Chinese Studies Commons^™

Where Is Literary Theory Going?: A Synopsis Of The Symposium On "The Future Of Literary Theory", Liangcong Zhang, Yuyun Feng

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The context of the symposium is the contemporary theoretical reflection on literary theories. Scholastic discussions in the symposium have focused on the crisis of theory and the possible way-out of the crisis, as well as some specific problems in the research and context of Chinese and Western literary theory. In a new context, the symposium with its focus on the possible prospect of literary theory has undeniable significance in reconstructing contemporary theoretical discourse.

The Enigma Of Visibility: Merleau-Ponty's Philosophical Reflection On Painting In Eye And Mind, Yaojun Zhang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Merleau-Ponty's Eye and Mind focuses on painting, but underlying the discussion in the book is the relationship between man and existence, as visuality is the sinew for the relationship. This paper proceeds from the discussion in Eye and Mind and investigates the basic characteristics of visuality before continues to analyze the reversible relationship between man and objects which the paper defines as the relationship between the visible and the invisible. The paper maintains that it is possible to approach existence by way of painting.

Theoretical Features Of Comments On Zhuangzi'S Prose In Qing Dynasty And Their Artistic Value, Bo Li

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The annotated commentaries on the prose in Zhuangzi's prose in the Qing Dynasty inherit and develop the traditional theory of literary criticism, and establish a discursive system of modern literary criticism. In particular, the interpretative studies on the narrative theory, appreciation and literary Dao have expanded the scope of Zhuangzi's aesthetics and have significant influence on theoretical development.

Trends Of Literary Theory In The Post-Theoretical Era: Towards Posthumanism, Ning Wang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In response to the pessimistic opinions in the circles of literary theory in the East and West, the paper holds that the passing of the golden era of literary and cultural theory does not mean the death of theory. In the present post-theoretical era, the function of theory is no longer forceful and ubiquitous as before, but rather it is to a certain extent restricted. The rise of the so-called posthumanist trend in the West in the past decade indicates that man in the present era is nothing but one of the species in nature, whose existence and development also …

"Post-New Period" And The Structural Position Of Everyday Life, Huanjiang Qiao

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The "post-new period" is a concept which the academic circle in the early 1990s gave to Chinese literature. This name, the present paper argues, is a way of expressing a value expectation more than an actual description of literature at the time. In the imaginary discourse that concerns literature’s dominant status and its autonomy, the theorization of the post-new period is departed from the essential aspects of contemporary society culture, revealing its lack of historical awareness. If the literature practice after 1990s has shown some distinctive features different from the New Period literature, the reason may not the breakup in …

A Cultural Study Of Unrelated Homonym In Internet Language, Mofan Xu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Unrelated homonym is a common phenomenon of language use in contemporary internet, in which the newly created homonyms have no relevance to the meaning of the original words. Unrelated homonym is not a way of making neologism, but a special usage conditioned by cyber communication techniques and it has become a kind of normalized language play. There are two purposes in using unrelated homonyms: to attract readers' attention through signifier noise, and to achieve an ironic effect through conveying the intended original content in an arbitrary phonetic form. The target of the irony reflects the group psychology of the contemporary …

A Critique Of Derrida's Deconstructive Mode Of Thinking, Bing Li

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Despite of misunderstanding, deconstruction as a kind of way of thinking has inserted profound influence in the late 20th century. Derrida's undermining of the dualistic way of thinking may not be taken as an irrational destruction, but as a rigorously logical analysis. The heterogeneous way of thinking contains two important perspectives of time and otherness. Derrida's cross-disciplinary writing implicates a post-modern thought of dedifferentiation, which further complicates the boundaries between arts. However, the main limitation of Derrida's mode of thinking lies in its reductionist way of thought, in which language is reduced to super subject and the author's authority is …

A Synopsis Of The Symposium On "Modern Chinese Foreign Literature Studies Over Six Decades", Suzhou Liu, Jing Chen

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

No abstract provided.

Aesthetic Modernity Forms Of Contemporary Taiwanese Prose Theory, Jiangzhen Cai

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The prose theory has developed for more than half a century in Taiwan, with "modernity" as the principal axis. In the process of prose theory transformation, Yu Kwang-Chung's call for "cutting off the pigtail of prose" became a symbolic slogan with far-reaching influence, and his modernist approach of "poeticizing" prose established itself as the predominant principle. In the recent three decades, however, scholars shifted their research focus to the generic essence of prose, trying to define the generic style by deconstructing the style, while at the same time advocating the imagination and fictionality in prose which challenges the conventional concept …

Benjamin In Love: A Re-Interpretation OfMoscow Diary, Shicong Sun

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Benjamin's Moscow Diary records the complex relationship between the life and the thought, and it also penetrated with his self-projection. Neither is Benjamin in love a symbol of the "Benjamin industry" carnival, nor is the bodiless Benjamin a feminist metaphor for the aura of his thoughts. Asja Lacis, the protagonist in Moscow Diary, represents one immanent origin of philosophical critique of modernity in the era of overflowing total alienation and pseudo-experience. Individual's authentic experience has been viewed by Benjamin as the last resort to transcendence and redemption of modernity, and underlying Moscow Diary is Benjamin's philosophy of experience.

Clearing A Path To China: A Probe Into Hall And Ames' Methodology Of Sino-Western Cultural Comparison, Yunhua Liu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

This paper focuses on the trilogy of comparative study of Sino-Western thought co-authored by David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames to make a critical survey of their methodology of cultural comparison. This paper regroups the barriers Hall and Ames find to be in urgent want of clearing and then it briefly describes and interprets the rationale behind the four groups. The paper proceeds to summarize the two scholars' neo-pragmatic concept of cultural comparison before analyzing the implications of their concept of determinants in culture and contextualized approach in relation to the two different frameworks of problematization in the two …

Continuation And Construction: On The Edition Study Of Contemporary Chinese Literature History And Its Limitation, Xiuming Wu, Tao Zhang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The study on the editions of contemporary Chinese literary history has profound significance for the compilation of literary history, academic studies of literature, and disciplinary construction as well as scholastic development. The call for "re-writing literary history" in the late 1980s in response to the paradigm shift in literary history writing is taken as the dividing line of two periods, and the paper proceeds to compare the different editions and examine the limitations in the revisions in the two periods. The paper points out that the shift from the political to aesthetic or cultural perspective is a significant breakthrough in …

Environmental Civility: Culture, Education, Enlightenment, And Wisdom, Sepänmaa Yrjö

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Culture and civility, enlightenment and wisdom all relate to the environment, and the environment relates to them. Environmental civility is a conscious and emotional skill or readiness, which permits a basically positive attitude and way of acting. Civility and wisdom are close to each other and nearly synonyms. Knowledge is the foundation, but it needs the partnership of an attitude that maintains and refines life. Civility is value-positive, but as such also critical. It means proper respect and appreciation of well-done work, and always seeking something better. Eco-humanism emphasizes the positive value of humankind and human work, positive footprints: we …

History And Nationalism In Images: A Review Of The MovieBack To 1942, Guo Feng, Ao Tian

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The paper examines Feng Xiaogang's movie Back to 1942 from the perspective of history and nationalism, claiming that it has remarkable merits in exhibiting history and revealing the nationalism through images. The theories informed the analysis of the film script and audio-visual language of the movie include the new historicist "plebeian history," the cultural memory related to cultural theorists like Aleida Assmann, and Northrop Frye's "archetype theory." The paper concludes that the movie Back to 1942 challenges the traditional concept of historical narrative and enforces a retrospect of national historical memory. The story in the movie is not only a …

Modernity, The Avant-Garde And Mass Culture: A Reflection Inspired By Walter Benjamin, Yong Wang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Walter Benjamin's meditation on modernity is the most significant in his theory, and his concept of aura apparently illuminates the transformation from traditional art toward modern one but essentially reveals the characteristics of popular culture as integration and formularization. His interpretation of the tragic drama, Baudelaire, Kafka, and Proust further exposes the nature of the avant-garde as a form going beyond the content. This illumination depicts two cultural patterns of modernity: discontent with reality that leads to injection of rationality into reality, and identification with reality that leads to acknowledge the random meaning from reality. These two patterns comprise the …

開幕式發言, Zongqi Cai

嶺南大學漢學國際研討會暨《嶺南學報》復刊工作會議 International Conference on Sinology at Lingnan University

No abstract provided.

《嶺南學報》小史述略 : 兼論陳寅恪與《嶺南學報》, Zhan Huang

嶺南大學漢學國際研討會暨《嶺南學報》復刊工作會議 International Conference on Sinology at Lingnan University

1888年，美國長老會傳教士在廣州創建格致書院。1903年，書院更名為「嶺南學校」，是為「嶺南」用作校名之始。1927年，學校易名為嶺南大學，鐘榮光先生出任校長。自此，嶺大發展為文理商工農醫兼顧的綜合性學府。四十年代，抗日戰爭及國共內戰致使大批學者避難粵廣，不少人進入嶺大執教。這一歷史機遇，也鑄就了嶺大最為輝煌的一段學史。1952年，全國大專院校進行院系調整，教會大學無法繼續存在，嶺大遂被分割合併至其他數所大學。其中，文理科撥歸中山大學，而原嶺大校址康樂園也成為中山大學的新居。

表徵嶺大學術成果者，乃二十世紀上半葉世所推重的《嶺南學報》。《學報》於1929年12月創刊，1952年6月隨著院系調整而終刊。二十三年間，《學報》共刊行35期。下文即對《學報》歷史做一個回顧。

嶺南大學漢學國際研討會暨《嶺南學報》復刊工作會議綜述, Zhan Huang

嶺南大學漢學國際研討會暨《嶺南學報》復刊工作會議 International Conference on Sinology at Lingnan University

2013年11月1-2日，嶺南大學漢學國際研討會暨《嶺南學報》復刊工作會議在香港嶺南大學隆重召開。是次會議由嶺南大學中文系主辦，來自中國大陸、香港、臺灣及海外地區的四十餘位學者出席會議。11月1日上午，嶺南大學中文系系主任許子東教授主持了會議開幕禮，鄭國漢校長致開幕辭。中文系講座教授、學報籌委會主席蔡宗齊教授向與會學者彙報了《嶺南學報》復刊籌備工作的進展。北京大學袁行霈教授作了題爲的書面主題報告。這次會議是為重新籌辦有著八十多年歷史、因種種原因而停刊的《嶺南學報》一事而召開的。研討主題只以漢學（國學）為限，這一設定為與會學者創造了最大的發揮空間。學者可以就個人研究興趣自由選題，提交論文。

Maneuvering Modernity: Family Law As A Battle Field In Colonial Taiwan (1895-1945), Yun-Ru Chen

2013 New England Association for Asian Studies Conference

Twenty five years after launching its own legal modernization in response to Western imperialism, Japan imposed a modern legal system upon its first colony, Taiwan. In accordance with the “respecting old custom” colonial policy, the Japanese created a system called Taiwanese customary law, a mixture of imperial Chinese laws, local customs and European legal concepts, and gradually implemented its newly adopted European-style Meiji Civil Code (1898). However, even since the late 1910s when the colonial policy changed into “full-flag assimilation,” family law remained an exception to the transplantation of Japanese laws. That did not, however, mean that family law was …

Painting Taiwan's Modern Identity, Shelley D. Hawks

2013 New England Association for Asian Studies Conference

Taiwan’s painters were dynamic contributors to a revolution in color that dramatically reshaped East Asian art. During the early twentieth century, new techniques of on-site sketching and the introduction of oil paint shook the foundations of Chinese and Japanese ink painting as it had been practiced for centuries. The Japanese colonization of Taiwan, a period when educators such as Ishikawa systematically introduced European painting methods, produced a cohort of painters in Taiwan professionally trained and committed to watercolor and oil painting. Building on international art trends like Impressionism and Fauvism, these painters developed a sense of color distinctly their own. …

Aesthetic Beauty In The 18th Century Chinese Novel Guwanyan (Preposterous Words), Qing Ye

2013 New England Association for Asian Studies Conference

This paper explores the tension between the radical sexual description and orthodox rhetoric in 18th century Chinese vernacular narrative. My research focuses on a xiaoshuo fiction, Guwangyan (Preposterous Words), authored by Cao Qujing and composed in 1730. This novel pictures the domestic lives of four families in Nanjing from the end of the 17th century to the early 18th century, including many explicit sexual descriptions. I argue that the author projects the ethic concern through the structure and characterization, while presents the anxiety towards desire in graphic sexual descriptions in the novel. The contrast and complementarity of the structural frame …

Absent Presence: Li Yu’S Drama Wanli Yuan And Early Qing Sartorial Politics, Guojun Wang

2013 New England Association for Asian Studies Conference

Li Yu’s 李玉 Wanli yuan 萬里圓 (Thousand-li Reunion) is one of the few dramas in the early Qing period that directly addresses the topic of the Ming-Qing transition. Although Wanli yuan was never published in its entirety during the Qing Dynasty, its popular scenes circulated widely on stage, resulting in a series of “performance editions.” Oriented toward stage performance, most of Li Yu’s plays include detailed costume instruction. By contrast, almost none of the extant editions of Wanli yuan includes any costume instruction. Despite this absence, the dialogues and stage directions of the extant performance editions show that different scenes …

Searching In The Dark - Han Learning And The Controversy Of 1799 Metropolitan Exam, Shiu On Chu

2013 New England Association for Asian Studies Conference

This paper investigates the introduction of Han Learning (hanxue 漢學) in Qing civil examinations from an institutional perspective. Focusing on the controversy over the 1799 metropolitan examination, I argue that hanxue was resisted not only by the intellectual orthodoxy Cheng-Zhu learning, but also a concept of “proper advancement” (zhengtu 正途) from examination.

The 1799 metropolitan examination was often seen as a triumph of Han Learning because the chief examiners Zhu Gui (朱珪1731-1806) and Ruan Yuan (阮元1764-1849), who were famous patrons of Han scholarship, awarded degrees to a number of established Han scholars. Contemporaries attributed this high rate of …

文苑 (重刊號第13期), 第十七屆嶺南大學學生會中文系系會 (朔翹)

文苑

困

Field And Factory: Chinese Revolutionary Posters, Molly E. Reynolds

Schmucker Art Catalogs

The images on display for Field and Factory, political propaganda used by the Communist Party of China during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, construct a fictitious world. In perceiving these kinds of illustrations, the audience is asked either to visualize the society in its ideal form or unify in opposition to a national enemy. In the first half of the twentieth century, before the possibilities of the television advertisement were fully realized, posters were one of the most popular forms of propaganda: cheap to produce in mass quantities and simple enough to hang in any public building. The art form’s …

張愛玲的自我改寫 : 以《紅樓夢魘》為觀察視角, Ruqin Liu

Lingnan Theses

《紅樓夢》是張愛玲畢生寫作的繆思。在不同的創作階段，《紅樓夢》所奉於張愛玲的靈感是有所差別的。重讀《紅樓夢》是張愛玲離滬後第二個創作生命的重要經驗，對照其心路歷程與書寫經驗，形成一種新的文學視域和價值尺度。

1977 年出版的《紅樓夢魘》，以不同版本為參照，「改寫」面貌始終是張氏關注的焦點。與此同時，張愛玲自身也在不斷重寫、改寫自己的作品，《紅樓夢》考據給予她重寫生命的養分和動力。透過關涉文學評述與創作的微妙互動，可觀察到張愛玲藉由對《紅樓夢》的思考與推測，内化為自己的改寫意識，形諸創作當中。離滬後張氏因應文化場域的轉變，「改寫」又可以說是夾雜對生存與聲譽的擔憂，權衡寫作技法與政治禁忌的兩難之下，所作出的適應與妥協。本文擬以《紅樓夢魘》為觀察視角審顧張氏作品的改寫面貌和改寫策略，並探討其改寫因由與改寫效果。

A Tale Of Two Needles, Chengyi Liu

SURGE

Looking back, I guess the name should have been my first clue. “Alternative” medicine? “Complementary” medicine? What is it about these medical practices, which to me are completely traditional, that places them in a secondary position to other medicinal options in the United States? [excerpt]

Manchu Shamanist Mythology And Ecological Aesthetics, Lijie Yan

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Manchu traditional culture of fishing and hunting has maintained a relation of harmonic multi-dimensional coexistence with its natural environment. Shamanic mythology has an animistic philosophical foundation with a primitive poetic thinking, holding nature in awe and veneration. Through constant communication with nature, the human beings are situated in the ecological system, and this means that Manchu life had an ecological aesthetics dimension since early. Manchu shamanism advocates animism, the unity of heaven and earth, and the identity of object and self. In shamanic mythology, the human interacts and keeps a kinship with the nature. Shamans communicate with the human and …

Marx And The Problems Of 20th Century Aesthetics, Zhenglong Wang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Marx's shift of focuses first from the essence of beauty to the formation of beauty and then from the relationship between art, society and life to the liberation feeling and sensibility undermines the traditional aesthetics from the metaphysical aspect and promotes the liberation of sensibility in the 20th-century aesthetics. Marx's political economy reveals various contradictions of capitalist industrial civilization and constructs a perspective of critique and methodology to analyze the capitalist culture, which establishes the foundation for the socio-cultural turn of criticism in the 20th-century aesthetics. The relations dealt with in Marx's aesthetics have been developed, revised, and questioned or …

On Heidegger, Jameson Fredric, Yu Zhu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Heidegger's Being and Time could be considered as a project in which the translation of codes occupies a central place. As for the dialectical oppositions between "the ontic" and "the ontological", "authenticity" and "inauthenticity" etc. and the ultimate failure of translation of codes induced by the analysis of "Dasein", these conceptual operations could be grasped as a "language experiment". It is only through this movement of "transcoding" that we could approach the historical specificity of Heidegger's thought and understand his political commitment and ideological significance of his philosophical discourse.