Overseas Student In Beijing, Wanming Liu
A Study Of The Relationship Between Zhou Zuoren And Takeuchi Yoshimi As An Overseas Student In Beijing, Wanming Liu
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
From 1937 to 1939, Takeuchi Yoshimi studied in Beijing as an overseas student. During this time, he had adeveloped deep understanding of literature's inefficacy when confronted with Japanese invaders＇ political violence. At the sametime, through befriending Zhou Zuoren, Takeuchi was deeply affected by him, especially regarding his views on the relationshipbetween literature and politics, national character, cultural subjectivity, and modernization of East Asia. In the end, Zhou Zuoren became a bridge for Takeuchi Yoshimi to Lu Xun. By using the two key words, "ghost" and "sorrow of the East Asia people", to connect Zhou Zuoren and Lu Xun, Takeuchi expressed …
A Comparison Of The Two Historical Narrative Approaches To Qi Baishi's “Late Life Transformation”, Zhongyi Xia
A Comparison Of The Two Historical Narrative Approaches To Qi Baishi's “Late Life Transformation”, Zhongyi Xia
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
The two historical narrative approaches to Qi Baishi's “late-life transformation” could be referred to as “the Sovietperspective” and “the non-Soviet perspective”. The former is characterized by “framing history with theory” and “substitutinghistory with theory”, while the latter “confirming theory with historical facts” and “constructing theory with historical facts”. Following the thread “constructing theory with historical facts”, one must valorize The Autobiography of Qi Baishi, because itssimple summary of “late-life transformation” is reliable as “history”, and as theory it is also superbly profound, which can shedlight on the absurdity of the Soviet perspective “framing history with theory”. Likewise, by following the …
On Anti-Conventionality And Limitation Of Non-Fictional Writing, Zhigang Hong
On Anti-Conventionality And Limitation Of Non-Fictional Writing, Zhigang Hong
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Non-fiction Writing is not a particular genre, but a narrative strategy with anti-conventional characteristics. It relies heavily on the specific value of the subject matter itself and the subjective thinking of the writer, and thus makes it difficult to take into account the inherent artistic value of the work per se. Throughout the process from identifying the subject matter to narrating, the writer is an ever-present figure, providing irrefutable facts for the narrative. However, the ever-presence of the writer also leads to the fragmentation of the narrative and the silhouette effect of characters. Such a way of writing, which lays …
Reconsideration Of Humanism And Literature, Gong Zhang, Yuneng Zhang
Reconsideration Of Humanism And Literature, Gong Zhang, Yuneng Zhang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
The issue of "humanism and literature" was once a forbidden area in Chinese literary theory. After the Reform and Opening-up, the emancipation of mind promoted the breakthrough in this forbidden zone and launched an in-depth discussion to bring order out of chaos and clarify the source of such thoughts. It not only did justice to the humanistic thought in modern Western literature and art, but also re-evaluated the "human literature" and "humanistic literature" in the May Fourth new literature and literary theory. It enabled fair evaluations of the view that "literature is a study of humanity" and played an important …
The Chineseness Of Chinese Fiction: Taking Wang Zengqi As An Example In Response To The Query Of Howard Goldblatt, Cancan Ouyang
The Chineseness Of Chinese Fiction: Taking Wang Zengqi As An Example In Response To The Query Of Howard Goldblatt, Cancan Ouyang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
In his questioning of Chinese fiction, Howard Goldblatt suggests that, thanks to its obsession with the depiction of daily life, Chinese fiction features loosely-knit plots, which as a result deprives itself of literariness. Goldblatt's perception is problematic, because the depiction of everyday details precisely originates from the long history of Chinese literary tradition, which pursues the harmony of writing, man, and the world. Such a harmony-seeking practice bespeaks the Chineseness of modern Chinese fiction. Unlike Western literature that puts an emphasis on literary independence, Chinese literary tradition stresses "the expression of what one truly thinks", and emphasizes the unity and …
Zhang Taiyan's View Of Literary Language And Qian Xuantong's "May Fourth" Literary Revolution, Xiaohui Wang
Zhang Taiyan's View Of Literary Language And Qian Xuantong's "May Fourth" Literary Revolution, Xiaohui Wang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Qian Xuantong borrowed and transformed Zhang Taiyan's resources of literary language when he joined the camp of the May Fourth literary revolution. On the one hand, he was against the use of allusion, advocated modern language, and opposed rhythmical proses featured parallelism and flowery language, targeting specifically at "evil of the study of Anthology and fallacy of Tongcheng School prose". On the other hand, he established the theoretical bases for the "unity of spoken and written languages" and "verbosity" in vernacular Chinese, using the methodology of "misuse of words" to respond to contemporary queries about May Fourth vernacular Chinese. Qian …
Non-Fictionality Of Lu Xun's Old Tales Retold: On The Stylistic Effect Of Literary Game On Lu Xun's Historical Writing, Jianhuai Li, Guangya Zhao
Non-Fictionality Of Lu Xun's Old Tales Retold: On The Stylistic Effect Of Literary Game On Lu Xun's Historical Writing, Jianhuai Li, Guangya Zhao
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Lu Xun's Old Tales Retold can be regarded as an absolutely unique voice in the history of China's "New Literature." It demonstrates an originality as non-fictionality of the stories, with imagistic modernist discourse interacting with with the ancient discourse. This resulted in a multi-voiced image-full textual world which contributes to the alienation of literary discourse, the estrangement of aesthetic experience, and the rhetoric effect of parody and irony. It hence broke the boundaries of reality and fiction, undermined the authenticity of historical writing, removed the barriers between fiction and non-fiction as well as those between literature and non-literature, and deconstructed …
The Politics Of Form: The Correlation Between Formal Reconstructions In Free Verse And Anarchism, Guohui Li
The Politics Of Form: The Correlation Between Formal Reconstructions In Free Verse And Anarchism, Guohui Li
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Formal reconstruction was a common phenomenon in the early stage of the Third Republic of France and in Britain during the First World War when free verse passed its stage of formal liberation. Rather than differentiating free verse from prose, the deeper rationale of formal reconstruction is that free verse has been contaminated by the "mauvais sang (bad blood)" of aesthetic anarchism that satisfied the poets' craving for anti-formal poetry in the early stage. As anarchism did not fare very well under the press of political conservatism in the late 19th-century France and 1910s Britain, free verse, as a result, …
The Shift From "Thought" To "Spirit" In Lu Xun Studies Since 1976: A Case Study Of Wang Furen's A Mirror Of China's Anti-Feudal Ideological Revolution, Jian Wang, Guoen Chen
The Shift From "Thought" To "Spirit" In Lu Xun Studies Since 1976: A Case Study Of Wang Furen's A Mirror Of China's Anti-Feudal Ideological Revolution, Jian Wang, Guoen Chen
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
It is commonly accepted that 1976 was a turning point for Lu Xun studies, but what remains obscure is through what ways the shift eventuated. This article, by focusing on Wang Furen's study of Lu Xun, attempts to outline the shift with the two keywords "thought" and "spirit", and highlights his contribution of integrating factors of intellectuals and reality into Lu Xun studies, which is inspired by the epistemological turn. This attempt becomes the origin of a more individualized and enlightenment-oriented approaches to Lu Xun. It is in this latter period that the concept of "spirit" is emphasized, because it …
The May Fourth Movement And Tradition: Cultural Undertaking Behind Fierce Rebellion, Xudong Gao, Tongwen Shi
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 …
Qian Zhongshu's Old-Style Poetry: A Case Study Of His Collected Poems And On The Art Of Poetry, Zhixi Qian
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 …
Regarding The Naming Of Things: Another Approach To Onomatology, Hong Yan
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 …
The Modernity And Dilemma Of Art Revolution, Xiaofeng Zeng
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 …
Ezra Pound's Poetry Translation And Stylistic Innovation, Liming Chen
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 …
Millet's Seeding: Form And Subject In The 1920s Evolution Of New Literature, Yunhao Chen
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 …
"Sister Xianglin's Doubts": The Situation And Dilemma Of Soul In Luxun's Short Story "New Year Sacrifice", Hong Zhang
"Sister Xianglin's Doubts": The Situation And Dilemma Of Soul In Luxun's Short Story "New Year Sacrifice", Hong Zhang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
The "world of Lu Town" in Lu Xun's"New Year Sacrifice"is a caricature of early twentieth-century Chinese society. It is a stable social structure centering on the charisma of Master Lu the Fourth, a member of the gentry in Lu Town. The narrator "I" and Sister Xianglin are marginal people, or "superfluous individuals" in the mainstream society. The encounter of the two discloses a serious dilemma. Sister Xianglin's doubts about the existence of soul and Hell are serious mental tortures that reflect the inner anxiety of the narrator "I" as a modern intellectual. Sister Xianglin and "I" are mirrors of each …
Deciphering The Myth Of "Liberating Actors' Nature": Reflections On An Idea Of Acting And The Import Of Western Teachers, Huizhu Sun
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
"Liberating actor's nature" sounds like from the West, yet not from Stanislavsky or any other mainstream acting teachers. It was coined by the Chinese who misread Western teachers. Westerners doing short-term acting workshops unwittingly contribute to this misconception. Because of the language barrier, they usually eschew scripts and focus on physical exercises. Those fragmented workshops are seen in China as representing mainstream Western actor training. "Be yourself", a western marketing cliché, is also mistaken as the core of acting. Actor training should cultivate actors' second nature, not let loose their original nature. Since the 1950s, Western theatre professors increasingly promote …
Chinese Native-Soil Literature: Occurrence And A Hundred Years Of Evolvement, Cece Wei
Chinese Native-Soil Literature: Occurrence And A Hundred Years Of Evolvement, Cece Wei
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Chinese "native-soil literature" has constantly been interacting with world literature due to its modern consciousness. Due to a deep spiritual connection with Chinese culture, society and history, it is the best entrance to perceiving the rich connotation in modern Chinese literature with regard to the issues of China and world, tradition and modernity. It is an excellent sample for studying modern and contemporary Chinese indigenous literature, which provides us with valuable experience about how to inherit and develop Chinese literature in the dimension of indigenousness, nation, and the world. It is also an effective dimension to explore contemporary "Chinese problems". …
Film Posters As An Alterative/Alternative Archive For Chinese Film History, Yingjin Zhang
Film Posters As An Alterative/Alternative Archive For Chinese Film History, Yingjin Zhang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
The film poster generates public desire for watching the film, but its pictorial cues often exceed its intended ideological or thematic message. The excess information contained in graphic composition, star texts, and visual citations (e.g., to current fashions and other intertexts) makes the film poster an alterative para-text in the sense that it sets in motion a dynamic of circulating multilayered meanings in a medium that resonates with other media and genres of art (e.g., drawing, painting, calligraphy, photography, design, literature, drama, opera, and music). Film posters are therefore enmeshed in intermediality or crossmediality and inevitably gesture toward something outside …
Chinese Medicine, Western Medicine, And Patients: Writings On Infectious Disease During The Debate Between Chinese And Western Medicine, Xiaoyan Deng
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Modern epidemiology led to a comprehensive change in social concepts. As a result, the fear of bacteria became a psychological basis of social mobilization in modern countries. In China, the fear of bacteria and the fear of Western forces were ingeniously combined, thus becoming the emotional motivation for New Culture intellectuals who fervently criticized traditional Chinese medicine under the slogan of scientism. In the context of the debate between Chinese and Western medicine, this article focuses on the writings of infectious diseases in modern Chinese literature. By analyzing the texts and events related to Chen Dabei, Sun Fuyuan, Lu Xun, …
Cunning Apparatus And The Pain Of Modern Literature: A Parallactic Reading Of Kojin Karatani's Literary Theory, Shangrong Han
Cunning Apparatus And The Pain Of Modern Literature: A Parallactic Reading Of Kojin Karatani's Literary Theory, Shangrong Han
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Since Kojin Karatani's Origins of Modern Japanese Literature was published, it has been regarded as an example of modern criticism based on rationalism. Considering Karatani's theoretical constructions at that time and his entire academic career, a hidden concept of parallax can be found, and the apparatus that exists in modern Japanese literature, as Karatani sees it, results from the lack of this parallax. In contrast to modern literature's emphasis on self-consciousness, the apparatus excludes self-consciousness and engenders a closed field by means of this exclusion. Therefore, arguments on modern literature, such as depth and plot, remain inside the apparatus; not …
Essential Differences Between The Late Qing And The May Fourth Written Vernacular Chinese, Yu Gao
Essential Differences Between The Late Qing And The May Fourth Written Vernacular Chinese, Yu Gao
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Dedicated to enlightenment, the late Qing movement of written vernacular Chinese spread both old and new ideas, whereas the May Fourth movement of written vernacular Chinese was an intellectual revolution. Not only did they refuse old ideas, May Fourth literati radically criticized traditional Chinese culture and initiated the modernization of China on both intellectual and social levels. Essentially, the written vernacular Chinese of the late Qing dynasty is a language of instrumentality, whereas that of the May Fourth is a language of thought. The former, mainly including colloquialism and slangs, was an auxiliary language of classical Chinese and unable to …
Humanistic Discourse And Knowledge Production Of Literary Theory In The Early Years Of The New Era, Yaming Lu
Humanistic Discourse And Knowledge Production Of Literary Theory In The Early Years Of The New Era, Yaming Lu
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Humanistic discourse is not inherently associated with the production of literary theory at its inception, but has become part of the production of literary theory knowledge and participated in the construction of the literary theory knowledge system in a specific way at a particular moment, humanistic discourse as a literary theory should be examined not only in relation to specific international and domestic historical contexts and actual social factors but also from the perspective of the formative process of the literary theory field in the new era. Humanistic literary theory was of great significance in the initial stage of the …
On The Genealogy Of Heresy In Revolutionary Literature, Huiying Xie
On The Genealogy Of Heresy In Revolutionary Literature, Huiying Xie
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
In the late 1920s, the debates about the nature, function, direction and position of "revolutionary literature" were accompanied by various conflicting voices. In each stage of the revolutionary literature developed afterwards, there were "alien" elements that diverged from literary mainstream and authoritative discourse. With the development of history, these "alien" authors constantly developed and finally formed a continuous genealogy of heresy. In the context where mainstream culture became increasingly conservative and ideological discipline turned stricter, they were gripped in a historical dilemma. Originally, Chen Duxiu and Lu Xun were two revolutionaries with the same ultimate goal, but they had different …