Aesthetics Commons^™

Socialist-Realist Art From The Perspective Of Gaze Theory: An Inquiry From Filmology To Iconology, Ying Lu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

"Socialist-realist gaze," linking gaze and socialist realist literary thoughts, refers to the visual communication of heroic figures on the external points off the screen in shooting Chinese revolutionary films. Such gaze, being invisible and with shared sight, returns to Jacques Lacan's gaze theory because of its intersubjective functioning. During its generation and function, socialist-realist gaze breaks the limitation of pictorial space, extends the boundary of screen as a "quilting point," and connects characters and audiences with ideological truth. As a performative image behavior, it arouses and strengthens the empathy between the viewers and the hero.

Fables Agreed Upon: A Comparative Study Of New Historicism And Alternate History, Feng Li, Yitzhak Lewis

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

New Historicism and alternate history raise similar questions regarding history and ideology. New Historicism reads every text as an alternate history narrative, while the narrative mode in alternate history can inspire a nuanced understanding of the critical positions promoted by New Historicism. The paper offers a comparative study of the two in terms of their conceptualizations of historical narrative, intertextuality, narrativity, non-linear structure and spatiality. It seeks to create dialogues between different voices in both the critical theory and the literary genre with respect to their attention to mundane matters, their allusions to the present and projections of the future, …

“Birth Of New Things From Old Things”: The Dialectics Of Ding Ling's “Transformation” In The Left-Wing Literature Movement During The 1930s, Shujie Wu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Written in the summer of 1931, Ding Ling's Flood is considered to represent her turn to the left-wing. This was the result of Ding Ling's transformation in thought and the construction in the organized movement of the League of Left-wing Writers. With the dialectical materialist method of creation, Feng Xuefeng reinterpreted Flood, turning it into a practice of the "November Resolution". This established new space of discourse and path of practice for the cultural struggle of left-wing writers in the new situation.

A Study Of The Relationship Between Zhou Zuoren And Takeuchi Yoshimi As An Overseas Student In Beijing, Wanming Liu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

From 1937 to 1939, Takeuchi Yoshimi studied in Beijing as an overseas student. During this time, he had adeveloped deep understanding of literature's inefficacy when confronted with Japanese invaders＇ political violence. At the sametime, through befriending Zhou Zuoren, Takeuchi was deeply affected by him, especially regarding his views on the relationshipbetween literature and politics, national character, cultural subjectivity, and modernization of East Asia. In the end, Zhou Zuoren became a bridge for Takeuchi Yoshimi to Lu Xun. By using the two key words, "ghost" and "sorrow of the East Asia people", to connect Zhou Zuoren and Lu Xun, Takeuchi expressed …

On The Relationship Between The Morality Advocating Campaign In The Qing Dynasty And Popular Novels, Caixun Chen

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Through the nationwide Morality Advocating Campaign, the Qing government brought novels into cultural management, which had a profound influence on the creation and dissemination of the novel. In such a political and cultural ecology, censership and banning of novels, which had formed an important part of the social Morality Advocating Campaign, became a top- down, national cultural conscious action in Qing Dynasty. On the one hand, in order to enhance the effect of advocating morality, some“moralist scholars”intentionally fictionized the moral-instruction books. On the other hand, some novelists consciously utilized popular novels to implement persuasion in order to cooperate with the …

A Comparison Of The Two Historical Narrative Approaches To Qi Baishi's “Late Life Transformation”, Zhongyi Xia

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The two historical narrative approaches to Qi Baishi's “late-life transformation” could be referred to as “the Sovietperspective” and “the non-Soviet perspective”. The former is characterized by “framing history with theory” and “substitutinghistory with theory”, while the latter “confirming theory with historical facts” and “constructing theory with historical facts”. Following the thread “constructing theory with historical facts”, one must valorize The Autobiography of Qi Baishi, because itssimple summary of “late-life transformation” is reliable as “history”, and as theory it is also superbly profound, which can shedlight on the absurdity of the Soviet perspective “framing history with theory”. Likewise, by following the …

Cento: The Categorizing Feature And Fictional Function Of Verse In The Vernacular Stories Of The Song And Yuan Dynasties, Chuyan Ye

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In the vernacular stories of the Song and Yuan dynasties, centos of poems or ci-poems not only appear in the beginning of the story as a lead-in, but also widely exist in the rhymed texts of other parts. Judging by its content and form, the performance of centos is closely related to the art form of hesheng (a form of rhyme created upon sighting anything) in the Song and Yuan Dynasties. According to the audience's familiarity with the rhymed text, and the story-teller＇s categorization of knowledge and utilization of techniques, the centos in the story-telling scripts can be classified into …

The Aesthetics Of Witheredness And Artistic Creations In The Song Dynasty, Yun Dong

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In the Song dynasty witheredness (ku) came to be the representation of a particular type of beauty, with the withered objects regarded as the object of aesthetic interest. The taste for witheredness manifests in various forms such as cold and thin, sparse and plain, old and strange, epitomizing the ancient-emulating aesthetics of the Song dynasty. Besides literary texts highlighting the withered objects, literati paintings constitute a unique world characterized by witheredness popularized with examples of withered objects such as dead trees, aged plum trees, and thin bamboos. The aesthetics for the withered reflects the taste and spiritual pursuit of the …

Yang Weizhen And The Changes Of Poetics In Late Yuan Dynasty, Fang Ding

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The history of poetry in Yuan dynasty is usually divided into three periods. In the early Yuan period, the poetic style of late Tang dynasty and late Song dynasty was prevalence. In the middle-Yuan period, the high Tang style was emulated, as was represented by the so-called the Four Great Yuan Poets who were officials and served in the court. Yang Weizhen, an influential poet in late Yuan dynasty for his poetics, however, advocated the Six-Dynasty poetry as well as the works of Li Po, Li Ho, Tao Yuanming, Wei Yingwu, Liu Zongyuan, Du fu, Li Shangyin, etc. Yang Weizhen …

Anthologies Of Ancient Chinese Fiction Compiled By Western Sinologists And The Construction Of The Literary Style Of Fiction, Lijuan Song

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Anthologies of ancient Chinese fiction compiled by Western Sinologists are an important channel for their textualization in the West. These fictive works exist mainly in three forms: selected translations of ancient Chinese fiction, selected works of Chinese literature, and histories of Chinese literature. Being translations, samples and selections at the same time, these texts also feature functions of in-betweenness, exhibition and criticism. Through translation, exhibition and criticism, those anthologies have not only textualized ancient Chinese fiction in the West, but also investigate Chinese fiction from Western perspective, which, regarding issues of translation, origin, and types of Chinese fiction, facilitated the …

An Analysis Of Chinese Fiction's Impact On The Joseon Conception Of Fiction, Weiguo Zhao

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Based on the literature of Goryeo and Joseon fiction, this article aims to study ancient Korean fictive works written in Chinese, and explores the conception of early Goryeo and Joseon fiction from the lens of its reception of Chinese understanding of fiction. With the wide spread of fictive works such as Taiping Guangji and Jiandeng Xinhua on the Korean Peninsula, Goryeo and Joseon scholars began to understand and consciously create fiction. Then, Seo Geojung and Yi Seungso, who inherited the Confucian conception of fiction, put forward the“jesting theory”and“completing history theory”. These ideas not only laid the foundation for the development …

Narratives Of Journey To The West In Overseas Sinology, Hongbo Zhu, Xinxin Wang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Since the mid-20th century, in Japan, as well as some European and American countries, studies of Journey to the West have started to emerge, which, with rich content and fruitful achievements, are in themselves narratives of overseas Sinology on this novel. Besides being an important part of overseas Sinology, they are also an extension to the modern study of Journey to the West in China, which testifies to the significance of cultural exchange in the process of “Chinese culture going West”. At the same time, through examining and interpreting Journey to the West from the perspective of global and modern …

On Allegory, Metaphor, And Allegorical Interpretation, Longxi Zhang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In the 4th and 5th centuries B.C., the rise of philosophy challenged the authority of Homer and many philosophers, notably Plato, dismissed Homer and poetry in the quarrel between poetry and philosophy. Some other philosophers, however, particularly the Stoics, came to the defence of Homer by proposing the idea of allegory and arguing that the Homeric epics contained a spiritual meaning beyond the literal sense of the text. Similarly, the Song of Songs in the Bible was also questioned by both Jewish rabbis and Christian interpreters because of its sensual language and eroticism. It was again allegorical interpretation that came …

The Seduction Of Pessimism: Eros, Failure, And The Novel, Tom Ribitzky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In Plato’s Symposium, we get a pessimistic myth not only about love, but about the first experience of loss, in which we were once globular cosmic beings who were split in two by Zeus’s thunderbolts as punishment for not obeying the Olympian gods. Falling down to earth after the split, Zeus introduced eros out of pity for our condition. Our consolation was to find our other halves and hold on to them as a way of remembering what it was like when we were whole. But, as Allan Bloom notes:

…man’s condition soon worsened. In the beginning, their real …

Depicting Absence: Thematic And Stylistic Paradoxes Of Representation In Visual And Literary Imagery, Alexandra Irimia

Languages and Cultures Publications

The article draws up an inventory of, and compares strategies for, the theoretical and critical treatment of the absence–presence interplay at stake in the literary and visual representations of absence. This brings to our attention a multiplicity of heterogeneous and, to a greater or lesser degree, marginal signify-ing phenomena that have in common patterns of disrupting and deviating from the standard conventions of creating and conveying meaning through figures of absence. Lacking a name for these disparate yet similar instances where meaning is created from empty signifiers, we have chosen to call them figural voids. This attempt to produce a …

What Moves You?: Georges Didi-Huberman’S Arts Of Passage And Pittsburgh Stories Of Migration, Alexandra Irimia

Languages and Cultures Publications

Contemporary art historian, critic, and theorist Georges Didi-Huberman thinks of images not as static objects, but as movements, passages, and gestures of memory and/or desire. For the French “historian of passing images,” as he has been called, “all images are migrants. Images are migrations. They are never simply local” (D2017). His book, Passer, quoi qu'il en coûte ("To Pass at Any Price"), co-written with the Greek poet and director Niki Giannari, takes on precisely the visual dynamics of passages, passengers, and passageways in the context of contemporary migration flows. In April 2018, only several months after the launching of the …

The Problem Of Literary Development In Russian Formalism And Digital Humanities, Basil Lvoff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The interest of this dissertation is how our understanding of literary development—as gradual or revolutionary; self-governed or socio-politically determined; like or unlike biological evolution—informs the status, meaning, and value of literature and literary studies. The dissertation shows how this problem—most pressing in our post-logocentric age—was addressed at the dawn of contemporary literary theory by the Russian Formalists. The latter are compared with Distant Readers, i.e., the Digital Humanists from, or conducting research in dialogue with, the Stanford Literary Lab: Franco Moretti, Matthew Jockers, Ted Underwood, William Benzon, and others.

This dissertation argues that both Russian Formalism and Distant Reading were …

Japanese-English Translation: Kitaōji Rosanjin—Why I Became A Potter (1933), Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

A translation of「なぜ作陶を志したか」、北大路魯山人著、1933年

Source, Aozora Bunko (a digital archive of public-domain Japanese-language works):

General website: https://www.aozora.gr.jp

Current text: https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/001403/files/55082_54782.html

All rights reserved, Christopher Southward, 2019

Japanese-English Translation: Nishida Kitarō—Self-Determination Of The Expressive Self (May 1930), Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Excerpt of working translation of 「表現的自己の自己限定」、西田幾多郎著. Source: 『西田幾多郎全集』、第五巻 （第一回配本）。東京、株式会社岩波書店、二〇〇二年一一月二七日。ページ 十一〜六十七。[The Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō, Vol. 5 (1st edition). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, Nov. 27, 2002. Pages 11-67].

Course Syllabus (W19 Online) Coli 331t--Television Culture: "Lens, Mirror, Screen: Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Description:

Or a conjuncture of three moments in the dialectic of television as technical apparatus and cultural practice. In this course, we will read George Orwell’s 1984, view Michael Radford’s filmic adaptation of the novel, and consider a number of critical texts in order to think the psychological and social implications of television as an instrument of control, manipulation, and knowledge production. What, we ask, are the implications, in both 1984 and concrete experience, of light-speed communication capabilities for sense perception, consciousness, language, and awareness? In its dissemination of images and information, how does television impede and/or facilitate politics …

Jewish Mysticism From Borges To Cirlot: A Transatlantic Approach To The Possibility Of A Non-Subject Subjectivity, Erika Martínez

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article “Jewish Mysticism from Borges to Cirlot,” Erika Martínez discusses the form in which some Latin American and Spanish poets of the twentieth century have experimented, in a disruptive way, with the subjective possibilities of stillness and of time capable of overflowing. Foucault defended, in his last lectures, the construction of a new governmentality of self and of others. Among the many possible technologies to achieve it would be that of the writing of a poetry without words, knowing the insurrectional potentiality of silence. This provides us with a possible starting point for reading the post-secular revision of …

Course Syllabus (Fa15) Coli 211 Literature & Psychology: "Material Aesthetics", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

An examination of questions concerning aesthetic experience from the standpoint of the structural and functional logics of the capitalist mode of production

Philosophy's Rarified Air: On Peden's Spinoza Contra Phenomenology, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

If You See Something, Say Something: A Look At Experimental Writing On Art, Charlotte Lucy Latham

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Signs all over New York City state, "If you see something, say something," but museum studies repeatedly find viewers do not attend to pictures, just as eye witness testimony is invariably skewed. Ways of seeing have been limited to known ways of discussing. Alternative approaches offer new insights. The first section, "Experiments in Art Writing," examines two texts: T.J. Clark's The Sight of Death, a journal of his daily visits looking at two Poussin paintings, for which he maintains the ambiguity of exploration and argues to keep visual images from their dissolution into political symbols; and, Charles Simic's Dime Store …

Agreeable Despair: Modernism And Melancholy, Derrick James Gentry

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study considers a group of distinctly modernist philosophers for whom aesthetic and reflective practices represented a way out of the paralysis of a culture dominated by narrowly conceived philosophical values. These modernist philosophers, I argue, helped to give birth to mode of experimental writing that Robert Musil called "essayism." I begin in Chapter One with an account of Walter Benjamin's experimental concept of melancholy and its intersection with the avant-garde practices of French Surrealism. Chapter One begins to contrast Benjamin's concept of melancholy with Friedrich Nietzsche's therapeutic efforts to transform and overcome melancholy on both a personal and a …