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Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

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The Chineseness Of Chinese Fiction: Taking Wang Zengqi As An Example In Response To The Query Of Howard Goldblatt, Cancan Ouyang Sep 2020

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 …


The Reconstructed Picture: On The Formation And Transformation Of The "Fangweng Style", Yuqi Shang Sep 2020

The Reconstructed Picture: On The Formation And Transformation Of The "Fangweng Style", Yuqi Shang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The term "Fangweng Style" was first used in The Metrical Marrow of the Hall of the Literary Notables, in order to describe the style of Lu You's poetic creations. Today, the prevalent definition of the "Fangweng Style" is focused on its patriotic themes and magnificent artistic conceptions. In fact, the connotations of "Fangweng Style" varied during different periods. During the Ming and Qing periods, it featured the subject matter of daily life, with a smooth and fresh style. With a preference for suite of poems, Ming and Qing literati emphasized the demonstration of their leisure attitude. Therefore, definitions of the …


The Substance Of Wei Xi's "Genuine Air" And Its Theoretical Implications, Zebao Zhu Sep 2020

The Substance Of Wei Xi's "Genuine Air" And Its Theoretical Implications, Zebao Zhu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Wei Xi(1624-1681), an early Qing-Dynasty prose theorist, proposed the concept of "genuine air(zhen-qi)," and it is an important component to his literary theory. In essence, the concept highlights author's personality and centers round author's reason, while it also implicitly promotes cultural pluralism. With this concept, Wei's theory framework can refrain from overreliance on the rules, reason and knowledge. The political implication of "genuine air" respond to the socio-cultural background in which the Ming-Dynasty subjects tried to reflect the fall of their nation, and his theory also embodies his intention of upholding mores of the intellectuals through changing literary mode. Wei …


Theory And Death, Liang Xu Sep 2020

Theory And Death, Liang Xu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Derrida's deathbed interview raises important questions about the relationship between theory and death. His dying and his words about death form the tension of this interview event. Through survival theory, he charts the theorist's path to immortality beyond life, but he also frankly shows the helplessness in the face of real death. He raises questions but does not answer them; rather, he leaves them to posterity because he could not find a convincing (or in his words, "sincere") balance or consistency between the theory and death.


Xu Zhongyu's Contributions To The Study Of Ancient Chinese Literary Theory, Shuzhuo Jiang Sep 2020

Xu Zhongyu's Contributions To The Study Of Ancient Chinese Literary Theory, Shuzhuo Jiang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

This paper discusses Xu Zhongyu's various contributions to the field of ancient Chinese literary theory. As a professional in this field, he devoted to it more than 80 years of his life. As a patriot, Xu Zhongyu, in the early stage of reform and opening up, took the initiative to emancipated his mind, and became an exemplary explorer who dared to enter the academic forbidden area, to innovate and to seek truth from facts. Xu Zhongyu was open-minded in terms of academic vision and eclectic in his research approach. With his singular academic vision, he made outstanding achievements in many …


Zhang Taiyan's View Of Literary Language And Qian Xuantong's "May Fourth" Literary Revolution, Xiaohui Wang Sep 2020

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 …


Desecration Disguised As Deification: The Image Of The Imperial Family In Ovid's Exilic Poetry, Yongyi Li Jul 2020

Desecration Disguised As Deification: The Image Of The Imperial Family In Ovid's Exilic Poetry, Yongyi Li

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Disputes over Ovid's genuine attitudes towards Roman emperor Octavian have never ceased among Western scholars of classics. Never a motivated dissident, Ovid was unfortunately an adherent to the idea of artistic autonomy, which, against the backdrop of a unified Augustan cultural order, was interpreted by the imperial family as a political stance. In order to return to Rome or suffer less severely, the banished poet would have to appease the emperor with servile penitence, but Ovid was frequently impelled by his obstinacy as an artist and indignation at his unmerited torments to overlook his real-life needs and give his works …


The Cultural Logic Of Digital Capitalism: "Participation" From Artistic Critique To Data Production, Zhongtao Zhang Jul 2020

The Cultural Logic Of Digital Capitalism: "Participation" From Artistic Critique To Data Production, Zhongtao Zhang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

"Participation" once played a critical role in artistic practice, which was used to against the encroachment of capitalism on art and culture and to demonstrate the individualistic values that promoted freedom, autonomy and authenticity. After the 1960s, the development of computers and networks, on the one hand, technologically realized the values embedded in "participation" and on the other hand, became the carrier of these values. In the era of social media and big data a culture of network participation is gradually formed on the basis of personal expression, original content and data output. As the newest form of self-expression, network …


The Aesthetics And Ideology Of Literature: A Discussion Focused On The Concept Of Aesthetic Ideology In Contemporary Western Literary Theory, Li Tang Jul 2020

The Aesthetics And Ideology Of Literature: A Discussion Focused On The Concept Of Aesthetic Ideology In Contemporary Western Literary Theory, Li Tang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Ideology embodies the deployment mode of power operation. Its functions include negotiating the relationships between subjects and between subjects and society, while its effects may lie in the difference between individual perceptual experience and individual-disciplining hegemonic discourse. Literature plays an indispensable role in conveying ideology and supporting hegemonic order, while it is also an important vehicle to break away from the control of hegemonic discourse. Literary discourse and practice bear the dual function of aesthetic and political discourse, but literature needs to take a balanced stance functioning aesthetically and ideologically so as to be accepted as a text with both …


Art Making As Analysis: Thought-Images And Image-Thinking, Bal Mieke Jul 2020

Art Making As Analysis: Thought-Images And Image-Thinking, Bal Mieke

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

On the basis of an experiment with and experience of making art as a mode of performing a cultural analysis of an object of cultural heritage — Miguel de Cervantes's world-wide known novel Don Quijote — in this article I explore the integration of what is now usually called "artistic research" with the historical genre of Denkbilder (Thought-Images). If done with precision and caution, this integration can yield a substantial innovation of the methodology of cultural analysis as well as of the practices of museum display, literary analysis, and audio-visual art-making. Most importantly, the project entails a revision of the …


From Texts To The World: A Methodological Exploration-Review Of La Géocritique: Réel, Fiction, Espace By Bertrand Westphal, Fang Gao, Siqi Lu Jul 2020

From Texts To The World: A Methodological Exploration-Review Of La Géocritique: Réel, Fiction, Espace By Bertrand Westphal, Fang Gao, Siqi Lu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Geo-criticism proposed by Bertrand Westphal as a methodology in comparative studies is distinguished by interdisciplinarity and a plurality of perspectives. As a leading achievement in the field of spatial criticism, geo-criticism compares the forms of real and fictional representation in the postmodern context, explores the possible relations between literature and space, and explains the inherent interaction between the text and the world. It offers multiple interpretations and cuts across a rich variety of domains, hence easily free from the shadow of subjectivism and ethnocentrism. Geo-criticism serves as a significant contribution to the practice of theorization in the field of world …


Incorporation Of Tang Short Stories Into Song Poetic Verses, Zhenqian Zhang Jul 2020

Incorporation Of Tang Short Stories Into Song Poetic Verses, Zhenqian Zhang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Tang short stories (xiaoshuo) have had an important influence on the creation of poetic verses (ci) in the Song dynasty, but this literary phenomenon received little academic discussion. The most salient manifestation of such influence is textual, including poetic verse's lyric patterns, titles, sequences, and main content. Additionally, writers of poetic verses in the Song dynasty composed their works by tailoring, rewriting and selecting verses, literary quotations, characters, and plot from Tang short stories. This kind of incorporation was further motivated by the sufficiency of short stories and their popularity among Song literati, as well as the practice of crossing …


Transition And Coordination: Unreliable Narration In Eighteenth-Century English Fictions, Yue Wang Jul 2020

Transition And Coordination: Unreliable Narration In Eighteenth-Century English Fictions, Yue Wang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The frequently used unreliable narration in eighteenth-century English fictions was closely related to the complex cultural context of that period. As a newly emerged narrative style, fiction has not separated itself from romance and history. The fusion of old and new values and the vague self-positioning of fiction jointly resulted in the unreliability in its narrative style. This paper analyzes the interactive influence between the phenomenon of narrative unreliability and the cultural restructuring in three dimensions, in order to explore unreliable narration from the perspectives of culture and history.


Changxieyao And Changjiedeng: Prosodic Theory And The Evolvement Of Five-Character Poetry In The Early Tang Dynasty, Hongqiang Xiang Jul 2020

Changxieyao And Changjiedeng: Prosodic Theory And The Evolvement Of Five-Character Poetry In The Early Tang Dynasty, Hongqiang Xiang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Changxieyao was a common prosodic phenomenon in the five-character poetry of the Six Dynasties. After the transformation by Xie Tiao and He Xun, the style of Changjiedeng became more mature, but the number of poems written in this style was still small, hence the lack of diversity in the prosody of poetry. Since 663 CE, the situation began to change: Lu Zhaolin, Cui Rong, Du Shenyan, among many others started to use Changjiedeng and Changjiedeng interchangeably in their five­-character poems, which enriched prosody in poetic writing. This move was related to Yuan Jing's theory of Changxieyao and Changjiedeng. Ever since, …


Expressing Feeling Through Scenery: On The Fashion Of Travel Among Literati And Its Influence On Xiqu During The Late Ming Period, Ji Yang Jul 2020

Expressing Feeling Through Scenery: On The Fashion Of Travel Among Literati And Its Influence On Xiqu During The Late Ming Period, Ji Yang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The rising fashion of travel among literati during the late Ming period significantly influenced the creation and development of xiqu. As many late-Ming playwrights shared great interest in travel, the choice of xiqu's theme and content also included portrayals of travel experiences. As a result, xiqu developed new features in its style and structure during this period. The model of portraying travel experiences in xiqu during the late-Ming period not only accorded with the requirement of xiqu's narrative mechanism, but also displayed its aesthetic characteristics and artistic features.


On The Formation Mechanism Of Contemporary Discourse On The Public, Chonghong Luo Jul 2020

On The Formation Mechanism Of Contemporary Discourse On The Public, Chonghong Luo

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The formation of contemporary discourse on the public is embedded in the cultural context of humanism and post­-revolution, taking culture as the main criterion to divide the elite and the public. The era of consumerism in which revolutionary discourse is absent is characterized by the formation of discourse contestation in a multicultural field. As consumerism gradually shows itself in the public culture, traditional humanistic intellectuals' criticism of it leads to a discourse contestation between the traditional elite and the contemporary public. Meanwhile, the sustained prosperity of popular culture and the developing theorization of cultural studies result in a gradual shift …


An Examination Of Collected Historical Biographies In The Ming And Qing Dynasties From The Perspective Of Article Studies, Shihai He, Lu Chen Jul 2020

An Examination Of Collected Historical Biographies In The Ming And Qing Dynasties From The Perspective Of Article Studies, Shihai He, Lu Chen

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Article anthologies of the Ming and Qing dynasties broke with the tradition of not excerpting writings from the Classical, Historical, and Philosophical Works. It compiled a great number of biographies that appeared in historical writings, and quite a few articles in The Commentary of Zuo, The Records of the Grand Historian, and History of the Han Dynasty. Four factors accounted for this phenomenon: the breakthrough of boundaries between the four sections; the necessity of distinguishing types or forms of literature; the elevation of narrative writings'status; the need to study eight-legged essays. Interactions among these various factors led historical biographies to …


Deciphering Hölderlin's "Hyperion": Eccentric Eros — On The Image Of The Poet As The Divine Mediator, Sha Li Jul 2020

Deciphering Hölderlin's "Hyperion": Eccentric Eros — On The Image Of The Poet As The Divine Mediator, Sha Li

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Friedrich Hölderlin took the Platonic idea of beauty to reconnect the soul and the world. As the epistemological basis against Johann Gottlieb Ficht, his "Vereinigungsphilosophie" reunifies the dichotomic world emerged from human judgement. Hölderlin explores this spiritual transition in his poetic novel Hyperion; or, The Hermit in Greece. The astronomic term "exzentrische Bahn"(eccentric orbit) fully epitomizes the potential for the transition of modem people between civilized society and the Rousseauian natural state. Hyperion's unification in love experience corresponds with the subtle spiritual transformation indicated in the ecstasy in " Phaedrus ", which reflects his aesthetical project to develop Kantian sublime …


From Original Creation To Manufactured Production: Transformation Of Literary Production In The Age Of Internet-Based New Media, Lingling Li Jul 2020

From Original Creation To Manufactured Production: Transformation Of Literary Production In The Age Of Internet-Based New Media, Lingling Li

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Internet literary activities on various website platforms for original literature and We-media accounts have brought about new mechanism of literary production. Fundamental changes take place in literary production from "original creation" to "manufactured production": the shift of the focal concern of writers from expressing "the self" to catering to the taste of "the divided audience", the shift from a formulaic adaptive mode of writing to trans-formulaic writing to cope with the impact of A.I writing, and the formation of literary production groups to offset the pressure inserted by capital on the scale of literary production to require a shift from …


Nobel Prize For Literature And The Making Of World Literature, Dadui Yao Jul 2020

Nobel Prize For Literature And The Making Of World Literature, Dadui Yao

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The Nobel Prize, while canonizing contemporary literary works, also establishes a set of standards for literary criticism, thus creating obstacles for properly evaluating prize-winners and their works. Through an analysis of the phenomenon of the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Committee's evaluation of Rabindranath Tagore, and its world literature criticism terms, the paper concludes that there are evidences to prove the inequality and pseudo-universality in world literature. World literature at the present time is a "one but unequal" system determined by global market where the main evaluation criteria are primarily based on western standards. Therefore, scholars of world literature should …


On Middle English Ballads And "Medievalized" Traditional British Ballads, Huiyi Bao Jul 2020

On Middle English Ballads And "Medievalized" Traditional British Ballads, Huiyi Bao

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The marginal status quo of ballad study is disproportionate to the importance of the ballad genre in medieval English literature. From Middle English ballads preserved in medieval manuscripts to traditional British ballads presented in early modem or modem anthologies, a ballad takes shape in the process which witnesses its constant adaptation, amplification, localization and individualization, in terms of both form and content. Such a poetic text in flux preserves and demonstrates the linguistic, metrical and rhetorical features of each period in which it was rewritten. This article analyzes one Middle English ballad and two traditional British ballads in their original …


On The Non-Temporality Of Aesthetic Experience: Case Study Of Michel Henry's Criticism Of Temporality, Can Liang Jul 2020

On The Non-Temporality Of Aesthetic Experience: Case Study Of Michel Henry's Criticism Of Temporality, Can Liang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Temporality is often considered as a transcendental condition of the manifestation of aesthetic experience, which, however, is challenged by Michel Henry, who distinguishes two ways of appearing. Henry believes that the essence of temporality is nihility, which cannot bestow on things any reality. The imposition of the structure of temporality on aesthetic experience would only deprive the experience of its living reality. As a mode of life, aesthetic experience constitutes an important moment of life's self-transformation and self-growth, and therefore only in life's feeling of itself can aesthetic experience be manifested as what it is.


Peeping And Moralizing: Daniel Defoe's Practices Of Literary Production, Zhenming Hu Jul 2020

Peeping And Moralizing: Daniel Defoe's Practices Of Literary Production, Zhenming Hu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

As early practices of literary production, Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders and Roxana integrated peeping with moralizing, exemplifying the transformation from the linear logic of author-work-reader to the bidirectional logic of author-work and author­reader. Through textual analyses of Moll Flanders and Roxana, this article argues that forerunners of eighteenth-century English novelists represented by Defoe were engaged in literary production in the spirit of exposing the interactive construction of personal subjectivity and social publicness. With peeping and moralizing as creative forms, their works laid foundation for the theory of literary production gradually developed by Karl Marx, Pierre Macherey, and Terry Eagleton, which …


Personality, Natural Endowment, Scholarship, And The Vicissitudes Of Time: Revisiting The Phenomenon Of "Reversion" In Wang Kaiyun's Poetics, Yafeng Li Jul 2020

Personality, Natural Endowment, Scholarship, And The Vicissitudes Of Time: Revisiting The Phenomenon Of "Reversion" In Wang Kaiyun's Poetics, Yafeng Li

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

"Reversion" used to be hailed as a pure "Chinese phenomenon", but its richness and complexity have not been effectively revealed yet, which has seriously affected our in-depth understanding of it. Take Wang Kaiyuan as an example. His poetics of "reversion" had profound spiritual connotation, which implied his original comprehension of poetry, his political ideal of "Entering the Holy Land through Zhuangzi" and "Self-government with Propriety"; it also presented Wang's distinct personality in his stance, method, and object regarding "reversion". The formation of such "reversion" phenomenon was both closely related to Wang's personality, talents, scholarship, as well as the vicissitudes of …


Post-Humanism, Reconstruction Of Subjectivity, And Politics Of Technology: A New Narrative Of The Relationship Between Man And Technology, Xiuqin Lin Jul 2020

Post-Humanism, Reconstruction Of Subjectivity, And Politics Of Technology: A New Narrative Of The Relationship Between Man And Technology, Xiuqin Lin

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Subjectivity is an important perspective to observe the relationship between man and technology. From instrumentalism to ontology and subjectivism of technology, this relationship is being constantly rewritten. Based on the concept of technological subjectivity, post-humanism re-activates the concept of subject with the post-human subject image represented by cyborg, in order to break into the theoretical space of cultural and political criticism. The new subject created by technology and its practice innovate the production mechanism of meaning, such as identity, recognition, and value, providing a powerful momentum for deconstructing the various hegemonic systems lurking in traditional humanism. However, as the subject …


The Revival Of The Ancient In Ming-Dynasty Essays: Its Political Appeal And The Chosen Approach, Jiaqi An Jul 2020

The Revival Of The Ancient In Ming-Dynasty Essays: Its Political Appeal And The Chosen Approach, Jiaqi An

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The Ming dynasty saw a surge of "the revival of the ancient" in both theory and practice of leisure essays. The revival of the ancient was both value judgment at the level of literature and cross-reference between personality traits and social changes. Essay writers who promoted the revival of the ancient fell into two groups, one comprising members of the learned societies and academies, the one including officials from ministries in the central government. The former advocated a plain style as exemplified by the Song-Dynasty prose, while the latterfavored the archaic style of the Qin and Han dynasties. The different …


Time, Space, Meaning, And Narrative: Literary Interpretation Of Alain Robbe-Grillet's Concept Of Game, Mingxing He, Yingyi Han Jul 2020

Time, Space, Meaning, And Narrative: Literary Interpretation Of Alain Robbe-Grillet's Concept Of Game, Mingxing He, Yingyi Han

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Alain Robbe-Grillet creates a distinctive world of game in his literary creations. Different from the everyday world of linear time and Euclidean space, Robbe-Grillet's world of game is based on topological space, where the inner and outer spaces are interconnected and topologically equivalent, the time stops at the present, and characters gain true freedom. By suspending the linguistic structure, Robbe-Grillet enables objects to return to their natural existence, where human and substance exist equally. The purpose of this return is to create a game that generates infinite meaning. This game is a rebellion against the unique truth and the authority …


Variations On Art And Technology: From Machine Aesthetics To Bio Art, Qiong Liu Jul 2020

Variations On Art And Technology: From Machine Aesthetics To Bio Art, Qiong Liu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The machine aesthetic had its origins in the emphasis on ingenuity and novelty in Baroque art. After the neoclassical period in the 18th - 19th centuries, the function of machinery (rational efficiency) was also accepted as beauty. In the 20th century, the aesthetic concept "form following function", marks the flourishing of machine aesthetics. Contemporary time witnesses the development of machine aesthetics into bio art and other forms of avant-garde art integrated with science and technology. The machine aesthetics reflect in different weight of truth, goodness and beauty and their different combinations in machinery, with truth being the key reference to …


A New Exploration Of The Title Of "Cheng Xiang" In Xunzi, Chaobin Zou May 2020

A New Exploration Of The Title Of "Cheng Xiang" In Xunzi, Chaobin Zou

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The meaning of the title "Cheng Xiang" in Xunzi is controversial. Through close reading, this paper analyzes "Cheng Xiang" in Xunzi from such new angles as evolvement of literary style and cultural integration. It is found that "Cheng Xiang" in Xunzi consisted of three relatively independent articles when Xunzi originally wrote them. "Cheng Xiang" was not simply titled by using several characters in the opening passage. Instead, it was consciously named after its literary style. "Cheng Xiang" as a literary style resulted from the integration of rites and music culture in the court of the Zhou dynasty and folk ballad …


Indefinability, Mystique And Theological Implication In Adorno's Natural Beauty, Ting Wang May 2020

Indefinability, Mystique And Theological Implication In Adorno's Natural Beauty, Ting Wang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In Adorno's aesthetics, there is a natural beauty with a particular form: it has no clear concept, but only undefinable and impalpable characteristics. This distinguishes it from rational things, for the essence of natural beauty is unconditional and transcendent. Being transcendent, it is beyond reason. Since indefinability and mystique are appearances presented at its experience level, natural beauty can only be referred to through detour and negation. The rationale for Adorno's set of natural beauty originates from Kant's aesthetics. Like Kant, Adorno distinguishes knowledge from beauty; he differs from Kant in that Kant draws natural beauty from experience and leads …