East Asian Languages and Societies Commons^™

Izutsu’S Zen Metaphysics Of I-Consciousness Vis-À-Vis Cartesian Cogito, Takaharu Oda, Alessio Bucci

Comparative Philosophy

Chief amongst the issues Toshihiko Izutsu broached is the philosophisation of Zen Buddhism in his book Toward a Philosophy of Zen Buddhism. This article aims to critically compare Izutsu’s reconstruction of Zen metaphysics with another metaphysical tradition rooted in Descartes’ cogito ergo sum. Putting Izutsu’s terminological choices into the context of Zen Buddhism, we review his argument based on the subject-object distinction and establish a comparison with the Cartesian cogito. A critical analysis is conducted on the functional relationship between subject and object in Izutsu’s metaphysics of Zen (meditation). This is examined step by step from the perspective of …

The Yi-Jing Cosmic Model: With An Application Of An Alternative To Neoliberalism, Harry Donkers

Comparative Philosophy

Based on Yi-Jing we present an elaborated version of the Diagram of the Supreme Polarity that consists of immanent and transcendent processes via the void (Wu-ji), the oneness (Tai-ji), the twofold (Yin and Yang), the fourfold (duograms) and the Five Phases in combination with the eight trigrams (Ba-Gua) to reproduction and the innumerable beings. The duograms are further discussed in a quadrant system with axes derived from pattern li and vital energy qi. The model has similarities with Libbrecht’s model of comparative philosophy, but also differences. It is further consistent with the quadrant system …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 …

Hopes And Struggles: Cross-Generational Metamorphosis Of Educational Beliefs And Practices Between Two-Generations Of Korean-American Parents, Haewan Rho

Graduate Theses & Dissertations

Although Korean-Americans are ubiquitous in contemporary American society, it was only after the enactment of the Immigration Nationality Act of 1965, when a sizable number of Koreans found their way to the U.S. During the two decades of the 1970s and 1980s, about a half-million Koreans immigrated to the U.S.

Almost five decades since their arrival, 2^nd-generation Korean-American offspring are now parents raising their own school-aged children - 3^rd-generation Korean-Americans. 2^nd-generation Korean-Americans who have grown up in the U.S. are largely assimilated to mainstream U.S. society, and therefore their views and practices on various …

Writing For Local Government Schools: Authors And Themes In Song-Dynasty School Inscriptions, Song Chen

Faculty Journal Articles

A hallmark of the Song dynasty's achievements was the creation of a national network of state-sponsored local schools. This engendered an exponential growth of commemorative inscriptions dedicated to local government schools. Many authors used these inscriptions as an avenue to expound and disseminate their visions of schools and education. Using the methods of network analysis and document clustering, this article analyzes all the inscriptions extant from Song times for local government schools. It reveals a structural schism in the diffusion of ideas between the Upper Yangzi and other regions of the Song. It also demonstrates the growing intellectual influence of …

The Expressive Forms Of Xu Bing’S Neo English Calligraphy, Jinfu Xie

Student Works (2020-2029)

Xu Bing is active in the contemporary art world and a famous calligraphy artist and painter who held many individual art exhibitions in New York New Art Museum, Czech National Museum and other famous international art institutions. In 1999, he was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in recognition of his "significant contribution to society, particularly in printmaking and calligraphy". Xu Bing created a kind of new square character which combined English alphabets with Chinese calligraphy strokes and named it Neo English calligraphy. A series of Neo English calligraphy artwork was produced which theoretically influenced by the Chinese traditional philosophy …

Nationalistic Massacre Victims Triumph Over Ccp, Nathan Huffine

Voces Novae

Following the Japanese invasion of mainland China, and the subsequent Nanjing Massacre in 1937, Chinese Massacre survivors gained a nationalistic perspective as a result of their lived experiences. Later, these survivors’ nationalistic perspective came in direct conflict with the class-based perspective held by the Chinese Communist Party. This clash in political views helps shed light upon much of the internal and external Chinese historical narrative throughout the mid to late twentieth century.

Crazy Rich Asians: Exploring Discourses Of Orientalism, Neoliberal Feminism, Privilege And Inequality, Devi Vijay

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

In this review of Crazy Rich Asians (2018), I examine elements of orientalism, neoliberal feminism, privilege and inequality that layer the film. Specifically, I interrogate the film’s American inflection of orientalism, surfacing a constant duel between essentialized Asian and American values, where what is American eventually wins out. Independent, entrepreneurial women are integral to this narrative of global capitalist accumulation. Yet, as the East meets the West in the globalized consumptive spaces of the super-rich, inequalities in the United States and Singapore are either repackaged under the myth of meritocracy, or conveniently erased. While the film demarcates a new Hollywood …

Before “Fire And Fury”: The Role Of Anger And Fear In U.S.–North Korea Relations, 1968–1994, Benjamin Young

Research & Publications

Since the beginning of the Korean War, the North Korean and U.S. governments have been involved in emotional warfare. From North Korea’s stated “eternal hatred” of the U.S. imperialists to Washington’s demonization of Pyongyang as an insidious Soviet pawn, emotions have been at the heart of this hostile bilateral relationship. Using three case studies (the 1968 Pueblo incident, the 1976 axe murder incident, and the 1994 nuclear crisis), I examine the ways in which the two sides have elicited emotional responses from their populations for their respective political goals. By portraying the U.S. as the source of all evilness in …