The major issues and fundamental perspectives concerning the popularization of literature and art can be broadly categorized into six aspects: the direction of development, the object of service, the subject of creation, the content and form, the language, and the evaluation of the May Fourth and New Culture Movements. While the theory and practice of the popularizing literature and art hold positive significance, they are also subject to biases and limitations. Mao Zedong, rather than merely perpetuating the ideals and objectives of the movement, deconstructed, synthesized and reformed its content and issues. He proposed his own insights and solutions to the associated problems and disputes, elevating them to a new level. The publication of the Speech on the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art marked the transition of popularizing literature and art into a phase of “generalization.” Following the 1950s, the flourishing socialist literature and art demanded sophisticated works, causing the momentum of popularizing literature and art to gradually wane. By the 1980s, traditional popular literature and art faced pressure from emerging mass culture, leading to their decline. In 2014, Xi Jinping further developed the ideas of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping to address the increasing spiritual and cultural needs of the people, putting forward the “strategy of fine works”. Both in practice and theory, the popularization of literature and art deviated from its original reality and rationality. The trajectory of the development of literature and art has shifted from popularization to the strategic pursuit of refined works, which has become an inevitable demand of the times and the inexorable trend of history.

Current aesthetic and literary theoretical research on AI art primarily focuses on issues such as originality and subjectivity, which reflects an instrumentalist view of technology that deviates from the trend toward the integration of art and technology. For this reason, this article examines AI creation from the perspective of Marxist art production theory. By identifying various technological concepts in the genealogy of art production theory and sorting out the technological lineage from mechanical reproduction to digital originality, this article further explains the connotation and potentiality of AI art from three aspects: social organization, spiritual production, and the problem of “imbalance”. Accordingly, it argues that scholars in humanities and art should examine the practice of spiritual production in the digital age through the dialectical relationship between art, technology, and society, in order to propel the production turn of contemporary aesthetics and realize the contemporary innovation of Marxist art theory.

During the period of the revolutionary literature movement, the dissemination and evolution of Marxist ideological theory significantly impacted the development of Marxist literary and art theory. Initially introduced from Japan as part of historical materialism, Marxist ideological theory focused on the implications of “spiritual structure” and its connection to the “economic basis.” However, as the revolutionary conditions and theoretical development of the Chinese proletariat progressed, the spread of Chinese Marxist ideological theory gradually distanced itself from Japanese influences and aligned with Russian Soviet Marxist Leninist literature and ideology theory. The focus of Chinese Marxist ideological theory also shifted to emphasize class struggle in the fields of literature, art and ideology. Examining the development of Chinese Marxist theory on literature and art is of great importance in advancing the theoretical process of Marxism in China in the new era.

In the early twenty-first century, a group of sociologists based at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, represented by Jeffrey C. Alexander, formally developed a constructivist theory of cultural trauma, or a constructivist social theory of trauma. Based on the rejection of pathological and essentialist theories of trauma, this theory argues that trauma does not exist naturally, but is a symbolic/representational construct; trauma, therefore, is not innately traumatizing but becomes so through social and cultural interpretations and interactions. The primary objective of this cultural trauma theory is to uncover and understand the nature, processes, and mechanisms behind this construction, thereby providing insights into the social underpinnings of trauma.

The presence of the black element in fairy tales and fairy-tale films has always been a challenging issue, sparkling debates on whether these narratives create a utopia of brightness and dreams or a dystopia of darkness and strangeness. Addressing this question necessitates revisiting the definition and history of fairy tales, uncovering the deep-rooted fixation on the binary opposition between adults and children. While Gilles Deleuze's concept of “becoming-child” offers a profound response, it tends to lean towards affirmative becoming, overlooking negative traumatic experiences and favoring abstract speculation over detailed living conditions analysis. This paper shifts the focus to negative aspects through the examination of fairy-tale films by Dani Cavallaro and Sue Short, particularly exploring the key concepts of rite of passage and initiation they introduce.

Georges Didi-Huberman adopts a trans-historical and interdisciplinary approach to image, and his theory of image unfolds through an ongoing dialogue with such particular figures as Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Aby Warburg, Walter Benjamin, and Gilles Deleuze. On the one hand, Didi-Huberman develops a style of “figurative thinking” in which he often starts from an old image and reformulates his own conceptual framework, such as the “Ninfa fluida”, the “firefly of resistance” and the “double Atlas” (atlas and resistance). On the other hand, despite the extensive and diverse nature of Didi-Huberman's research, his theoretical thinking maintains remarkable coherence. In the early years, he focused on the issue of image migration and survival represented by the image of the flowing Ninfa, as a means of reassessing the potential for rewriting art history as an open narrative. He later turned to the visual form of image juxtaposition, the atlas approach, and introduced the multiplicity and heterogeneity of montage. In recent years he has attempted to transform the historical and political reflection on image into a philosophy of action: how images move towards emancipatory action through the mediation of desire, affect and imagination.

The practice of “fenchu” (separation) marks a pivotal development in the Ming dynasty's chuanqi playwriting system, manifesting as either “implicit” or “explicit” separation within early Southern Opera texts. The late Ming period saw enhancements in the separation methodologies within actors' performance manuscripts and reader-oriented printed editions, improving upon the character entry and exit strategies from the Song, Yuan, and early Ming operas. This led to the formulation of separation standards that reconcile character transitions, scene consistency, and narrative cohesion. The emergence of the separation mechanism in Southern Opera is attributed to multifaceted causes: for performance scripts, it facilitated staging; for printed editions, it enhanced readability; and for literary compositions, it signified playwrights' endorsement and standardization of theatrical conventions. The advent of selected scene plays and the demands of public discourse, requiring the “establishment of dispersed identities” and “collective interaction,” played a crucial external role in the development of this system. The inception of the separation mechanism signifies a comprehensive understanding of drama's intrinsic and extrinsic structures by performers, patrons, and playwrights alike, highlighting the intricate interplay between script performance and consumption, and between creators and audiences.

Much of the contemporary praise for Kong Shangren's Peach Blossom Fan focuses on the literary merits, but the stage art remains understudied. Kong Shangren's meticulous approach to stagecraft, particularly his adoption of a realistic style, forms an intentional and integral part of his artistic vision. His use of large, realistic props such as boats and carts has a longstanding tradition in xiqu, persisting through the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, unaffected by the advent of virtual performance styles. The realistic scenery, which reached its zenith at the end of the Ming dynasty, was extensively utilized in performances at the Qing court, by literati, and in folk theatre. The realistic style of stage art and performance, like the unrealistic virtual style, has its own tradition. Historically, there was no strict adherence to non-realistic performance nor a rejection of physical stage elements. Criticism of Kong Shangren today stems from a preference for non-realistic art theories. Such theories, not fully representative of xiqu's diverse artistic experiences, tend to marginalize the realistic tradition in xiqu, obstructing academic inquiry, exacerbating the genre's loss of spiritual depth, and widening its gap from modern audiences and the market.

Mirrors, as a tool for presenting images, often have a mysterious quality. From the initial reflection to the later symbolic metaphor, mirrors often appear in the illustrations of popular fictions and xiqu in the Ming and Qing dynasties due to their practical imaging function and multiple symbolic meanings. As a physical carrier, painters use the images reflected by mirrors to create a different image of space-time in the illustrated world. It symbolizes deep emotions and characters' destinies that were not clearly expressed in the illustrations, creating a special visual image of “painting in the mirror”. As a pictorial symbol, the “painting in the mirror” becomes part of the whole expression of the main picture, becoming “mirror in the painting”. Painters not only use mirrors to expand the space of the picture, but also continuously interact with various objects in the main picture through the “picture in picture” in the mirror, leading viewers into the world of “picture in picture” with endless meanings.

In today's international context, how to establish a Chinese discourse and an autonomous knowledge system is a major challenge facing the academic community. Historically, discourses on civilization have been marred by a prevailing Western-centric bias, with Western scholars largely monopolizing the authority over narratives of civilizational progress. Such narratives frequently misrepresent or deviate from the historical realities of China. The hegemony of Western discourse permeates various disciplines, leading to a phenomenon of “aphasia” within the humanities and social sciences. In response to this phenomenon, a call was made to “rewrite the history of civilization” and “rewrite the history of disciplines.” This approach begins with the factual history of civilizational exchanges and mutual enlightenment, advocating for a respect for the diversity and heterogeneity of civilizations. It involves rewriting the history of civilization with an adherence to factual accuracy, reshaping our understanding of civilizations, and consequently, revising the history of academic disciplines and literature. By critically reflecting on disciplinary discourses and unearthing unique modes of expression within traditional cultures, the aim is to reconstruct academic discourse. Embracing Chinese discourse to amplify Chinese perspectives and collaboratively forge a new civilizational discourse underscores the essence of rewriting civilizational and disciplinary histories.

How does one reconstruct the fictional world in the text reasonably? Before the emergence of the possible worlds literary theory, this issue was not clearly or sufficiently elaborated. The possible worlds literary theory holds the following ideas. Firstly, the idea that the fictional world enjoys independent ontological status, as well as certain independence and autonomy, allows readers to reconstruct the fictional world more reasonably by means of symbols and textual information. Secondly, readers follow two “intentional functions” to reconstruct the fictional world, with the authentication function determining the facts in the fictional world and the saturation function determining the density of these facts in the fictional world. Finally, readers also follow the theory of “recentering” and “the principle of minimal departure” to fill in the gaps in the fictional world as well as further improve and enrich such a world. The possible worlds literary theory provides a novel and effective scheme to elaborate on the ways in which readers reconstruct the fictional world, but there are still some issues that need to be further addressed in academic discussions.

Marcel Duchamp's artistic endeavors not only challenge Kantian aesthetics but also reflect a certain continuity with it. Duchamp embodies the paradox of the genius who both establishes and transcends indescribable rules. These rules are not templates for imitation by other artists but exemplars for the genesis of new norms. Driven by skepticism towards other agents, Duchamp crafted his own set of artistic principles, valuing innovation and autonomy. However, his venture did not achieve a harmonious integration of imagination and intellect, severing the traditional lineage of aesthetic appreciation without addressing its universality. This led to an untamed creative subjectivity, perpetually embroiled in controversy. Duchamp's ready-made art asserts that not everything qualifies as art. While Duchamp rebuffed the notion of beauty, he did not eschew meticulous formalism. The misinterpretation of Duchamp's oeuvre as “Art equals fine art” overlooks the nuanced levels of his artistic philosophy, where understanding the hierarchical nature of art concepts dispels such misconceptions.

The hostility of aesthetic modernism to mass culture has been a central position in avant-garde theory from the Frankfurt School to the October Group. Although mass culture has already been rehabilitated through a re-evaluation and critique of modernism, no avant-garde theory has achieved reconciliation with mass culture. Inspired by cultural studies theories, Thomas Crow argues that potential criticality is already embodied in mass culture and that, by appropriating it, avant-garde art can offer new solutions to art while expressing an implicit social critique. Crow re-defines the concept of the “avant-garde” to allow for a historical narrative that makes room for mass culture. On one hand, while the October Group returns to the oppositional mode of critical aesthetics, Crow defends neo-avant-garde art by revealing the tension and dynamic cooperative relationship between high art and mass culture. On the other hand, this dialectical relationship has led the Utopian avant-garde theory to embrace the realistic dimension of cooperation and competence.

While Heidegger identified art as the beacon of hope amidst the technological era's crises, his action of inscribing a cross over the word “art” in his 1950s manuscript, “Notes on Klee,” symbolizes a profound and creative engagement with art's essence and its paradoxes. Through analyzing “Notes on Klee” and other related texts, it can be found that this “cross on art” has two opposite but complementary meanings. Negatively, it signifies art's resistance to metaphysical representation and experiential modalities. Positively, it suggests art's potential for self-referential transformation towards its essence as “” (techne).Thus it embodies the antinomy in Heidegger's philosophy of art, namely, two respectively established but contradictory propositions, “art itself having the essence of metaphysics” and “art itself having the opportunity for transformation.” This antinomy, deeply embedded in Heidegger's later thought, highlights the philosophical stakes of Heidegger's engagement with art. It serves as a critical reflection on and a cautionary note about contemporary art's evolution, offering insights into the enduring complexities art faces in transcending its metaphysical constraints while seeking authentic transformation.

The concept of aesthetic categories (meixue fanchou) serves as a cornerstone of Chinese aesthetics. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the terms “aesthetics” and “categories” entered the Chinese academic discourse as loanwords from Japanese, but they were rarely used in conjunction. Discussions surrounding “categories” within the relam of “aesthetics” remained confined to the Western and philosophical frameworks. However, following the 1920s, phrases such as “aesthetic-perception categories” (meigan fanchou), “categories of Chinese aesthetics”, and “aesthetic-appreciation categories” (shenmei fanchou) emerged, signaling not only a more equitable dialogue between China and the West but also a deep integration between philosophical aesthetics and artistic aesthetics, thereby providing a theoretical foundation for the conceptualization and understanding of “aesthetic categories” in the Chinese context. Subsequently, during the 1980s, efforts towards disciplinary systemization and the influence of power discourse propelled the process of “borrowing form and establishing soul” of “aesthetic categories.” Consequently, the recognition of Chinese “aesthetic categories” took shape, leading to systematic case studies. Overall, the Chinese conceptualization of “aesthetic categories” has traversed three stages: the “philosophical category” stage, the “aesthetic-perception category” stage, and the “aesthetic category” stage, embodying the inherent logic of “introduction-localization-artistic abstraction.” This process also elucidated the historical context of establishing and developing “Chinese aesthetics” within academia.

Qian Xuantong borrowed and transformed the Confucian classics and philology during the New Culture Movement to integrate Chinese traditional knowledge into the May Fourth ideological revolution, literary revolution, and Chinese written character revolution. Firstly, Qian Xuantong transformed the resources of Confucian classics from figures like Zhang Taiyan and Kang Youwei, reducing them to mere historical materials and denying the value of all Confucian classics. Such an approach enabled the rejection of Chinese traditional culture from within the Confucian classics, significantly strengthening the May Fourth ideology. Secondly, as a philologist, Qian Xuantong employed the principles of philology, phonetics, and exegesis to validate the rationality of the May Fourth vernacular writing concept during the literary revolution. Thirdly, in promoting the May Fourth Chinese written character revolution, he utilized Chinese philological resources to demonstrate the academic rationality and historical inevitability of “switching to alphabetic writing,” thus achieving a radical modern transformation of Chinese written characters. Qian Xuantong leveraged Chinese academic resources to propel the development of the New Culture Movement, offering a novel methodology for the May Fourth Movement and establishing an independent and unique “voice.”

Rock music has been a central arena for the production of noises in music industries. The singing of rockers, carrying gendered subject identities, harbors a wealth of gendered noises. “The Big Band 2,” a variety show launched by Aiqiyi and involving indie record companies and musicians, presents a contested soundscape of Chinese gendered rock noises, creating moments that exemplify the “disruptive nature of listening.” It also provides a critical perspective for exploring alternative expressions of female rock singers and contemplating gender order and social ideology. Drawing upon theories of musicology, gender studies and cultural studies, this paper introduces a theoretical framework of voice/voicing to comprehend feminine noises. It argues that these non-resilient, bodily feminine noises represent the lived experience and ethnic minorities’ history of those marginalized within the music industry and broader society. These noises are subversive as they challenge the resilient biopolitics and sleek digital aesthetics propagated by neoliberalism. However, it should be recognized that these seemingly subversive pseudo-feminine noises also conform to industrial commodification and platform capitalism.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, China experienced significant transformations in its state structure and territorial attributes, largely due to the expansion and impact of Western colonialism. One of its primary challenges was to make the shift from the territorial conceptualizations and allegiance patterns of the ancient Chinese tributary system to those of modern sovereignty. This evolution underscored the significance of the ‘frontier,’ which became a focal point and a challenge in 20th-century Chinese political life. It also motivated literary and artistic exploration of the Northwest frontier during the 1930s and 1940s. This article begins its discussion from the essential concept of “construction of landscape.” It examines how various strategies and narrative modes of frontier representation during that period facilitated the integration of the Northwest into China's territory within the nation-state framework. Concurrently, it sheds light on the remarkable heterogeneity within the Northwest landscape. These disparities not only reflect the intricate interplay of political, social, and intellectual dynamics in cultural practices and landscape production but also underscore the diverse undercurrents and discursive competitions within Chinese nationalism at the time.

Han scholars, represented by Liu Xiang and his son Liu Xin, undertook a systematic collation, compilation and categorization of the growing number of texts. Seven Summaries (Qilüe) assigned each work from the early period to the late Western Han period to different intellectual lineages as understood by Liu Xiang and Liu Xin, creating textual lineages dominated by the Confucian classics. In turn, these textual linages established theoretical frameworks for later literary styles such as the idea that “the classics are the source of all writing”. Categorized Catalogs (Bielu) and Seven Summaries gave specific descriptions of the nature, various sources, meaning of titles and textual styles of all the materials and art forms that Liu Xiang and Liu Xin dealt with. The way in which Seven Summaries categorized and ordered the texts also revealed a potential concept of literary styles. In particular, the organization of the miscellaneous materials according to textual forms can be seen as an early pattern for arranging an anthology according to literary styles. In Records of Literature and Art in the Book of Han (Hanshu yiwenzhi), Ban Gu modified the catalog offered in Seven Summaries. This modification heralded the concept of “literary collection” in the Four Categories in ancient Chinese classification of classics, namely, scripture, history, masters and literary collection.

In his work “An Ode to Life in the Mountain (Shanju fu),” Xie Lingyun explicitly articulated key elements of his poetry thought, including “expressing will” and “conveying the spirit (shen) by complying with one's disposition (xingqing).” This extended the concept of complying with one's disposition beyond Xie Lingyun's reclusive tendencies and into the realm of literary creation, offering a comprehensive view of his poetry thought. Drawing from The Book of Songs, The Songs of Chu, and the poetry of the Han and Wei dynasties, Xie Lingyun inherited the spirit of employing comparison and affective image, developing his own emotional theory that integrated the meaning of reality. His idea of poetry merged emotion with the expression of will, not only refining modes of expression but also highlighting the distinctiveness of his concept of emotion. Introducing the concept of “spirit (shen)” as an ontological foundation from the Jin and Song dynasties into literary criticism, the notion of conveying the spirit, represented a breakthrough in the creative mode of metaphysical poetry in the Eastern Jin dynasty. Xie Lingyun underscored the importance of conveying subjective perception and sharing experiential wisdom in the present, revealing his reflections on the relation between meaning and language. In essence, Xie Lingyun's assertions encapsulated his ontological definition of literature, showcasing his adept blend of traditional literary criticism with an inclination toward returning to the essence of literature with his poetic creation.

There were different perspectives of stylistic discrimination in the study of ci rhyme in the Ming and Qing dynasties. From the mid-Ming to the mid-Qing, the objects of differentiation included metrical poetry, qu-poetry or yuefu poetry. Scholars often employed techniques of breaking styles and linking them to other forms, showcasing a blend of differentiation and integration. From the mid- to the late Qing dynasty, the trend gradually returned to the style of ci-poetry, emphasizing the internal exploration of rhyme schemes, and aimed to distinguish styles without disrupting them. These varied perspectives were driven by differing strategies of adherence to style. The evolution of these strategies in Ming and Qing ci rhyme studies can be traced through four phases: “adapting qu to fit musical patterns,” “conducting textual research on rhyme rules,” “tracing origins and interpreting rhymes,” and “returning to ci style.” Correspondingly, the approach to stylistic discrimination evolved through stages of “linking qu to differentiate from poetry,” “linking poetry to differentiate from qu,” “integrating and differentiating yuefu poetry,” and ultimately “discriminating without disruption.” The exploration of the musical attribute of ci rhyme at different levels and in different ways was the intrinsic cause of the different perspectives and strategies in Ming and Qing ci rhyme studies.