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    Studies of China's Independent Knowledge System of Literary Theory
  • Studies of China's Independent Knowledge System of Literary Theory
    On the Construction of Contemporary Literary Historiography and Related Issues
    Wu Xiuming
    2025, 45(1): 1-13.
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    The construction of contemporary literary historiography, within the context of the “historiographical turn” and supported by the national academic framework, warrants significant attention in the present era. It involves the conceptual relationship between historical materials, materials, data and documents, necessitating careful differentiation, and is predicated on specific conditions and foundations. Based on the current state of research, it is both possible and feasible to construct a systematic framework by drawing on the scholarly experience of modern literature, philosophy, historiography, and other disciplines. Furthermore, there is an urgent need to develop an appropriate hierarchical theory based on the “three-in-one” model. The proposal of contemporary literary historiography stems from profound necessity, and its construction requires a dialectical approach to addressing the relationships between historical materials and literary history, as well as between fragments and the whole.
  • Studies of China's Independent Knowledge System of Literary Theory
    Dialectics of Motion and Stillness: The Theoretical Foundation of Zong Baihua's Construction of “Chinese Aesthetics”
    Zheng Haoyue
    2025, 45(1): 14-23.
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    Zong Baihua's “Chinese aesthetics” argued for the legitimacy of traditional Chinese painting in the modern world. However, it was not a simple “incorporation” of traditional Chinese aesthetic viewpoints, but a modern interpretation of classical Chinese arts centered on the “dynamic” spirit. His work benefited from Europe's longing for Chinese culture after the outbreak of World War I, as well as domestic opposition to the idea of “wholesale Westernization”. Moreover, Guo Moruo's interpretation of the debate between motion and stillness in Confucian and Daoist philosophy was highly inspiring and laid important theoretical groundwork for the construction of Zong Baihua's “Chinese aesthetics”. Meanwhile, Zong Baihua's reflections on the relationship between motion and stillness gradually led to the fusion of the Eastern consciousness of “serene contemplation” and the Western spirit of “striving forward”, reflecting his ideal vision of integrating resources and reconstructing culture behind the construction of “Chinese aesthetics”.
    • Issue in Focus: Narrative and Ethics Studies
  • Issue in Focus: Narrative and Ethics Studies
    The Moral Stuff of Narratives
    Paolo Tortonese
    2025, 45(1): 24-34.
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    The Ethical Turn is commonly supposed to have occurred around 1988. In that year, Wayne C. Booth published The Company We Keep, a book considered to be the first attempt to rehabilitate moral judgement in literary critics and theory. The Ethical Turn can have various consequences for literary theory and criticism. In this paper, I try to describe and examine some, mainly those that concern the possibility of an ethics-based narratology. Are the attempts to define it in the last thirty years satisfactory? What kind of description of narrative structures can they give us? Must an ethics-based narratology be focused on the notion of character? Can it deal with the notion of plot, with the problem of temporality? Should it be necessarily linked with one of the different schools of ethical philosophy? Do different philosophical tendencies lead us to different kinds of narratology? After discussing these questions, I propose some paths for future research in moral narratology.
  • Issue in Focus: Narrative and Ethics Studies
    Distanciation and Belonging: Paul Ricoeur's Hermeneutic Detour in Textual Interpretation
    Hu Youfeng, Zhao Haixia
    2025, 45(1): 35-43.
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    In his reconsideration of Descartes's “Cogito,” Paul Ricoeur constructs a philosophy of reflection that emphasizes understanding one's subjectivity through the mediation of the other, such as symbols and texts. The introduction of textual mediation means that self-understanding is no longer self-evident; rather, readers encounter a concrete engagement with four types of “distanciation”: between saying and the said, authorial intention and textual meaning, the world of the text and the world of reality, and “moi” and “soi.” Ricoeur assigns a productive and positive meaning to distanciation, establishing methodological practices grounded in existential foundations, linking structuralist linguistics with deep semantics, and outlining methods of belonging to these four levels of distanciation within the text. Through a specific detour in subjective reflection via the mediation of “textual hermeneutics,” Ricoeur responds affirmatively to the thematic challenges of structuralism and postmodernism, such as the dissolution of subjectivity and the decline of meaning.
  • Issue in Focus: Narrative and Ethics Studies
    Possibility of Literature as Testimony: An Analysis Based on Paul Ricoeur's Hermeneutics of Testimony
    Zhang Na
    2025, 45(1): 44-55.
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    The crisis of testimony, ignited by skepticism, reveals itself in two distinct dimensions. Firstly, from an epistemological perspective, testimony represents a textual rendering of historical events, and its inherent unverifiability gives rise to the quandary of conformism. Secondly, in ethical terms, doubts about the legitimacy of witnesses to extreme events contribute to a nihilistic trend in historical discourse. In response to this challenge, Paul Ricoeur offers his concept of testimony. Epistemologically, he introduces the notion of the hermeneutics of testimony, which seeks to bridge the gap between the inner affirmation of the original account and the external realm of history through the lens of textual hermeneutics. Ricoeur employs “narrative identity” to harmonize the dialectic of testimony and attestation, addressing the fundamental question of the reliability of testimony. Ethically, Ricoeur advocates the notion of “presupposed trust” in the witness. This forms the basis for constructing a mutual ethical relationship of “trust-commitment,” connecting established truths with the historical dimension of human existence through various literary narratives. In this process, the dynamic interaction between the “witness” and the “audience” transforms past historical events into ethical experiments. The traditional divisions between event and representation, truth and fiction, as well as history and literature, gradually dissolve. The Literature that looks toward the future offers new possibilities of contemplating the reliability of writing.
    • Theoretical Studies of Ancient Literature
  • Theoretical Studies of Ancient Literature
    Viewing Lin Chuanjia's A History of Chinese Literature from the Perspective of Classical Studies
    Qian Zhixi
    2025, 45(1): 56-70.
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    Lin Chuanjia's A History of Chinese Literature is a pioneering work in the teaching and research of modern literary history. However, it reflects the traditional Chinese perspective of literature and literary history. Lin's work has been widely criticized for its significant differences in concepts and methods compared to the mainstream literary history works that followed. In his book, Lin integrated the literary historical concepts of the Tongcheng School and the Yangzhou School of the modern times. He adopted the curriculum framework of “Research Methods of Chinese Literature” from the Imperial University of Peking and focused on describing literary works and enumerating literary styles as its core content. The book is divided into sixteen special topics, each of which is narrated in the form of a general history, following the traditional style of a “record of historical events”. Lin's approach organizes literary history based on the traditional division of literature into the four categories: classics, histories, philosophers and collections. This differs significantly from the later literary histories that adopt a diachronic structure and classify literature into unitary forms of poetry, prose, fiction, and drama. Lin's work emphasizes “literary works”, devoting more content to ancient prose and parallel prose. While his treatment of poetry history is not particularly systematic, and he expresses some disdain for fiction and drama, he still includes them in a timely manner. It can be said that Lin's work is a literary history of a classical nature, presenting ancient knowledge in a new form.
  • Theoretical Studies of Ancient Literature
    An Exploration of the Characteristics of the Classical Chinese Concepts of “Literature”
    Cai Zhili
    2025, 45(1): 71-82.
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    The classical Chinese concept of literature takes written forms (Chinese characters) as a prerequisite, with the mastery of them as a fundamental requirement for composing essays. In ancient China, the legitimacy of ci-poetry, qu-poetry and analects as literary forms was strongly questioned due to their reliance on oral transmission. This distinguishes classical Chinese literature from modern Western literature, where creation precedes the written word. Furthermore, because classical Chinese literature was closely tied to practical daily use, literary styles were primarily classified based on their application scenarios. Thus, the success of an essay depended crucially on the appropriateness of the chosen literary style rather than on the ornate, lyrical, or impractical features advocated by modern scholars. Additionally, the Confucian tradition of “telling without creating” restricted creative power in ancient China to formal aspects. Unlike modern Western literature, which values original content creation, classical Chinese literature did not encourage it. This is a key reason why the novel, a major genre in Western literature, remained marginalized in ancient China. These fundamental differences from modern Western literature suggest that the literary self-awareness advocated by certain theories never truly emerged in ancient China. The so-called self-awareness in the Han and Wei dynasties is merely a modern scholarly projection influenced by Western literary frameworks.
  • Theoretical Studies of Ancient Literature
    The Evolution of Tianmu Mountain Woodcutter's Comments on The Scholars: A Form of Reader Awareness and Dissemination of Commentary in the Post-Jin Shengtan Era
    Shi Lujie
    2025, 45(1): 83-94.
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    During the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, literati-oriented popular novels, such as The Water Margin, appealed to talented readers represented by Jin Shengtan. To address the generally low literary level of readers, these scholarly readers attempted to align the works with a potential readership of “talents” and guide them through authoritative yet accessible interpretations infused with literati ideas. By doing so, the scholarly readers engaged themselves in the commercialized dissemination of popular novels. This marked the “Jin Shengtan Era” in the history of novel dissemination. The refined literary quality of The Scholars drew scholar-type readers such as Zhang Wenhu. Based on a strong identification with the work and the reading circles to which he belonged, Zhang developed a “middle-level” reader awareness. In the modern commercialized dissemination context, which expanded readership boundaries, this awareness drove Zhang to further refine and elevate his commentary, actively seeking ideal readers for The Scholars. This approach created an experience of shared appreciation among like-minded individuals, illustrating a distinctive aspect of popular novel dissemination in the post-Jin Shengtan era.
  • Theoretical Studies of Ancient Literature
    The Transmission and Shifting Status of Ouyang Xiu's Classical Prose in the Qing Dynasty
    Zhou You
    2025, 45(1): 95-105.
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    The Qing dynasty was a crucial period for the dissemination of Ouyang Xiu classical prose. In the early Qing, the literary model shifted from Su Shi to Ouyang Xiu, influenced by changes in the understanding of qi (vital force) in literary thought. Since then, Su Shi's prose no longer held the same stature as Ouyang Xiu's, and the pairing of Ouyang Xiu with Zeng Gong became more prevalent among scholars. During the mid-Qing period, both the Tongcheng School and the Wu School of textual criticism professed to follow the literary principles of Ouyang and Zeng, though they interpreted Ouyang's style differently based on their respective thematic concerns. In the late Qing, a split within the Tongcheng School emerged over Ouyang Xiu's prose, specifically regarding whether his style was overly simplistic. This debate led to differing approaches to Ouyang's legacy, with figures like Mei Zengliang and Lin Shu adopting distinct methods of transmission. This also highlighted the tension between the two stylistic tendencies within Ouyang Xiu's prose.
  • Theoretical Studies of Ancient Literature
    Revision and Deletion of Early Works and the Shift in Poetic Style: Wang Shizhen and the Transformation of Early Qing Poetry
    Wu Liuying
    2025, 45(1): 106-118.
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    Wang Shizhen's poetic corpus underwent significant revision from its initial publication in the late Shunzhi period to his final compilation of the complete collection of his works in his later years. Over the course of half a century, he continually produced new works while re-editing and republishing earlier collections. During the first and eighth years of Kangxi's reign, he made substantial deletions to his earlier poems when compiling new editions of his works. By examining these deletions through early editions and related documents, we can reconstruct Wang Shizhen's early poetic development and trace his evolving aesthetic sensibilities. Although his success in the civil service examination and subsequent official appointments in Jiangnan suggested a promising career, his lost works reveal an underlying sense of frustration and melancholy during this period. His extensive engagement with yanti (amatory) poetry, which was actively composed and published at this time, signals a phase of aesthetic experimentation and stylistic boldness. During his years in Yangzhou, his poetic influences alternated between the styles of Wang Wei and Meng Haoran, as well as Wen Tingyun and Li Shangyin, which reflects a dynamic intersection of different literary traditions. As he continuously revised and refined his collections, Wang's Yuyang poetics gradually matured, which moved toward a more polished and elegant form. His selective deletions and evolving aesthetic choices exemplify the broader literary transformations of the early Qing period, a time when poetic expression transitioned from stylistic plurality to increasing formalization and refinement.
    • Mutual Learning between Literary Theories
  • Mutual Learning between Literary Theories
    De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) and Roman Poetry in the Golden Age
    Li Yongyi
    2025, 45(1): 119-128.
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    Lucretius exerted enormous pressure on the Roman poets of the Golden Age with the outstanding achievement of his De Rerum Natura. Virgil outmaneuvered him by reducing him to one of the voices and perspectives in his own work, by introducing other voices and perspectives, and by unifying them structurally and thematically, and in particular by employing a strategy of re-mythologization to dissolve the rationalism of De Rerum Natura. Horace took a pragmatic approach to the Epicurean philosophy and the literary elements of the epic, refusing to engage in head-on collision with Lucretius, and even frequently alluding to this predecessor in his later works. Ovid praised Lucretius unreservedly and created an alternative type of overarching epic about the universe by fusing the three traditions of mythological, etiological, and scientific epic. In the face of the daunting epic tradition from Homer onward, Lucretius' courage and wisdom in challenging it showed the three major Roman poets how to emulate their predecessors.
  • Mutual Learning between Literary Theories
    “Poetry Is a Discourse of Republicanism”: On Friedrich Schlegel's Idea of Aesthetical Politics
    Luo Jiu
    2025, 45(1): 129-139.
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    For a long time, German Romanticism was regarded as politically dangerous because of its aestheticism. The modern concepts of state and legal right based on Enlightenment rationalism have led to extremely irrational and inhuman consequences in political practice. This prompted early romantics to oppose the artificial and destructive nature of knowledge embedded in the Enlightenment rationalism, as well as the blunt political principles derived from such understanding. Schlegel's interpretation and development of Kant's critique of aesthetic judgment demonstrate that aesthetic experience is a vital form of sensory education and that shaping the senses through aesthetic experience aids in realizing the goal of cultivating human nature. In this regard, a person's rationality and will can develop in harmony with their realistic sensory experience, thus forming a self-consciousness grounded in intersubjectivity and common sense. The educational function and political significance of aesthetic experience in shaping people's senses and self-consciousness are fully reflected in Schlegel's analysis of the concept of republicanism.
  • Mutual Learning between Literary Theories
    From a Political Genre to the Politics of Genre: The Avant-Garde Manifesto's Inheritance and Variation of the Modern Political Manifesto
    Li Li
    2025, 45(1): 140-149.
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    As a result of application of the earlier political manifesto to the artistic field, the avant-garde manifesto plays a crucial role in breaking through the conservatism of the old system and establishing a political dimension for aesthetic practice in Western avant-garde art. On one hand, it shapes the avant-garde consciousness of artists from the dimension of time and space with a fragmented historical narrative pattern and a multi-role dramatic conflict structure. On the other hand, it calls for immediate action to disrupt the static and closed relationship between artists, recipients and works, revitalizing the connection between art and life. This transformation makes avant-garde art a form of manifesto-driven practice. Overall, the avant-garde manifesto inherits key elements of the modern political manifesto while creating a unique politics of genre, which informs its aesthetic orientation. The inherent contradiction between “the art manifesto” and “the art of the manifesto” becomes emblematic of the dilemma surrounding avant-garde art's attempts at intervention.
  • Mutual Learning between Literary Theories
    Literature Dies in the Digital: Friedrich Kittler on Literature as Medium
    Jiang Na
    2025, 45(1): 150-160.
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    Friedrich Kittler, one of the theoretical pioneers of the “media materialism” paradigm, views literature as a medium and thereby analyzes its material basis and technological features. From the writing practices of the print era to modern literature in the age of analog technology, shifts in technological media have disrupted literary history, resulting in the death of literature in the age of computers. Kittler's media materialist approach to literature emphasizes the external hardware conditions that define literature as a medium and offers a new technological perspective for reviewing literary development. This innovative approach has transformed the framework of literary studies and provided a forward-looking method that offers valuable insights into broadening current literary research.
  • Mutual Learning between Literary Theories
    Towards the Ordinary: The Argument Structure of Jacques Rancière's Poetics of the Sensible
    Sun Qiqi
    2025, 45(1): 161-169.
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    Jacques Rancière's critical texts contain various attempts to subvert the reproductive logic of art by rediscovering the sensible, to show the power of the ordinary, and to liberate it from the realm of signification on the levels of language, time, and space. On the level of language, Rancière uses the example of the nineteenth-century French novel Madame Bovary to show how the flow of language suspends the perceptual order of inequality. On the level of time, Rancière sorts out the multiple structures of time in Bela Tarr's film Turin Horse, showing how the time of purely material events presented in the film subverts the tradition of representation. On the level of space, he reconstructs the tangled and separate relationship between the objects of life and forms of art, using everyday objects to exhibit how art exerts its lasting appeal. Rancière's critical text thus presents a theoretical system of the poetics of the sensible that not only promotes the reciprocal transformation of time and space, great events and trivialities, but also constructs a new aesthetic empiricism through critical practice. It also continually blurs the boundary between the highbrow and the ordinary, offering a new way of thinking about the revolutionary significance of art in everyday life, that is, how the excess of pure perception dialectically promises the redistribution of the sensible.
  • Mutual Learning between Literary Theories
    Ekphrasis as a Paradigm of Art History Writing and Its Contemporary Circumstances
    Dai Yingying
    2025, 45(1): 170-180.
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    Ekphrasis, derived from classical rhetoric, was a traditional paradigm in art history writing, but current scholarship has overlooked how it transformed from a rhetorical device into a paradigm of art history writing. Considered as a vivid description of the “qualities of ekphrasis”, enargeia was the rhetorical source of ekphrasis's characteristics such as visualization and emotional persuasiveness. Through transformation and use by classical rhetoricians, ekphrasis shifted from a rhetorical device into a method in art history writing, and further into a paradigm featuring visualization and emotional persuasiveness during the Renaissance. Today, ekphrasis and contemporary art have encountered the same dilemmas and necessities for transformation, and thus it becomes more necessary for ekphrasis to be open and useful for contemporary art.
  • Mutual Learning between Literary Theories
    The Use of the Useless:Semiotic Significance of Redundancy in Communication
    Bai Shanshan
    2025, 45(1): 181-190.
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    The concept of redundancy is derived from information theory. However, as the question of significance is suspended in information theory, the important role of redundancy in communicating the textual meaning is hardly elaborated. From the perspective of semiotics, redundancy can be divided into in-text redundancy and out-of-text redundancy. In-text redundancy mainly unfolds in such forms as the indicator of intrinsic metalanguage, phatic symbols, and the built-in redundancy as a response to semiotics noise. Out-of-text redundancy primarily serves as genre determination, subcultural style representation, and conversion of markedness. Redundancy, as an organizational form of meaning interpretation in the dimension of temporality, provides index for the interpretation of the text, guarantees the coherence of different meanings in the process of text interpretation, and offers solid foundation of significance for a broad consensus within the community.
    • Issue in Focus: Walter Benjamin Studies
  • Issue in Focus: Walter Benjamin Studies
    On the Reorientation of Benjamin's Practice in Gestural Criticism
    Zhang Fan, Zhang Han
    2025, 45(1): 191-200.
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    Walter Benjamin's gestural criticism not only serves as a new perspective of theatre criticism based on the interruption and citation of “gesture,” but also opens a mysterious gate to Kafka's fiction. Gestural criticism of theatre unveils the aesthetic effect of alienation inherent in gesture and highlights the cognitive function of the stage's “dialectical imagery”. Benjamin's criticism of fiction seamlessly inherits the narrative analysis strategies of his theatrical critiques, transitioning from stage performance to broader social spaces. The exploration of gesture shifts from an aesthetic to a philosophical path: it examines the alienation embedded in gestures, their deeper production mechanisms, and their contemporary manifestations; on the other hand, it treats gesture as archaic imagery that recalls the lost experience and seeks opportunities for redeeming collective human experience from mythological violence. Gestural criticism is both a vivid reflection of the tension in Benjamin's thought and a unique contribution to literary criticism.
  • Issue in Focus: Walter Benjamin Studies
    Artwork as Monad: Theodor Adorno's Interpretation and Reconstruction of Walter Benjamin
    Li Ruoyu
    2025, 45(1): 201-212.
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    The aesthetic proposition of “Artwork as Monad” expresses a special conceptualization of art works. This notion took shape at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, during a period when transformation of the relationship between man and the universe reconstructed the empirical world. Walter Benjamin, through his critique of modern mechanical cosmology and Kantian empiricism, proposed a new cosmic empirical theory, thus constructing a world of Konstellation that laid an experiential foundation for knowledge. Theodor W. Adorno dynamically remolded it via negative dialectics. From the micro to the macro, the artwork-as-monad structure includes Machtfeld of art, consciousness of Konstellation and social history. Within the philosophical turn of 20th-century Western Marxism, the artwork-as-monad theory has released the potential for ideological critique. It reveals the aesthetic illusion inherent in capitalist society through the dichotomy between the atom and the monad. However, the theoretical positioning of artwork-as-monad theory also indicates its limits in political practice, as later Marxist theorists extended these ideas into two distinct tendencies merging with political art.
  • Issue in Focus: Walter Benjamin Studies
    Skull or Angel: A “Dynamogram” of “Auffahrt”: On Aby Warburg and Walter Benjamin's Baroque
    Qiao Hongkai
    2025, 45(1): 213-223.
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    In his personal letters from the 1920s, Walter Benjamin expressed his desire to join Aby Warburg's circle. Compared with the epistemological resonance of their “Final Plans”, the connection between Benjamin and Warburg during this period was more essential. Warburg described the kinetic form of the inversion and repolarization of history energy as the “Dynamogram,” emphasizing its vertical operation. Similarly, Benjamin proposed a spatialized historical dynamic in The Origin of German Tragic Drama.Both the allegory and “Dynamogram” provided a similar historical Structure, the spatialization of time in allegory corresponded to the naturalization of Baroque history structure. The allegorical antinomy signified the kinetic inversion of ancient “Pathosformeln.” Warburg's work carries an implicit dimension of the philosophy of history. Melancholy emerged as the dominant metaphysical emotion in both Baroque history and The Mnemosyne Atlas. Here, the corpse served as a medium connecting the viscera and the astra, revealing a cosmological soul dynamic. The stage of the tragic drama (Trauerspiel) was inevitably occupied by ghosts, and Baroque history was a “ghost story (Gespenstergeschichte)” in Warburg's sense.
  • Issue in Focus: Walter Benjamin Studies
    Synopsis of The 12th Youth Forum of China Association for Theory of Literature and Art on “National Memory and Artistic Imagination”
    Yan Dong
    2025, 45(1): 224-226.
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