The "world of Lu Town" in Lu Xun's"New Year Sacrifice"is a caricature of early twentieth-century Chinese society. It is a stable social structure centering on the charisma of Master Lu the Fourth, a member of the gentry in Lu Town. The narrator "I" and Sister Xianglin are marginal people, or "superfluous individuals" in the mainstream society. The encounter of the two discloses a serious dilemma. Sister Xianglin's doubts about the existence of soul and Hell are serious mental tortures that reflect the inner anxiety of the narrator "I" as a modern intellectual. Sister Xianglin and "I" are mirrors of each other, highlighting the confusion and powerlessness of modern intellectual rationality on the issue of soul.
"Liberating actor's nature" sounds like from the West, yet not from Stanislavsky or any other mainstream acting teachers. It was coined by the Chinese who misread Western teachers. Westerners doing short-term acting workshops unwittingly contribute to this misconception. Because of the language barrier, they usually eschew scripts and focus on physical exercises. Those fragmented workshops are seen in China as representing mainstream Western actor training. "Be yourself", a western marketing cliché, is also mistaken as the core of acting. Actor training should cultivate actors' second nature, not let loose their original nature. Since the 1950s, Western theatre professors increasingly promote directing/acting, while most Chinese scholars are not well-versed in directing/acting, which has resulted in previous problems in the import of Western teachers. This needs serious reflection.
Chinese "native-soil literature" has constantly been interacting with world literature due to its modern consciousness. Due to a deep spiritual connection with Chinese culture, society and history, it is the best entrance to perceiving the rich connotation in modern Chinese literature with regard to the issues of China and world, tradition and modernity. It is an excellent sample for studying modern and contemporary Chinese indigenous literature, which provides us with valuable experience about how to inherit and develop Chinese literature in the dimension of indigenousness, nation, and the world. It is also an effective dimension to explore contemporary "Chinese problems". By far, most existing studies are limited to the internal study of "native-soil literature", ignoring the characteristics in its early theoretical construction as well as the social environment, historical context and cultural motivation, which all contributed to the occurrence of the concept "native-soil literature". This article examines the origin of "native-soil literature" from the perspectives of sociology, history and regional culture, to explore the reason why it is named "native-soil literature". It also investigates the "Chinese experience" in the development of "native-soil literature", and its rich connection with Chinese literature and world literature in the process of evolvement.
The term "three prose writers of our Qing dynasty" was popularized after the compilation and spreading of Song Luo's The Anthology of Three Prose Writers of Our Qing Dynasty during the reign of Emperor Kangxi. While this term was purely Song Luo's personal coinage, it was widely accepted by his contemporaries who considered Hou Fangyu, Wei Xi, and Wang Wan as the paragons of literati for their "civilian spirits", upright personality and responsibility for the country. Song's Anthology epitomizes the cultural origins and stylistic standards of classical prose, demonstrating literati's consciousness and efforts to define, mold, and exemplify the styles of classical prose during Kangxi reign. Through the prose writing of Hou, Wei, and Wang, Song's Anthology demonstrates the plain and honest social morality during the early Qing period. The title of this anthology also suggests the establishment of a style of classical prose accepted by both the court and common people, reflecting the unique scene of civil administration during the Qing dynasty. The "three prose writers of our Qing dynasty" is a cultural construction rather than a historical fact, however, and it does not try to portray the historical landscape of classical prose during the early Qing dynasty.
Two main conceptualizations of the essence of poetry before the Tang dynasty are yanzhi, expressing aspirations, and yuanqing, conveying emotions. Tang poets inherited and developed both traditions, and their poetry reflected the conceptualizations in different ways during different periods. Although Tang Emperor Taizong wrote poems in the mode of expressing aspirations and ordered officials to follow suit, a majority of poets believed in the mode of conveying emotions. During the reigns of Emperor Gaozong and Empress Wu Zetian, the court considered conveying emotions as the aim of poetry, while Luo Binwang and Wang Bo followed both modes of yuanqing and yanzhi and slightly inclined to the latter. Tracing back to ancient traditions, Chen Zi'ang advocated the mode of yanzhi and had significant influence on his contemporaries. During the High Tang, both the court and poets considered poetry as a means to express aspirations. Not only did the link poetry at the court of Emperor Xuanzong have the intention of education, the poetry of Li Bai and Du Fu also had the characteristics of yanzhi.
Teasing "the extraordinary out of the ordinary" is a prevailing aesthetic taste in the late Ming dynasty, initiated by Li Zhi in the intellectual field and proliferated into the creative writing of novels and plays. This research delineates the development of this ideal in the Late Ming dynasty, and explains the reasons for the ideal from three aspects: zeitgeist, partisan contestation and literary claims. It hopes to explore the cultural implications and values with reference to the historical context.
The core of Badiou's concept of inaesthetics is to liberate art from philosophy and let it become an independent program of truth in contrast to philosophy. Among arts, poetry was once denounced by Plato, who thought it was an imitation of imitation and therefore unhelpful for the establishment of the Republic. Badiou, however, sets a high value on poetry from his inaesthetic perspective. From the poems of Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Celan, and others, Badiou discovers a dialectical coexistence between poetry and mathematics. For him, modern poetry, as a form of thought, is able to verify itself. Being the task of idea, it is a set of operational methods rather than an effective existence of a thought devoted to the body of language. For this reason, poetry can contemplate the truth embedded in itself. It is essentially an event, an ensemble that embodies truths. When a poem enters the reader's mind, it combines with the poet and the reader, and they constitute an ensemble that approaches the representation of truth. The poet's inspiration is transformed into alphabetic symbols, which pave the way for readers' access to truth after they enter poetry. In this moment, poetry, as an event, possesses the possibility of representing truth.
