Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Aesthetics of Translocality and Crossmediality in Isaac Julien's Ten Thousand Waves

Zhang Yingjin

2017, 37 (6): 6-15.

Abstract ( 220 )

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This article examines translocality and crossmediality as new developments in cinema and visual studies. Isaac Julien's 9-screen video installation Ten Thousand Waves (2010) represents a migratory aesthetics based on translocal evocation, crossmedial interaction, and mobile spectatorship. As Julien reconstructs the legend of Mazu and memories of Shanghai in radically different modes (e. g., the idyllic versus the phantasmagoric, the nostalgic versus the post-nostalgic), their screen images and sounds enter a constant circulation and produce intriguing multi-directional, multi-spatial, and multi-temporal dissonance/resonances across different media and genres — cinema, art photography, video installation, police rescue footage, calligraphy, poetry, painting, and star performance. Cross-border visual arts no doubt have enhanced the auteur mystique, but a key question remains as to whether Western audience, in its reception of Eastern imageries, could break through the confines of entrenched Orientalism.

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Our Modernity: The Cross-cultural Potential of Chinese Scholarship

Liu Yiqing

2017, 37 (6): 26-34.

Abstract ( 207 )

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The issues of "how the west understands China" and "how China understands China" have been the two sides of the same coin in the global scholarship. Both China and the West are trapped by the same issue of understanding China, because modern Chinese social structure and basic aspects of mentality are shaped by modernity, and China and the west are equally confronted by the challenges of modernity under the circumstances of globalization. Chinese modernity came into being due to the western impact, and consequently Chinese tradition has become the Other for contemporary China, which means that there is a gap between tradition and modernity. A keen awareness of the fracture in China caused by modernity is helpful for us to reappreciate the value of tradition with a more pragmatic attitude. Seen positively, the inner tension of Chinese academic thought caused by the coexistence of tradition and modernity, China and the West, would breed cross-cultural potential to promote Chinese scholarship to complete self-construction through drawing on multifarious thoughts.

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Imagery in Chuang Tzu from the Perspective of Pictorial-Linguistic Semiotics

Bao Zhaohui

2017, 37 (6): 35-43.

Abstract ( 235 )

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This article tries to investigate the representation of the world from Chuang Tzu's language, and also to examine the ground on which Chuang Tzu's language activities contain imagery. It argues that Chuang Tzu represented the world by visualizing Tao, or the Way. The fact that literature is a form of language art provides help for describing the visualization of the world. Therefore, this determines that Chuang Tzu employs imagery for expression. Chuang Tzu gives prominence to the poetic function rather than referential function in his language during the process of linguistic expression. Such a feature emphasizes the poetic turn of image, rather than the image of notional words. In addition, Chuang Tzu is not merely a poet, but a poet philosopher. His method to utilize image is also determined by his unique identity, and connected with the generation of Tao. In particular, one part of the image representation, Ekphrasis, which is very close to imitating the practical bodily activities, is particularly favored by Chuang Tzu.

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Exploring the Lives of Song Dynasty Women through Hong Mai's Yijianzhi

Ronald Egan

2017, 37 (6): 44-49.

Abstract ( 338 )

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Yijianzhi is a collection of anecdotes and tales compiled by the Song dynasty literatus Hong Mai. Most of the stories it contains were transmitted orally to Hong Mai by people he knew. Consequently, Hong Mai believed the stories to be reliable accounts of events that had actually happened. This article follows the methods of the British Sinologist Glen Dudbridge in viewing such stories as belonging to medieval China's "vernacular culture." Many of Yijianzhi's stories feature one or another type of women as their protagonist, and so the collection is a valuable source for the study of women of that period. This article pursues four approaches to using these stories: (1) to discover in them aspects of women's lives that are little known and not revealed in other Song dynasty materials; (2) to find representations of women that are at odds with what we find in other materials; (3) to explore aspects of women's lives that the stories broach only in an indirect or suppressed manner; and (4) to reflect on ways to deal with and interpret unclear or illogical stories. Particular stories are discussed in each of these four categories.

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"Qin Virtue" and "Wenxin": Innovation of Ji Kang's "Qin Fu" Based on Tradition and Its Impact

Song Zhanyun

2017, 37 (6): 50-58.

Abstract ( 324 )

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Based on the classic vocabulary of music fu's creative mode in the Han dynasty, Ji Kang's "Qin Fu" integrated the parallel prose and the argumentation into the work of the fu. Ji Kang gave yaqin metaphysical description, thus bringing the qin culture a richer content. He proposed a qin ethics of "peace virtue", which was an innovation based on the music theory tradition of the pre-Qin and Han dynasties. Ji Kang's "Qin Fu" reversed the trend of sadness beauty in the Han dynasty, and reinstated the idea of harmony from traditional Confucian music theory; it dispensed with the Confucian qin theory which emphasized didactic self-cultivation. In the meantime, he brought in the Taoist idea that no music is sorrowful, thus highlighting music's natural characteristics and practical function of self-cultivation and entertainment. The study, admiration, appreciation of Ji Kang's essay by posterities across the world have enriched its meaning, so that its moral can be felt, and its essence can be seen.

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A Query about the "Peasant Uprising" and "Driven to Join the Liangshan Rebels" Hypotheses: An Analysis of the Identities and Occupations of the Heroes and Their Uprising Causes in Water Margin

Liu Zhaoming

2017, 37 (6): 59-69.

Abstract ( 299 )

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In the thematic and narrative study of Water Margin, the "Peasant Uprising" and "Driven to Join the Liangshan Rebels" hypotheses, though frequently questioned, still hold unshakable position among works on Chinese Literary History, popular readings and even Chinese language textbooks for high school. In fact, statistics suggest that instead of all the 108 heroes in the story, only 11 were peasants from the angle of big agriculture, and only 9 were compelled to join the Liangshan Rebels. This thesis proposes three interpretations underlying such long-lasting misunderstanding: 1) "Peasant Uprising" and "Driven to Join the Liangshan Rebels" hypotheses greatly overlap with the modern Chinese proletarian revolution in the revolutionary and rebellious spirits; 2) the ideologicalization of the hypotheses has direct relation with the success of the historical drama Driven to Join the Liangshan Rebels adapted in 1943; and 3) studies on Water Margin since 1949 are interwoven with politics.

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A Study of Remarks on Prose in the Ming Dynasty and the Construction of Prose Theory from the Viewpoint of the Modern Times

Gong Zongjie

2017, 37 (6): 70-79.

Abstract ( 208 )

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Remarks on prose provide significant resources for the prose theory of ancient China. In recent years, with the publication of Chinese scholar Wang Shuizhao's Remarks on Prose through the Ages and the progress in the construction of ancient prose theory, the collation and study of remarks on prose of each dynasty has attracted greater attention. As for the works of the Ming dynasty, the study of which is still in a primary stage presently, the re-evaluation of their historical status and theoretical contributions, along with literature survey, is the premise for its further development. Based on this, and from a viewpoint of the modern times, this essay attempts to take historical context of the Ming dynasty into consideration, including the publishing industry, the educational and imperial examination system, thus providing feasible approaches to remarks on prose in the Ming dynasty as well as the construction of prose theory.

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From Poetry to Ci: The Misunderstanding of Genre and Responses to "Jiangnan Spring" in the Ming and Qing Dynasties

Tang Zhibo

2017, 37 (6): 80-89.

Abstract ( 299 )

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Ni Zan, a famous poet living in late Yuan dynasty, wrote two seven-character ancient verses of "Southern Song" and "Jiangnan Spring". Then the two poems were merged into "Jiangnan Spring" and given to his friends as a present. Shen Zhou and other literati in the Wuzhong area began to follow the pattern of "Jiangnan Spring" during the Hongzhi period of the Ming dynasty, treating them as two tunes. During the period of Jiajing, fifty people were involved in the responses and an anthology was complied. The earliest works of Ni Zan and the following responsive verses by Shen Zhou and Wen Zhengming were in fact poetry. But in the Jiajing period of the late Ming dynasty, there were differences in understanding the genre, for some took it as poetry, and some as ci. With the expansion of subject matters, the use of rhyme was not strictly regulated, and the "subject" and "tune" were also separated. During the period of Kangxi in the Qing dynasty, "Jiangnan Spring" was regarded as ci, and its inclusion in ci collections such as Yishengchuji and Yaohuaji, facilitated the designation of "Jiangnan Spring" as ci. This situation was further enhanced by the Jiangnan Spring Collection printed in the Guangxu period. This was, again, taken as a matter of fact during the Republic of China in the book Collected Ming-Dynasty Ci-Poems. Because of all those incidents, "Jiangnan Spring" was completely mistaken as ci. The misunderstanding of "Jiangnan Spring"'s genre and following responses had much to do with the history of ci studies in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

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Criticism, Rebellion and Adaptation: Multi-dimensional Construction of Discourse of Remarks and Interpretation on Amorous Poems

Xiong Xiao

2017, 37 (6): 90-103.

Abstract ( 244 )

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The formation of the concept "amorous poem" related to the semantic meaning of the character "yan" (glamorous) , and both of them were constructed as typical negative images due to their implicit "dangerous factors" in the cultural context of the past. These critical discourses thus set the tone of remarks on amorous poems, and the connotation of amorous poems thence showed a clearly ideological implication. But two new types of discourse in the remarks on amorous poems emerged in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. One emphasized the independent significance and value by the theory of "emotion-rootedness", and constituted a discourse of rebellion. The other formulated the scope of amorous poems by the concept "elegant legitimism", or claimed that amorous poems can also contain the element of sustenance, thus formed a discourse of adaptation. These views all displayed an obvious consistency with the environment of poetics at that time, and showed the intention that people wanted to reconstruct the image of amorous poems on the theoretical level. However, the ideological dominance of Confucianism determined that the critical discourse always took the unshakable advantage, and it still exerts a powerful inertial effect nowadays, which caused the marginalization of research on amorous poems.

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Opportunities and Challenges: Reflections on the Cultural Situation and Destiny of Modern Poetry in the Past Century

Yin Guoming

2017, 37 (6): 104-112.

Abstract ( 282 )

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"Modern Poetry" has been around for a century since the publication of On Literary Improvement written by Hu Shi in 1917. However, the situation of today's poetry seems less satisfactory considering its influence on people's everyday life or the performance of its creation, which would even raise doubt on modern poetry's future. Undoubtedly, as an expression and accumulation of traditional artistic spirit, poetry functions as cohesion and inheritance of traditional Chinese aesthetic consciousness and artistic spirit. The development, change and innovation of poetry not only provide reference, resources and vitality for literary creation and theory constantly, but also function as a historical portrayal of the change and renewal of Chinese artistic spirit which reflect the different values of artistic thinking in different contexts and environments. Nevertheless, the emergence of modern poems in the 20th century presents a sudden change and a turning point in the history of Chinese poetry while highlighting the influence of literature on social changes at the same time. modern poetry is a "premature child" with distinctive features of the times. It has to experience a long test and baptism in order to have its future through continuous error correction, reconciliation and innovation.

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From the Vernacular to Colloquial: A Reflective Approach to Modern Poetry over the Past Century

Zhao Siyun

2017, 37 (6): 113-121.

Abstract ( 271 )

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From the establishment of vernacular poetry to the boom of colloquial poetry in the 1980s, the development of Chinese poetry suffered from the vicissitudes and challenges brought by wars and political changes. And this becomes an approach to reflect on modern poetry over the past century. Vernacular poetry was given birth by force under the great impact of the western discourse and the great demands for huge social changes, and was guided by historical evolutionism and instrumental rational thinking, hence vernacular poetry's born deficiencies. And later it was deformed and finally reduced into verbal violence due to harsh war environment and extreme political context. In the 1980s, vernacular poetry came out from the shadow of excessive politicization and thus colloquial poetry was awakened by the efforts of the third-generation poets. Since the 1990s, post-colloquial poetry has become conscious of its identity and theory, against the cultural background of awakened and foregrounded popular position. A review of and reflection on the history of modern poetry over the past century reveal that modern Chinese colloquial verse basically represents an indigenous form full of vitality and Chinese poetic wisdom.

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Integration and Innovation: the Construction of the Aesthetics of Poetry for the Future, also on the Relationship between Traditional Poetics and Modern Poetics

Zhang Lvkun, Wei Shiyi

2017, 37 (6): 122-128.

Abstract ( 197 )

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Modern poetry has a history of more than one hundred years, during which period China's social form and cultural symptoms have undergone significant changes. Centering on the inheritance and rebellion of traditions, the development of modern poetry is essentially categorized within the construction of new "tradition", no matter how it assumes social responsibilities of materialization, or turns into "modernity" affected by Western cultures. It is expected that modern poetry and poetics get their legitimacy through practice in the real world situation, on the basis of an integrative vision and an open historical context of the era which brings opportunities as well as challenges. In this respect, the construction of the aesthetics of modern poetry for the future lies in integration, innovation, and a broad theoretical mind, which can provide strong theoretical support in the context of historical depth, cross-culture, and futurity.

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Three Meanings of Moderation: The Effective Integration of Literary Aesthetics and Ethic Politics as a Practice of Rhetoric Politics

Liu Fengjie, Fan Tiange

2017, 37 (6): 129-138.

Abstract ( 262 )

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As a theory of artistic style within the domain of political cultivation, moderation is both the result and rhetorical practice of Confucian ethics and authoritarian politics. Moderation forms its own systemic characteristics, namely, roundabout admonishment in terms of rhetorical strategies, aesthetics of harmony regarding aesthetic taste, and a lyrical principle of starting with genuine feelings and stopping with good manners. However, after the May 4th Movement, it was replaced by the creation principle of "starting with genuine feelings, and ending with genuine feelings".

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The Epistemological Attributes of Literary Theories

Xing Jianchang

2017, 37 (6): 139-146.

Abstract ( 190 )

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Literary theories are epistemological truth/prescriptions or principles on literature. The reception of literature calls for not only implicit understandings so as to achieve its realization in individuals, but also a reinvention in the epistemological arena, e. g. a rational construction concerning the interactions between literature and society, cognition as well as ideology. The major epistemological attributes of literary theories are being non-empirical, describable, interpretative and parasitic. Literary theories are non-empirical knowledge, because their major concerns are human souls, values and significances; literary theories are describable knowledge because as reflections on literature and related areas, they are conveyed by languages, which is comprenhensible; literary theories are parasitic because they do not always invent themselves — on the contrary, they are heavily dependent on knowledge of other disciplines. Parasitism, a limitation at first sight, actually tells us more about the uniqueness of this epistemological field.

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Reflections on Structuralist Narratology

Jiang Shouyi

2017, 37 (6): 147-157.

Abstract ( 352 )

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The rise of structuralist narratology has its theoretical source and theoretical prelude. Its theoretical source includes Saussure's concern of the language and Russian formalism's attention to "form". Its theoretical prelude includes the concern of 'perspective' in the U. K. and the USA, the contribution to novel theory, Propp's Morphology of the Folktale and the study of Lévi-Strauss's structure anthropology. After the preparations of the above theories, structuralist narratology emerged in France which developed into three research approaches: focusing on the story structure, focusing on the composition system of works and focusing on the function of the narrator. Though each approach has its own achievements, structuralist narratology has its limitations at the micro and macro levels, as well as in the scope of application.

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Constructing "Chinese-Style" Literary Theory: A Review of the 2017 Council Meeting of Chinese Literary Theory on "The Innovation of Literary Theory and Chinese Style"

Li Zhenzhen

2017, 37 (6): 158-160.

Abstract ( 157 )

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What's Wrong with Star Wars, Star Trek and Žižek?: A Marxist Analysis

Josef Gregory Mahoney

2017, 37 (6): 161-176.

Abstract ( 786 )

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Star Trek and Star Wars are two of the most popular science fiction franchises in commercial history. This essay examines these two franchises from a critical Marxist perspective. Both offer fantastic visions of human development, which I will argue prove all too familiar to the reified consciousnesses of contemporary consumers. How and why do these films appeal, and how do they repackage the "end of history" in ways that normalize current logics of hegemony for a future that remains founded, nevertheless, on forms of injustice and commodity fetishism as familiar to us now as they were to Marx in the 19^th century? In the first half of the essay, I will show how Star Trek has been the commodity designed to appeal directly the political and economic consciousness of its moment. I will demonstrate how these projections have degraded from a type of popular progressiveness in the 1960s to an entrenched conservative militarism in its recent film reboots. In the second half I will show how Star Wars, conversely, was designed in the first instance to appeal to consumers on a universal, timeless, and unconscious level, one that I will argue is consistent with the type of cogito-consciousness that is itself both a product and producer of capitalism. Along the way, I will contrast these ideologized narrative forms with those found in pre-modern, Chinese consciousness. Thus I will show how both Star Trek and Star Wars work in powerfully ideological ways consistent with "capitalism lately," but likewise demonstrate how the latter functions as the far superior commodity form. This then provokes, in the conclusion, a critical engagement with Slavoj Žižek's discussions of these and similar films and his unflagging defense of the cogito-consciousness as a vital presence of revolutionary agency for the future.

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A Study of the A-signifying Semiotics of Félix Guattari

Dong Shubao

2017, 37 (6): 177-185.

Abstract ( 334 )

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This paper mainly discusses Guattari's a-signifying semiotics. He opposes Lacan's Structuralist psychoanalysis as well as the tyranny and hegemony of the signifier. By borrowing Hjelmslev's glossematics and Pierce's semiotics, he builds modes of semiotization, and develops the a-signifying semiotics, which offers a new perspective and dimension for the theory of subjectivity and the psychoanalytic criticism, and further forms a schizoanalytic criticism based on the a-signifying semiotics.

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An Exploration of Literary Mimesis through the Perspective of Mirror Neurons

He Huibin

2017, 37 (6): 186-193.

Abstract ( 227 )

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Mirror neurons are discovered by Italian scientists Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues, which are not only active while people are acting, but also active when they are observing others' action. Mirror neurons, which imitate the action of others just like mirrors, can lead to "motor equivalence" between readers and characters. Human imitation, which is often accompanied by anthropocentrism and egocentrism, can be divided into simple ones and complex ones, and can also be divided into imitation of content and imitation of form. Mimesis, which traditionally means the writer's imitation of the world, can by extended into the field of the reader's imitation of the characters by applying the theory of mirror neurons.

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From "Phenomenological Body" to "Reversible Flesh": the Transformation of Merleau-Ponty's Aesthetic Theory

Shu Zhifeng

2017, 37 (6): 194-203.

Abstract ( 408 )

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Merleau-Ponty's philosophical thinking is also aesthetics. Such an openness is vital for him, since it concerns the sensitivity and becoming of selfhood philosophy, without being trapped in the dilemma in traditional philosophy. With the transition from the "phenomenological body" to the "reversible flesh" in his philosophy, Merleau-Ponty' aesthetics shifts from perception and sensibility to ontology and "element". In his early works Cézanne's Doubt, Indirect Language and The Voice of Silence, and late work Eye and Mind, painting is always central to Merleau-Ponty's aesthetic thinking, because the pure "vision" in painting refers to the visual dimension that is ignored and marginalized in conscious philosophy. The visual dimension concerns the opening of the primordial world and becoming of the structure of "visible and invisible".

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A Study of Franco Moretti's "Materialism of Form"

Qian Chunrong

2017, 37 (6): 204-210.

Abstract ( 166 )

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Directly influenced by Galvano Della Volpe's Positivist Marxism, Franco Moretti pursues objective and scientific literary research. The most concrete manifestation is his use of metering method. Of course, Althusser's Structuralist Marxism is the main context for Moretti's entire thought. Though he accepts Lukacs' s proposition that "forms are the true social factor in literature", there are three unique features in his thinking about the proposition compared with other Marxists. Firstly, forms are not conceptual or abstract, nor do they exist for the need of theories. Rather, forms are a part of stylistic theories, stylistic practices and styles. Secondly, forms are not recognized by means of metaphysical deduction or empirical conclusion, but directly involving the state of number, time, history and geographical space. Thirdly, he analyzes stylistic features with a comprehensive interdisciplinary method. It should be mentioned that Moretti has constantly used and been close to physical state or materiality of stylistic features, which reflects his Marxist standpoint. Such is the content covered by the general proposition of his "Materialism of forms".

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