Chinese Studies Commons^™

Signs Of The Return To Literary Studies From The Debate On Literary Canon, Wenfang Yao

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The debate on literary canon in 1970s raised the cultural issue behind literary canonization and promoted the turn from literary study to cultural studies. The turn, however, has also resulted in a return to literary studies, which could be seen in the 1990s arguments of some representative scholars engaged in the debate. Scholars such as J. Guillory, Harold Bloom and Jonathan Culler have all expressed that the canonization of literary texts should center on literature and aesthetics. Their common appeal also implies an inherent logic which helps to reconcile the debate on literary canon.

The Discourse Of Revolt And The Study Of Contemporary Literary Theories, Yun Fan

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The discourse of revolt is gaining increasing popularity in contemporary literary theories, and the collaboration between the radical politics and literary theories has also alerted scholarly attention. One demanding question is how to evaluate and reflect the radical trend in contemporary literary theory. While Western researchers have made timely responses to the issue, Chinese scholars need to extend the research field and return from discursive politics to aesthetic ethics.

A Dynamic Analysis Of The Essence Of Art, Yan Chen

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The essence of art is neither inbuilt in human brains nor conceived by theorists, but constructed in the course of the practice of art. Any static transcendental and metaphysical circumscription is doomed to fail, and this failure provides an easy excuse for the analytical aesethtics to deny the study on the essence of arts. If a perspective of art history is taken to dynamically examine the essence of art, art may be easily defined as a collection of artifacts that people created by way of material medium and conceptual symbols on the basis of imagination gained from life experience and …

Non-Academic Discourse Practice: Contemporary Association Among Aesthetics, Politics And Ethics: A Review On Rancière's Seminar WithTheoretical Studies In Literature And Art, Yin Bai, Feng Lv

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

No abstract provided.

Narrative Frequency And Three Dimensions Of Time, Weihua Li

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Time, as an experience for human beings, has three dimensions: linear time, annular time and psycho-time. Gerard Genette's theory of narrative frequency has dealt with only two of the three dimensions, namely, linear time and psycho-time. As a result, Genette's theory of narrative frequency demonstrates as a binary structure between the singular and the iterative. The lack of annular time leads to the neglect and misunderstanding of repetition. From the perspective of the three dimensions of time, a new theoretical structure of narrative frequency can be constructed in the frame of the singular, the repetitive and the iterative.

On Pleasure, Imagery And Value Of Beauty As The Characteristics Of Aesthetics, Zhixiang Qi

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Textbooks on the principles of aesthetics have all tackled the fundamental issue about the characteristics of aesthetics, but generally there exists a breakdown between the description of characteristics and the definition of beauty or there is no distinction between the pleasure of beauty and the pleasure of aesthetic perception. Modern aesthetic theories have a tendency of highlighting the generative aspect of beauty in aesthetic activities and denying the homogeneous quality of beauty and its definition, and therefore the possibility and necessity of the research into the characteristics of beauty is ungrounded. This paper takes a constructive post-modern stance to re-examine …

A Synopsis Of The Symposium On "Paradigm Transformation Of Literary Theory And Traditions Of Literary Theory In West And China", Yong Li

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

No abstract provided.

Beauty As The Intuitive Presentation Of Idea: A Phenomenological Interpretation Of Hegel's Aesthetics, Hongbin Su

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Hegel's aesthetic view derives from his view of arts, which grows out of his views of art typology and art history. However, his views of art typology contradict his logic principle, and his views of art history contradict the historical practice of art history, and Hegel's aesthetic view is therefore seriously undermined. On the other hand, Hegel’s idea of intellectual intuition proposed in philosophy of mind may serve as a cognitive ability and produce a general representation. This representation, we believe, is actually idea in its intuitive state, which means that idea can be directly presented by way of intuition. …

On Aesthetic Depth Psychology And The Appreciation Of Art, Yuneng Zhang, Gong Zhang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Aesthetic depth psychology has a decisive role in art appreciation. Unconsciousness and sub-consciousness formed in the course of art appreciation as a social practice may act on a certain "pre-view" embedded in aesthetic unconsciousness and sub-consciousness and result in "horizon fusion", and constitute "a schema of evocation". Thus the subjecthood and creativity in the act of art appreciation may be attained.

The Locality Of Theory: Name, Reality, History And Position, Xuehu Chen

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

This paper attempts to discuss from the aspects of name, reality, mainstream and related contemporary issues the social position and role of the so-called theory and literary theory in China. Scholars still tend to take literary activities as purely personal perceptions and ignore the social connotations and its structuration, with the result of failure to understand the position and role of theoretical reflection on literature's social significance. This paper hopes to clarify some of the misunderstanding and delineate the related contextual issues before drawing the conclusion that contemporary theory should inherit Chinese theoretical tradition developed in the 20th century, break …

The Will To Power: Retreating From The Ontological Position, Xueqin Feng

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

"The will to power" has long been considered to be the foundation of Nietzsche's aesthetics or even his entire thought, as it is the most clarified differentiating mark in Nietzsche's philosophical thought. However, this claim has pinned Nietzsche's aesthetics on the metaphysical concept of aestheticization and overlooked his breakthrough contributions to contemporary aesthetics. The ontological theorization of the will to power is itself not an established theory, and a retreat from the ontological position of the theory can be found in Nietzsche’s later works. Nietzsche eventually abandoned his project to build a mansion of philosophy on The Will To Power. …

A Comparative Study Of Aesthetics Between Fang Dongmei And Xu Fuguan, Cheng Xu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

A comparative study of the aesthetics between Fang Dongmei and Xu Fuguan may reveal that their common aesthetic idea is the aesthetic identification between the Nature and the human, but they hold different understanding in the dominating-dominated role in the interactive relation between the Nature and the human. For Fang Dongmei, the Nature is the dominant, and a metaphysical axiology is built around the Heaven. For Xu Fuguan, the human is the dominant, and a humanist axiology is built around humanism. From the methodological perspective, Fang Dongmei’s aesthetics unifies Confucianist and Taoist philosophies while Xu Fuguan's aesthetics interprets Taoist thoughts …

Meta-Theoretical Procedure Of Foreign Literature Research: An Approach To The Science Of Foreign Literature, Jin Fan

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The paper suggests the concept of a discipline of "the Science of Foreign Literature Study" and claims that such a discipline may be constructed from a trans-theoretical standpoint. The paper argues that the various methodologies and theories introduced into Chinese literary researches should be integrated so as to investigate the general formational principles behind the symbolic system of "foreign literature." This argument is attempted by bypassing all the methodological debates and then is made from the perspective of the double duality between the real vs. the imaginary and the self vs. the other in the sign system of foreign literature. …

Narrative Act And Literariness: On Formal Analysis And Literariness, Xu Liu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Literariness is one of the fundamental issues in literary studies, and this paper tries to examine the forma presence of literariness in literary texts. The paper approaches the issue from the perspective of postclassical narratology, and it focuses on formal analysis combined with content analysis while the paper also tackles the relation between literariness and the writer's creative talent. The paper analyzes the texts by such writers as Zhao Shuli, Eileen Chang and Liu Qing to illustrate the inevitable relation between literary form and literariness, and it concludes that literariness of a literary text is determined by the narrative act …

On Literature As An Art Form And Its Ways, Feng Peng

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

This paper argues that literature is an art form and proposes three ways to approach the issue. The issue is then rephrased as three views of literariness: the formalist, the ontological and the procedural. The formalist view claims that the literariness exists in special linguistic and narrative features, such as defamiliarization. The ontological view emphasizes on a certain form of existence of the text and takes a literary work as a pure intentional object. The procedural view asserts that literariness exists in the appropriate attitude of reading as a result of long-term literature education.

On Lu Ji's Concept Of Audible Meaning As A Form Of Synesthetic Criticism, Songqing Chen

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Lu Ji's term of "liuliang" in A Treatise on Rhapsody (Fu) had been interpreted since Li Shan in the Tang Dynasty as "clear and bright" or "lucid," although some scholars take it as referring to a new mode of writing rhapsody ("fu," rhymed prose) in the Wei and Jin Dynasties. In this paper, I argue that "liuliang" means "resonant," which was then used to describe the high and loud quality of sound. The term was used by Lu Ji to describe not only the loudness of the sound quality in "fu" but also the rhetoric and beautiful style in its …

On The Acceptance OfThe Books Of Songs In The Qing Dynasty Poetry, Guoan Chen

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The acceptance of The Book of Songs shows not only in a branch of study in itself but also in almost all the genres of literary texts. This paper surveys how The Book of Songs was accepted in the poetry from Qing Dynasty and examines the acceptance into the Qing Dynasty literature from the perspectives of preserving the original spirit, the lyric way of expressing emotions and the imagery.

On The Suzhou-Poetics Centrism In Qian Qianyi's Selected Poems Across Dynasties, Yijin Bai

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Qian Qianyi's Selected Poems across Dynasties was compiled with a highlighted local style and taste centred on the poetics developed around Suzhou (traditionally called Wu). The compiler of Selected Poems across Dynasties had consciously evaluate and position the various poetic schools in Ming Dynasty from the perspectives of Suzhou poetics, and the perentage of Suzhou-originated authors in those poetic schools and the affinity with the Suzhou poetics were highlighted to delineate the development of Suzhou-poetics as the mainstream and authodox source of literature in the Ming Dynasty.

On The Theoretical Innovations Of The Chinese Cultural Poetics, Zuzhao Gu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Chinese cultural poetics as constructed by Chinese scholars is a response to the international academic trend in the 20th century, and it has not only developed a new arena for literary studies and literary theory in China but also brought about an all-around and profound theoretical innovation. This paper focuses on the cultural and aesthetic features of literature, cultural identity and subjecthood of nationality, and the theoretical innovation attributed to the "other" theory. The paper summarizes four main features of Chinese cultural poetics, and argues for the theoretical potentials of Chinese cultural poetics.

China's 80后 And 90后: The Next Generation Of Leaders In The World's Next Superpower, A Students-Teaching-Students Course, Patrick Slavin

Senior Honors Projects

In light of China’s recent reemergence as a global superpower, it is becoming increasingly important for westerners to understand its history and culture. For current college students, the culture of China’s youth is particularly pertinent.

In this project, a course, HPR 107: Chinese Youth Culture, was designed and taught through the Students-Teaching-Students program, which provides senior Honor’s Program students the opportunity to design and teach their own Honor’s Program course. The HPR 107 course focuses on China’s 80后 and 90后 generations, those born in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively.

This multi-faceted project includes: subject matter research, course development, pedagogy development, …

Political Interpretations Of The Lotus Sutra, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

The Sutra on the White Lotus of the Sublime Dharma (Sk., Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra; Ch., Miàofǎ liánhuá jīng; Jp., Myōhō renge kyō), commonly known as the Lotus Sutra, is arguably the most influential sutra of Mahāyāna Buddhism, and certainly one of the most revered sacred texts in East Asia. Via parables and short stories, the twenty-eight chapters of the Lotus Sutra indirectly present a number of core doctrines of the early Mahāyāna, the form of Buddhism that first emerged in India and West Asia roughly five centuries after the death of the historical Buddha Siddhartha Gautama (c. 563–486 …

Across The Red Steppe: Exploring Mongolian Music In China And Exporting It From Within, Thalea C. Davis

Masters Theses

Mongolian music culture as it exists in China is a unique entity unto itself as it features a base of traditional Mongolian practice and also includes aspects of Chinese music and culture. As the world becomes more interconnected and as China continues to display a markedly Han society to the world at large, Mongolian musicians and Mongolian-music enthusiasts in China maintain and evolve their musical culture in a nebulous middle-ground between Mongolian and Han-Chinese culture. How Mongolian music culture in China came to be and its ultimate function in global society are the key questions being investigated in this thesis. …

The Intellectual Trajectory Of Marxist Literary Theory From Abstraction To Concreteness, Diyong Long

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Marx did not take literature and art as isolated phenomena but approached literary phenomena with roughly the same way of thinking as he investigates other social phenomena. The general intellectual trajectory in his investigation followed the path from abstraction to concreteness, which exhibited in literary studies as the following three aspects. First, writers should observe the society and its age from historical point of view, and create typical character reflecting tendency of the age and social nature. Secondly, characterization in writings should demonstrate Shakespeare's realism instead of Schiller’s method so as to avoid turning the character into a mere mouthpiece …

The Political Position Of Poets In ThePolis: An Interpretation Of Pindar'sEighth Pythian, Lin Lou

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

As the greatest lyric poet in ancient Greece, Pindar achieved the peak of the Greek traditional choral poems through his beauteous odes and his teaching about aristocratic moral teaching. This paper takes the use of the first person, a conventional technique in his odes, as the starting point to approach the odes. T he paper tries to analyze the poet's political position in the polis (city) through a detailed reading of Lines 60-80 of Pindar's "Eighth Pythian Ode." In this section, the first person and the second person are employed in the pray to Apollo, the claim for the harmonious …

The Two Narratives Of The History Of Avant-Garde Poetry After The "Misty Poetry", Yuqin Jiang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In the 1990s, the avant-garde poets had a very strong consciousness of literary history, and some had even kept a detailed record of creative activities. While some proclaimed that they were writing for literary history, there were more poets who, unsatisfied with the aesthetic norms and rules advocated by the scholastic critics, would engage themselves into the critical practice by writing essays, editing poetry anthologies and compiling collections of critical essays on poetry. In the 1990s' avant-garde poetic circle, the poets managed to be the masters of their own poetry, and their active engagement into the theoretical exploration and the …

The Word Order In The Collective Titles For Authors In The Tang Dynasty And Its Implications For Literary Criticism, Shijin Luo

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

It is a common phenomenon to group writers under a collective title in the history of literature and literary research, especially in the Tang Dynasty. This phenomenon, as well as how to group the authors and in what order to call them, is meaningful to literary criticism. As the collective titles are highly acronymized or very abstract, the process of de-acronymizing and origin-seeking becomes an approach of interpretation, during which the re-examination of the original authors’ achievements may help to promote the process of canonization. Collective titles have different significance and value in the history of Chinese literature, and some …

Neo-Confucianism's Premises Facing Aesthetic Questions: Art, Ethics And The Way In Zhou Dunyi's Thought, M'Bondjo Maud

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Zhou Dunyi (1017-1073) is commonly considered as the founder of the Confucian revival during the Song Dynasty (976-1279). In his moral treatise, Penetrating the Book of Changes, Zhou Dunyi clearly distinguishes "art (艺)" from "reality/truth (实)," and claims that the role of "expression (文)" is to express the Sage Kings' Way (圣王之道). The claim leads us to ask to what extent "art" helps along ethics in the restoration of the Way and whether there is a philosophy of art in Zhou Dunyi's moral discourse. The paper observes that cheng (诚 sincerity) is a central concept in Zhou Dunyi's thought and …

On The New Media Culture And Production Of Space: In The Perspective Of Binary Relation Between Space And Place, Jun Zhu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

One eternal issue in the study of space is the binary relation of space and place, which is reshaped in the age of new media by the mimic culture. The production of space observes the logic of consumerism while it also refreshes the belief in localism. This profound confliction between space and place is manifested in fans culture, cyber subculture, fundamentalism, and even cyber-terrorism, thus it attributes to an increasingly serious global culture of risk. At the present age of new media, the space crisis can be approached mainly through the simple strategies of localism, everyday discourse and utopianism, which …

On The Paradigm Shift In Literary Theory Research, Dengyun Dai

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The paper claims that researches on literary theory in contemporary China have been restricted in intellectual horizon and displays a tendency of homogeneity and one-dimensionality, which in turn results in a path that depends on the novelty and change. The author argues that one fundamental way to offset this dependence is to return to the origin and explore the source. This paper tries to redefine the problem consciousness and intellectual horizon and re-clarify the methodological path of literary theory research in order to promote the interventional nature of literary theory research and the mergence between theory and thoughts in the …

Prof. Xu Zhongyu's Researches Into Literary Theory, Qinghua Wang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

This paper tries to delineate Prof. Xu Zhongyu's contribution to the establishment of Chinese literary theory. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, Prof. Xu Zhongyu has been making efforts to approach literary theory with an aim to establish the discipline of Chinese theory of literature and art which may be grounded on traditional Chinese literary criticism. His theorization has covered such significant issues as the value of literature, the artistic principles of literary creativity and criticism, and the national characteristics of literary theory. His insightful observations and investigations have constructed a unique research framework that bases on literariness, centers …