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Full-Text Articles in East Asian Languages and Societies
Toward The Future: A New Interpretation To Liang Qichao'sThe Future Of New China, Liyuan Jia
Toward The Future: A New Interpretation To Liang Qichao'sThe Future Of New China, Liyuan Jia
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Through a close reading of The Future of New China by Liang Qichao's (1873-1929), an important novel published in 1902, the paper analyzes the way Liang narrates time, which is revealed in the dialogue relationship between the text and its annotations. It argues that the novel is neither a pure narration of the future, nor a mere review of the present, but a constant movement between the two. This fundamental narrative feature of the novel explains why the author made many mistakes, unnoticed in existing scholarship, when dealing with the conversion between the Gregorian calendar and the Chinese calendar, as …
The Inheritance Of Misty Poetry's Tradition And The Crisis Of New Poetry, Guoyuan Xu
The Inheritance Of Misty Poetry's Tradition And The Crisis Of New Poetry, Guoyuan Xu
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
The paper aims to analyze how the Misty Poetry inherited Chinese poetry tradition and how the inheritance resulted in the spiritual crisis and the entailing crisis of Chinese contemporary poetry. The Misty Poetry tries to conceal its inheritance of Chinese modern poetry with an explicit anti-traditional gesture, but due to the unbridgeable gap between the poets' self and the cultural and historical tradition, the Misty poets could not but fall into the deep trap of nihilism. The essential influence on the Misty Poetry has been the early Western modernism, especially the Symbolism, and the Misty Poetry could hardly be said …
The Cultural Nature Of Material Objects And The Return Route Of Material Culture, Liang Xu
The Cultural Nature Of Material Objects And The Return Route Of Material Culture, Liang Xu
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Material object is a sign which exists in the system of meaning discrimination and expression, and it is a concept in culture. Material objects in consumer society show the features of a system that is dominated by cultural ideas with the human sense of orientation. The development of material culture in consumer society necessitates the insatiable pursuit of material objects, because the prospect of material objects comprises the man-material relationship in consumer society and the foothold of consumer society falls on material. As the pursuit is based on the substantiality of material and it tries to avoid the certainty of …
The Cultural Political Significance Of Form: On The Musical Practices Of The New Worker's Art Troupe, Chunlin Guo
The Cultural Political Significance Of Form: On The Musical Practices Of The New Worker's Art Troupe, Chunlin Guo
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
The paper examines the musical practice of the New Worker's Art Troupe from the perspective of cultural study, and focuses on the cultural political significance of forms in their practice. As a new kind of organization, the New Worker's Art Troupe purposely keeps a defiant posture to distance itself from cultural industry. They showcase many popular music works to the grass roots free of charge and their music works are usually imbued with keen sense of reality, adopting folk song's melodies and singing in dialects, and the paper observes that their musical practice is realizing the concept of "people's literature …
The Encounter Between François Cheng And Contemporary French Poetry, Chunfeng Wu
The Encounter Between François Cheng And Contemporary French Poetry, Chunfeng Wu
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
François Cheng is the first person of Chinese origin elected to the French Academy. He has authored creative writings of poetry and fiction, with both Chinese Daoist philosophical wisdom and Western logical reasoning. This paperattempts to adopt a synchronic perspective and the thematic approach of criticism to explore how Cheng's poetry encounters contemporary French poetry so as to find out the common spirit behind the two cultures. The shared concept ofliterary writingbetween Cheng and the French poets is investigated from three aspects of the unknownness of the world, feeling and its subject, and the art of in-between writing so as …
Literary Mind And The Carving Of DragonsAnd The Study On Texts In The Ming Dynasty, Jianzhong Bai
Literary Mind And The Carving Of DragonsAnd The Study On Texts In The Ming Dynasty, Jianzhong Bai
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
The study of Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons emerged in the Ming Dynasty for many reasons, among which the Six-Dynasty School's attention to the work was an important factor. The influence of Literary Mind was so great in the Ming-Dynasty study on texts that the first monograph on text study A General Survey of Literary Texts (Wen Tong) was written in the style of Literary Mind in late Ming Dynasty. Some of the influential and important concepts in Wen Tong were either inherited from or developed upon Literary Mind, which showed that the Ming-Dynasty scholars could both inherit …
On Auscultation, Xiuyan Fu
On Auscultation, Xiuyan Fu
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
The absence of auscultation, listening for precise judgement, in the perceptual experience entails the phenomenon of the employment of eyes for ears in the present "era of pictorial-reading." Listening has been entrusted with the power to resist the increasingly noisy self-talking in modern life. The earliest literary activity in mankind history is story-telling through listening, and due to the absence of auscultation, some important information only available to listening has been unrevealed from literary works. The paper argues that to re-read literary works from the perspective of listening facilitates to offset the perceptual imbalance caused by visual hegemony.
Qian Gurong In Literary Criticism From 1949 To 1966, Jianjun Xu
Qian Gurong In Literary Criticism From 1949 To 1966, Jianjun Xu
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
The first seventeen years from the establishment of P. R. China to the Cultural Revolution (1949 to 1966) is a special period for literary survival. In this period, the constraints and restraints of politics on literature co-exist with literature's rebellion against and escape from politics, which are intertwined with the dialogue and communication between the "integrated" literary norms and the heterogenic literary criticism. Under this historical context, Qian Gurong went through three important stages in his life, namely, the anxiety of political identity, the return to literary identity, and the adherence to "humanistic study." In each stage, Qian Gurong managed …
Wen Yiduo's Translation And The Formation Of Metrical Poetics, Liming Chen
Wen Yiduo's Translation And The Formation Of Metrical Poetics, Liming Chen
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Wen Yiduo translated English poems with different metrical forms, and consciously applied English metrical poetics in his poetry writing and the theoretical configuration of new Chinese poetry, as an attempt to resist the prevailing poetic trends during the May 4th New Poetry movement predominantly spoken vernacular in nature and to promote the modern Chinese poetics with contemporary metrics and prosody. Through an examination of Wen Yiduo's long neglected translation of Byron's "Isles of Greece," the paper demonstrates his metrical poetics was constructed in and by his practice of translation and creative writing. The paper argues that Wen's practice helped to …
An Exploration Into The Logics Of Language Construction During The May Fourth Period, Wei Deng
An Exploration Into The Logics Of Language Construction During The May Fourth Period, Wei Deng
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
In his History of National Language Movement, Li Jinxi discussed the process of language construction in the May 4th period with a focus on the pronunciation while putting the vernacular movement into his narrative of the national language movement history. On the other hand, Hu Shi paid high attention to written language and tried to construct the national language with "vernacular literature," hoping to use "a literature of national language" to create "a national language of literature." Hu Shi's endeavor showed the general logic of language construction during the May Fourth period, that is, to construct a modern national language …
How Consumer Phenomenon Enters Literary Writing, Changzhong Wang
How Consumer Phenomenon Enters Literary Writing, Changzhong Wang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Representation of consumer culture is universal in literary writing and consumption has contributed an extensive content for literary works. When writing about consumer culture, literary production becomes an integral part of the culture. The paper argues that the consumption of literary writing implies an essentially literary discourse instead of consumer culture discourse. Literary writing about consumption shows distinctive characteristics of discursive presence: common and widespread capacity, localized and fragmented modality, and penetrative and interspersed mechanism. In view of the features such as the value, attributes, discursive features, it may be argued that the narrative strategies in literary writing about consumer …
The Politics Of Technology: Reflections On Overseas Modern Chinese Visual Cultural Studies, Xiayun Yu
The Politics Of Technology: Reflections On Overseas Modern Chinese Visual Cultural Studies, Xiayun Yu
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
The dialectical relationship between words and images is an important issue of modern Chinese literary studies. Although the interpretations from the overseas, especially Rey Chow's "technologized visuality," highlight the key position of visuality in the making process of modern Chinese literature, they exaggerate the opposition between words and images, and this exaggeration implies a colonial thinking of technology which sets the relationship between China and the Western as that between the primitive and the modern through its emphasis on Western-ownership of technology. Thus, technology becomes not only a state of matter but also a structure of ideology. If the emphasis …
The Political Turn And Rational Return Of Critical Discourse In Its Localization In China, Wenfang Yao
The Political Turn And Rational Return Of Critical Discourse In Its Localization In China, Wenfang Yao
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
The term "critical discourse" was not indigenous in China, and Liang Qichao and Wang Guowei were believed to bring it as a Kantian concept into Chinese knowledge and discourse system. But Liang gradually strayed from the neutral and rational Kantian concept to relate it with negative political nuance. The denunciative negative nuance was increasingly reinforced in the years from the May 4th New Culture Movement to the 10-year Cultural Revolution. The 1980s saw the return of the implications of the term from the highly political to the rational and neutral, with significant flexibility and tolerance. This return helped to redress …
The Structure Of Narrative Dynamics In Lyric Poetry: Exemplified With Classical Chinese Lyric Poems, Junqiang Tan
The Structure Of Narrative Dynamics In Lyric Poetry: Exemplified With Classical Chinese Lyric Poems, Junqiang Tan
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
As a product of author-reader communication, lyrical texts, like narrative texts, have internal narrative dynamics to push the narrative progression. The structure of the dynamics shows as the three relations of time, logic and space in the texts. These relations exist in the combination of events and development of plots in narrative texts, but in lyrical texts they show in different ways. The fusion of narrative dynamics and reader dynamics pushes the narrative progression and realizes the communications between the author and the reader. This paper takes classical Chinese lyrics as examples to illustrate the analysis.
Redefining Art, Anying Chen
Redefining Art, Anying Chen
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
This paper tries to present a new definition of art on the basis of contemporary Western philosophy of art. William E. Kennick's and Arthur Danto's definitions are sophisticatedly open, but they fail to take into account of the dimension of value in art. This paper proposes that art is both a production and a culture, which means that art is the production of cultural value through artisanship. The definition of art in the classical aesthetics has defined art as craftsmanship plus aesthetic value and defines artworks as the product with aesthetic value, while this paper defines art as craftsmanship plus …
What Is Narrative Ethic Criticism?, Hongsheng Wang
What Is Narrative Ethic Criticism?, Hongsheng Wang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
This paper probes into the origin, significance and problematic of narrative ethic criticism, and demonstrates narrative ethics can be approached from three aspects. Firstly, narration and ethics are indivisible in that there has been for a long time an intertwining and mutually generative relationship between them. Secondly, narration may be characterized to be moral or immoral as well as ordered or unordered, which means there exists non-ethical or even anti-ethical narration. Finally, narration itself may have ethical nature, and this nature is very likely to be under tension due to the possibility of constructing multiple value orders by way of …
A Re-Examination Of "Imagistic Thinking": With A Focus On Zhu Guangqian And Li Zehou, Qian Cao
A Re-Examination Of "Imagistic Thinking": With A Focus On Zhu Guangqian And Li Zehou, Qian Cao
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Zhu Guangqian's and Li Zehou's concepts of "imagistic thinking" were formed in the 1950s and the Post-Mao Period, with each having distinctive characteristics and both having common ground. While both equal "imagination" with "imagistic thinking," Zhu had always been taking them as the same and Li’s concept has evolved into using imagination to replace imagistic thinking. Although imagistic thinking is a transitional concept in the history of contemporary Chinese aesthetics, its theoretical value and significance are highlighted in the present context of linguistic turn and visual culture.
A Critical Survey Of Four Concepts In Literary Theories Concerning "Ethics", Yuanqiao Li
A Critical Survey Of Four Concepts In Literary Theories Concerning "Ethics", Yuanqiao Li
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
In terms of the relation between ethics and literature, some key concepts have been frequently used but sometimes the supposed distinction has not been clarified. This paper tries to survey the following four important concepts concerning the ethics in literary theories: ethical turn, ethical criticism, narrative ethics, and ethical literary criticism. The ethical turn occurs in many fields, while ethical criticism mainly applies to the field of literature and arts. The uses of narrative ethics vary in different contexts, and ethical literary criticism is a neologism in Chinese context first used by Chinese scholar Nie Zhenzhao.
The Boundaries, Implicit Speech, And Blind Areas Of The Narrative Of Love In The Red Classics, Yanbing Hui
The Boundaries, Implicit Speech, And Blind Areas Of The Narrative Of Love In The Red Classics, Yanbing Hui
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
In the narrative of love, "Red Classics" in contemporary Chinese literature have left many significant narrative traces, and these traces show in the changeable boundaries, abundant implicit speech and characteristic blind areas. Through these traces we can recognize the specific historical context of those literary works and the complicated interaction between literary narrative and the dominant ideology. Symptomatic reading of the love narratives helps us to evaluate the Red Classics more objectively and understand the intrinsic nature of contemporary literature better.
On The Connotations Of Hsia Chih-Tsing's Criticism With An Example From The Perspective Of Close Reading Of A History Of Modern Chinese Fiction, Wei Xia
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Hsia Chih-tsing's concept of literary criticism in his History of Modern Chinese Fiction is constructed around a group of concepts centered round moral concerns and supplemented with indirect comment and personality integrity. However, when these criticism are put into practice, personality integrity often than not takes precedence over the other concepts and sways Hsia's objectivity in evaluating literary works. The paper argues that Hsia had the edge of literary critic but was not sharp enough to be a literary theorist, although his achievements have been the most fortunate contribution to the study of modern Chinese literature.
Passion And Politics In Revolution: A Psychoanalytical Reading Of Ding Ling, Ban Wang, Xiaohua Cao
Passion And Politics In Revolution: A Psychoanalytical Reading Of Ding Ling, Ban Wang, Xiaohua Cao
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Psychoanalysis, a historically evolving discourse, has the radical and socially transformative potential. By addressing the sex centered mode in psychoanalytical criticism and by tracing certain fraught moments in Ding Ling's fiction, this paper suggests that private love can be an integral part of collective solidarity, that unconscious drives can propel the impulse for social change, and that libidinal energy can fuel political passion and collective action. Clarifying the concept of "sublimation", and analyzing "positive sublimation" process in which libidinal energy turns into political passion, this paper will challenge the rigid separation of libidinal life from social commitment, love from politics, …
The Study Of The Literature Of Minority Ethnic Groups: Some Reflections On The Concepts And Methods, Weiwei Yan
The Study Of The Literature Of Minority Ethnic Groups: Some Reflections On The Concepts And Methods, Weiwei Yan
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Literatures of minority ethnic groups is an indispensable part of literature in China, and have attracted increasing academic attention in recent decades. The study of different approaches to literature of minority ethnic groups with reflections on the concepts and methods may bring the achievement into prominence and rectify the errors. The study may open new possibilities in the researches of the literature of minority ethnic groups, promote the harmonious co-existence and co-development of these literatures, and prompt further research into and the value reconstruction of minority literatures.
Desire, Currency And Modern Urban Space: A Rereading Of Shi Zhecun's "The Spring Sun", Xiaoping Song
Desire, Currency And Modern Urban Space: A Rereading Of Shi Zhecun's "The Spring Sun", Xiaoping Song
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
With Shi Zhecun's (1905 年-2003 年) story "The Spring Sun" as an example, the paper aims to examine the two aspects of female experiences. The first is to explore the unique experience of the flaneuse in modern urban space and the symptoms of the female body in the heterogeneity of the traditional township space and modern urban space. The other is to analyze how the urban consumption space and the gaze evoke female desire and how money in the process of consumption constructs and deconstructs the female day-dreaming.
Karaoke-Style Rituals And Music: On The Practice Of Karaoke And The Problem Of Modernity, Guanjun Wu
Karaoke-Style Rituals And Music: On The Practice Of Karaoke And The Problem Of Modernity, Guanjun Wu
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
As one of the key parts of metropolitan life and popular culture in contemporary China, Karaoke has so far eluded the scope of scholarly study. This paper aims not just at analyzing the phenomena spurred by Karaoke activity but essentially at developing a structural analysis of this activity itself. By juxtaposing Karaoke against the Confucian thought on music, this paper argues that the structure of Karaoke constitutes a key feature of modernity and manifests what I call the "crisis of sincerity."
On The Idea Of Progress In The Literary Criticism In The Seventeen Years After 1949 And Its Influence, Pengcheng Kou
On The Idea Of Progress In The Literary Criticism In The Seventeen Years After 1949 And Its Influence, Pengcheng Kou
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
In the field of pre-modern Chinese literature, progress usually referred to the countercurrent of the revival of the ancient styles or practice and it often came with the claim that each era should have a literature with its own new spirit. The concept of progress in modern literature, however, was developed fundamentally with Darwin's evolutionism, which in literary studies displayed a temporal linear development. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China, the idea of progress in literature implies the literature which serves the masses and the revolution, with a proletariat ideology and a realistic approach. Progress, therefore, refers …
Western Literature Or Western Learning? On Wang Tao's Experience And Practice, Huaiqing Duan
Western Literature Or Western Learning? On Wang Tao's Experience And Practice, Huaiqing Duan
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
The communication between Wang Tao (1828-1897) and protestant missionaries in the Late Qing Dynasty focused on the Western religion and learning. When discussing Western learning, Wang Tao also used the term "literature," a term that would have great influence on the developmental history of pre-modern Chinese literary thoughts. While he had a systematic exploration into the development of Western learning and the Jesuits' works in the Late Ming, Wang Tao didn't elaborate on the concept of the term "wenxue (literature)," although he had mentioned Western poetry and other genres as well as some important Greek, Roman and British poets. Wang …
Yan Lianke And Chinese Literature In The Perspective Of World Literature, Zhang Yingjin
Yan Lianke And Chinese Literature In The Perspective Of World Literature, Zhang Yingjin
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
This paper delineates Yan Lianke's literary status in line with David Damrosch's tripartite definition of world literature, and then reexamines the bipolar assessments of modern Chinese literature in Western Sinology in terms of international cultural politics as represented by the Nobel Prize in Literature. With reference to two key words in Mo Yan's Nobel acceptance speech — "human" and "transcendence" — the paper further explores the contemporary transformation of realism and Yan Lianke's "spiritual realism" in theory and practice.
Modernist Imagination Of Space And The Hardship Of Returning Home: An Investigation Centered On The Literature Of Minority Nationalities In Contemporary China, Changzhong Li
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
The capacity of cultural bearing of the minority nationalities in China is relatively weak, their ecological environment relatively fragile, and vehicles of cultural heritage relative scarce, which contributes to the two-sided problem comprising of existential and cultural spaces. These spaces are gradually invaded in the process of modernization by the foreigners who, as the cultural Other, have not only contaminated the aboriginal space of existence with their physical presence but also undermined the indigenous cultural tradition through their representation. The imagination of the Other's space helps confirm the construction of selfhood, but the question "where is home" becomes the modernist …
Playthings Of History, F. Jones Andrew, Dun Wang, Yiren Zheng
Playthings Of History, F. Jones Andrew, Dun Wang, Yiren Zheng
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
The 1930s Republican China exhibited a historically determinate and pervasive cultural logic in which children and commodities were consistently linked together as part of a larger narrative of national development. This is attested by the visual and narrative logic of Sun Yu's film Playthings. Often lauded as a classic of Shanghai cinema, Sun Yu's film narrates China's national salvation by way of a seemingly unlikely figure: toys. Released on National Day in 1933 and promoted in the popular press as a call to arms, this particular "toy story" — which focuses on a Chinese toy maker's struggle for survival in …
The Thinking Mode And The Literature Originated From Chinese Characters: The Value-Added Intersection Between Comparative Literature Studies And Cultural Linguistics Studies, Naiqiao Yang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Scholars posit that thinking mode originated from Chinese characters and the formation principles of Chinese characters show cultural psychology of Chinese. The formation principles of Chinese characters may take on the nature a cultural meta-code, and morphological features of Chinese language as a symbol system define Chinese literature as s literature grounded in Chinese characters. Comparative literary studies need to investigate how Western comparatists and sinologists grasp Chinese thinking mode that is encoded by Chinese characters as different languages will shape different ideas of literary writing.