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    25 November 2019, Volume 39 Issue 6 Previous Issue    Next Issue
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    Seventy Years of Chinese Literary Critcism: Retrospection and Reflection
    Life, Conduct, and Scholarship: Achievements of Prof. Xu Zhongyu
    Tong Qingbing
    2019, 39 (6):  1-2. 
    Abstract ( 131 )   PDF (1187KB) ( 78 )  
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    Two Major Approaches of the Interaction between Literary Criticism and Historical Materials: A Data-Driven Analysis
    Wu Xiuming, Shi Tingting
    2019, 39 (6):  3-12. 
    Abstract ( 175 )   PDF (7437KB) ( 56 )  
    Over the past seven decades, the research on contemporary Chinese literature has witnessed a significant change from literary criticism in the narrow sense to a criticism integrated with historiographical source investigation. This change has shown its influence in the field of literary criticism. By An analysis of data on articles published in nine major journals such as Literary Review, Literature & Art Studies, and Modern Chinese Literature Studies from 2007 to 2017 shows that there have been two major forms of the interaction between literary criticism and historiographical sources, which may define as led to two approaches, namely, literary criticism via historiographical sources and historiographical sources via literary criticism.
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    Chinese Literary Critical Discourse
    "The Pattern of Dao": A Conceptual Study of the Core Categories in Ancient Chinese Aesthetics
    Gu Mingdong
    2019, 39 (6):  13-22. 
    Abstract ( 250 )   PDF (7436KB) ( 62 )  
    Dao and wen are two core categories in Chinese aesthetic tradition. The mainstream description of the relationship between these two categories was that "wen is the vehicle for Dao". In the strict sense, this view was not an aesthetic thought per se, because it reduced wen to a tool and thus obscured the inherent aesthetic relationship between wen and Dao. Perhaps Liu Xie's under-researched idea of "the wen of Dao" (the pattern of Dao) provided a more persuasive description to this relationship. This article re-evaluates the significance of the discourse on wen as an aesthetic category from the perspectives of history, philosophy, aesthetics and semiotics, examines the origin of wen and its connections with Chinese aesthetics, and explores the internal relationship between wen and Dao, thus reinterpreting and re-conceptualizing the nature and function of both concepts. "The pattern of Dao" is a form of immanent transcendence and humanized nature resulting from the integration of wen and Dao. It is both a signifier of experience and a signified of transcendence. The interaction between wen and Dao has deeply influenced Chinese thought on philosophy and aesthetics, rendering Chinese literature and art distinct from other cultural traditions.
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    Narrative Function and the Order of Life: Analyzing the Performative Mode of Moggallāna Folk-Opera
    Zhang Zhiquan
    2019, 39 (6):  23-32. 
    Abstract ( 212 )   PDF (7204KB) ( 90 )  
    Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, Mulian (Moggallāna) folk-opera about howMoggallāna saves his mother from Avici Hellhad become the main performative mode of Buddhist deity-worshipping contest. On the level of narrative function, the performance has three types of ritual: those of leading-in and leading-out ritual,, dramaturgic ritual and intervention ritual. The introduction of ritualistic elements into the contest creates a unique space for Mulian Opera in the forms of the geographical space constructed by sacrificial circles and ritual venues, the life space enacted by the rites of life and rites of custom, and the cosmic space of human-deity interaction. The three types of space enables the transcendence from phases of the ritual to the eternity of nirvana in life experience, and this may the ritual to from the transient to the eternal, constitute the deep-rooted significance to the human society. In the deity-worshipping contest, "off-stage performance" is an important component with unique creativity. Put into the horizon of modern Western theatre theory, off-stage performance not only caters to the audience's revelry but also serves as a performative ritual based on the representation of religious ecstasy.
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    Modern and Contemporary Literary Theory
    Film Posters as an Alterative/Alternative Archive for Chinese Film History
    Zhang Yingjin
    2019, 39 (6):  33-45. 
    Abstract ( 184 )   PDF (12656KB) ( 238 )  
    The film poster generates public desire for watching the film, but its pictorial cues often exceed its intended ideological or thematic message. The excess information contained in graphic composition, star texts, and visual citations (e.g., to current fashions and other intertexts) makes the film poster an alterative para-text in the sense that it sets in motion a dynamic of circulating multilayered meanings in a medium that resonates with other media and genres of art (e.g., drawing, painting, calligraphy, photography, design, literature, drama, opera, and music). Film posters are therefore enmeshed in intermediality or crossmediality and inevitably gesture toward something outside themselves — something shadowy, alterative, alternative, something out of sync with itself in place and time. This article cites Paul Fonoroff's Silver Light: A Pictorial History of Hong Kong Cinema, 1920-1970 (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 1997) as example and argues that film posters constitute a largely unexplored, underutilized archive for Chinese film historiography. Fonoroff's pictorial history offers an alternative way of approaching the history of Hong Kong cinema, one that resembles postmodern literary historiography in its emphasis on discontinuity, fragmentation, juxtaposition, and heterogeneity. The article goes on to examine film posters in Hong Kong, mainland China, and Taiwan in the 1950-1970s and illustrates the ways film posters constitute an alterative/alternative archive for Chinese film history and visual culture, an archive that calls for speculative reading to construct an open, multivalent system of visual signification.
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    "Sister Xianglin's Doubts": The Situation and Dilemma of Soul in Luxun's Short Story "New Year Sacrifice"
    Zhang Hong
    2019, 39 (6):  46-55. 
    Abstract ( 353 )   PDF (6441KB) ( 169 )  

    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.

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    Deciphering the Myth of "Liberating Actors' Nature": Reflections on an Idea of Acting and the Import of Western Teachers
    Sun Huizhu
    2019, 39 (6):  56-65. 
    Abstract ( 232 )   PDF (7192KB) ( 46 )  

    "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.

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    Chinese Native-soil Literature: Occurrence and a Hundred Years of Evolvement
    Wei Cece
    2019, 39 (6):  66-74. 
    Abstract ( 571 )   PDF (7474KB) ( 173 )  

    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.

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    Classical Literary Theory and Criticism
    The Paragon of Literati, the Decorum of Essays, and the Signature of Civil Administration: Remarks on the Term "Three Prose Writers of Our Qing Dynasty"
    Guo Yingde
    2019, 39 (6):  75-86. 
    Abstract ( 169 )   PDF (10794KB) ( 64 )  

    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.

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    The Early and High Tang Poets' Inheritance and Development of the Traditions of Yanzhi or Yuanqing
    Liu Qinghai
    2019, 39 (6):  87-97. 
    Abstract ( 244 )   PDF (7921KB) ( 139 )  

    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.

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    On the Poetic Method "Duotai Huangu": A Clarification of Misunderstandings
    Zhang Changhong
    2019, 39 (6):  98-107. 
    Abstract ( 430 )   PDF (7323KB) ( 68 )  
    Duotai huangu(lit. grabbing the embryo and changing the bones) is an important proposition in classical Chinese poetics. However, in the process of transmission, some recipients are haunted by misunderstandings about its conceptual expression, connotation, and poetic value. These misunderstandings are mainly manifested in five aspects. First, the essence of the method of duotai is "to imitate" rather than "to see through" the original poems. Second,duotaiis often erroneously referred to as "tuotai", the meaning of which is fundamentally different from that ofduotai. Third, duotai and huangu are two correlated poetic methods separated by the degree of innovation. The conflation of duotai and huangu in fact blurs the boundary between them. Fourth, duotai huangu is neither a thorough plagiarism nor a real innovation, but an astute imitation. Fifth, duotai huanguis not the ultimate way to learn poetic writing, but simply a preliminary technique.
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    On the Factors to "The Extraordinary out of the Ordinary" in the Late Ming Dynasty
    Chen Gang
    2019, 39 (6):  108-117. 
    Abstract ( 230 )   PDF (7306KB) ( 74 )  

    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.

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    The Selection of The Scholars in Chinese Textbooks and Homogenization in the Canonization Process during the Republic of China Period
    Zhang Hongbo
    2019, 39 (6):  118-127. 
    Abstract ( 226 )   PDF (6815KB) ( 78 )  
    Ancient novels such as The Scholars, The Travel Notes of Lao Can, and The Water Margin were frequently selected into Chinese textbooks for primary and secondary schools during the Republic of China period. Because The Scholars was closely related to the Vernacular Movement and catered to the taste of young students, it came to be the most frequently selected novel, and its excerpt, "The Childhood of Wang Mian," became the most frequently selected story. During the Republican period, Chinese textbooks were arranged in accordance with the theme, language, and era of each work, and editors tended to select similar rather than diversified passages fromThe Scholars. This phenomenon shared a close connection to the Republican period's selection of traditional cultural resources.
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    Issue in Focus: French Theory
    Mediocre Drama: Jean Baudrillard's Remark on Andy Warhol
    Wan Shuyuan
    2019, 39 (6):  128-141. 
    Abstract ( 236 )   PDF (10114KB) ( 107 )  
    Andy Warhol is Jean Baudrillard's favorite contemporary artist. In Baudrillard's opinion, Warhol was a great transitional figure who has opened a new chapter in the history of art by initiating the trend of commodity fetishism and laying foundations for artistic modernity. He dispelled abstractionism in contemporary art by promoting figurative expressions, established the ready-made style of art, and normalized aesthetic practice in a broader sense. While eliminating the differences between original works and duplications, Warhol also profoundly changed the thinking model and aesthetic trend of artistic creation. He was well versed in creating meaning from meaninglessness, discovering prominence from mediocrity, and producing magnificence from insipidity. However, Warhol described himself as a machine and did not want to write legendary works. In contrast, he only wanted to hide himself in the machine and to show the tedious and mediocre drama of ordinary life in a technical, neutral, and detached way. In this way, Warhol and his colleagues transformed art into popular art.
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    Alain Badiou's Inaesthetic Critique of Poetry
    Wang Yushen
    2019, 39 (6):  142-151. 
    Abstract ( 292 )   PDF (7089KB) ( 96 )  

    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.

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    The Value of Fiction: The Aesthetic Politics of Speculative Design and a Future Poetics
    Zhang Li
    2019, 39 (6):  152-160. 
    Abstract ( 395 )   PDF (7264KB) ( 175 )  
    As AI technology permeates the media society of today, futurology has become one of the most notable topics among various disciplines. In reference to Jacques Rancière's aesthetic politics, this article discusses how speculative design distributes the audience's sensibility by means of fiction and creates Dissenus with props, so that the vigorousness of future poetics can be maintained. As today's most critical cross-media practice, speculative design, based on the logic of "What-If," relies on props and their fictional aesthetics to deduce the side effects of emerging technologies. In this way, people can get away from the consumer-based logical script and turn themselves from passive consumers into active subjects. In Herbert Simon's view, designing is essentially utopian, for it always aims to transform the present in reference to the future. Speculative design shapes the present from the perspective of the future, reflects the real world based on paralleled worlds, and questions the blind spots of technology against technological optimism. Dedicated to an intellectual equality, speculative design raises questions without answering them and leaves the decision and possibility of action to the audience. In general, the fictional value of speculative design is embodied in its dimensions of aesthetic politics and future poetics.
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    Jacques Rancière on Literarity
    Zheng Haiting
    2019, 39 (6):  161-167. 
    Abstract ( 222 )   PDF (6079KB) ( 75 )  
    Jacques Rancière reconstructs the term "literarity" through the concept of "distribution of the sensible." By considering "literarity" as the joint of politics and literature, he defines the term as the availability of mute letters and the excess of words. The unbridled wandering of mute letters expands the space of literary expression and blurs the boundary of literature, which represents not only the democracy of literarity but also the paradox of democratic literarity. Literature suppresses the democracy of literarity by various means of self-cancellation. On the one hand, this mechanism transforms the paradox of democratic literarity into a productive contradiction of literature; on the other hand, it makes literature an irregular mode of writing under the regime of aesthetics. Literature is thus open to infinite possibilities, reconciling the normative speech of representational poetics and the mute speech of non-compliance.
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    Baroque Irony in Contemporary French Fictions: A Case Study of "Playful Fiction"
    Zhao Jia
    2019, 39 (6):  168-174. 
    Abstract ( 216 )   PDF (5829KB) ( 75 )  
    The term Baroque irony is coined by Roland Barthes, which is considered to be representative in the so-called language turn. It represents the relationship between the signifieds within language rather than that between language and the outside world, and thus it questions language itself. The"Playful Fiction" demonstrate Baroque irony in terms of semantics, syntax, morphology and parody. Baroque irony is, the paper concludes, a kind of anti-metaphysical language that does not aim to convey fixed meanings but deconstructs them. It is an anti-rational language that brings readers to a world of texts where meanings coexist and interact. It is also an intransitive language that focuses only on itself and considers the materiality of language as the only reality.
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    Western Literary Theory
    William James's Philosophy of Aesthetic Temporality: About the Relationship between the Horizontal Composition of Stream of Consciousness and the Integrality of the Spatial Composition of Art Works
    Liu Yanshun
    2019, 39 (6):  175-182. 
    Abstract ( 162 )   PDF (6294KB) ( 86 )  
    William James's grasp of the original practical activities underlies his aesthetic thought of pragmatism. He is well versed in describing and analyzing the aesthetic phenomena in the field where the subject and the object are not separated. On the one hand, he emphasizes the impromptu features of aesthetic behaviors driven by meaning-seeking, centering on the analysis of their fresh state, which is original, occasional while inevitable. On the other hand, he also creatively explores the horizontal features of the smooth and impromptu development of aesthetic life from the perspective of stream of consciousness or consciousness of time. He believes that only under this premise can the spatial composition of art works come to be integral. By ensuring the integrity of aesthetic life and the spatial composition of art works, James's philosophy of aesthetic temporality provides an excellent exemplar for "spatiotemporal grammar" that describes aesthetic life. This article provides a revisionist idea that develops and supplements James's philosophy, some of which still remain latent, unconscious, and fragmented.
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    Types and Subtypes of Artistic Justice
    Wang Yun
    2019, 39 (6):  183-195. 
    Abstract ( 246 )   PDF (9776KB) ( 43 )  
    Because forms of performing arts and story-telling such as drama, fiction, and film present a caricature of social life, they inevitably describe people's good and evil deeds and their conflicts. In the world history of art over two thousand years,numerous works of drama, fiction, and film have done so from a position of correct or at least relatively correct morality. In this sense, artistic justice is an eternal theme for performing arts and story-telling,and the theory of artistic justice should have been well established. However, in the present-day, works on artistic justice are mostly published by scholars in the field of "law and literature", rather than literature or other forms of art. Because the generic structure, generating reasons, social effects, and methodology of artistic justice remain largely under researched, scholars' understandings of this theory are relatively vague. This article analyzes the generic structure of artistic justice, in the hope of promoting studies of this theory.
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    Literary Friendship Revisited: Significance of Wayne Booth's Literary Ethics to the Contemporary Literary Studies
    Fan Yun
    2019, 39 (6):  196-204. 
    Abstract ( 185 )   PDF (7730KB) ( 40 )  
    The theories and critiques since the 1960s have snared contemporary literary studies into a predicament, and with the emergence of post-critique, reviewing Wayne Booth' literary ethics may cast some new light on the predicament. His efforts to reconstruct literary ethics, call for literary friendship, elucidate rhetoric ethics, and explore the public dimension of conduction will illuminate the reshaping of cultural character and the return to ethics and life in contemporary literary studies.
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    The Mind of the Other, Political Organism, and the Dramatic Nature of Ordinary Language: A Case Study of Stanley Cavell's Comments on Coriolanus
    Lin Yunke
    2019, 39 (6):  205-212. 
    Abstract ( 226 )   PDF (7019KB) ( 91 )  
    Stanly Cavell is the precursor to apply the philosophy of ordinary language, especially the thought of later Ludwig Wittgenstein, into analyzing literary and artistic works. Through detailed analysis of Wittgenstein's discussions on the issues of "the mind of the other" and "private language"s, Cavell claims that thinking in ordinary language is a seduction of the skepticism brought about by the myth of positivism. In his reading of Shakespeare's Coriolanus, Cavell expounds "appetite" as a metaphor of political organism, demonstrating how Wittgenstein's criticism is embodied in a dramatic way. The ontological mechanism of drama realized through explorations of ordinary language is itself also a practice of what Wittgenstein refers to as "therapy".
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