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    A Study of Socialist Discourse System with Chinese Characteristics
  • A Study of Socialist Discourse System with Chinese Characteristics

    Theoretical Construction of the Sinicized Marxist Theory of Political Literature and Art

    Fu Jianzhou
    2022, 42(1): 1-10.
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    Socialism has recently achieved great success with distinct Chinese characteristics. Intellectual contributions are made by China to the world. In terms of literary studies, Chinese academia has been able to construct a sinicized Marxist theory of political literature and art according to its own experiences. Based on the dialectical relationship between politics and literature, such a sinicized Marxist theory of political literature and art encompasses a vision for class analysis in the narrow sense and a vision for the entire human race in the broad sense. This theory highlights three fundamental characteristics, that is, the spirit of the Party, affinity to the people, and theoretical practicality. It also embraces three ideal principles, the mutually imagined relation between literature and politics, the literaturepolitics relationship that overcomes pride and prejudice, as well as the theoretical state that combines the politicization of literature, the politicality of literature, and the political integration of literature and art. This theory features four keywords： people as the subject of literature, people as the foundation of China, social formation, and original motivation. Therefore, the sinicized Marxist theory of political literature and art is a great supplement to the aesthetics and theory of literature and art.
    • Issue in Focus：Aethetics Studies
  • Issue in Focus：Aethetics Studies

    The Origin and System of Modern French Aesthetics: A Reinvestigation Based on the Literature

    Zhang Ying
    2022, 42(1): 11-20.
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    Modern French aesthetics can be identified as a classicist aesthetic system. As a modern nationstate, France developed its own classicist culture during the 17th century, which then dominated the general knowledge in Europe. Baumgarton’s proposal of aesthetica was followed by a halfcentury resistance against the discipline of aesthetics among the French intellectual circles. However, pushed by the German achievements in aesthetics, French aesthetics began its disciplinary exploration from the 19th century. On the one hand, it assimilated the German classical aesthetics. On the other, it returned to and carried forward its own tradition, that is, the science of the beautiful. This disciplinary process has undergone a qualitative transformation thanks to the engagement of positivism. By sorting out the representative works of the main estheticians during this period, this article shows the ways in which they connect to one another intertextually. Frederick C. Beiser advocates the return to Leibniz and Lessing’s tradition of rationalist aesthetics, to which French classicist modern aesthetics is related. This reminds us that the introduction of the perspective of “national aesthetics” may reanimate the universal history of aesthetics and add new dimensions thereof.
  • Issue in Focus：Aethetics Studies

    Richard Wagner’s Aesthetics and the Musical Turn of Symbolism

    Li Guohui
    2022, 42(1): 21-31.
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    Wagner’s musical aesthetics, because of its concentration on reverie, appeals to symbolists from Baudelaire onward. Such aesthetics informs the musical turn of symbolism. Unlike Wagner’s music which has a foothold in the musical sound and its structure, symbolist literature, inherently an art of language, puts emphasis on feeling and experiencing the world, employs the language of rationality, and produces symbolic imageries, all of which makes it impossible for symbolists to integrate musical features into poetry but to create new forms of expression. Abstracting the spirit of music, symbolist poets have developed such conceptualization as symbolic music, which refers to the suggestive power of images, and the theory of emotional music, which involves the spontaneity of images and impressions. Although symbolist musical turn differs from Wagner’s model, it is informed by the latter and has regarded it as the main reference.
  • Issue in Focus：Aethetics Studies

    Modern Aesthetic Symptoms in Among the Flowers and Lois Fusek’s Poetics of Equivalent Translation

    Tu Hui
    2022, 42(1): 32-42.
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    In the translation and dissemination of classical Chinese poetry in the Englishspeaking world, Among the Flowers: The Huachien chi translated by Lois Fusek has great value for interpretation and inspiration on poetics. From the perspective of interpretation, Fusek starts from the general aesthetic consciousness and the concept of modernity, giving modern experience and creative interpretation to Among the Flowers. She thinks that Among the Flowers has characteristics such as realistic transcendence, textual selfdiscipline， artificial skill, creative imagination, and ambiguous theme, which are in line with the modern aesthetic symptoms rising in the late nineteenth century. In terms of translation poetics, Lois Fusek sheds light on crosslinguistic translation and crosscultural poetics to emphasize the structural arrangement and image arrangement of Among the Flowers, the poetic dimension of Tz’u poetry and the relationship between its form and theme. She uses “translation of structural equivalence” to endow the structure of Tz’u poetry with aesthetic significance and poetic value. Between the modern aesthetic symptoms in Among the Flowers and the translation poetics of structural equivalence, there is both correspondence and contrast. It not only represents the “selfimagination” and “Chinaimagination” rooted in the subjectivity and modern values of the West, but also shows a variation of the interaction between the modern value and national appeal.
  • Issue in Focus：Aethetics Studies

    On the Translation of “the Sublime”: Also on the Difference between the Chinese and the Western Conceptions of Mountains

    Chen Jia
    2022, 42(1): 43-51.
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    In the long history of translation that the term “sublime” was introduced to China, the Chinese word chonggao stood out and became the final equivalent. One factor that cannot be ignored is that both chong and “sublime” contain the image of the mountain. However, the difference between Chinese and Western views of nature leads to a great disparity in the emotions evoked by mountains. This inevitably weakens the connotation of fierce confrontation of the word formed in the Western historical context.
  • Issue in Focus：Aethetics Studies

    The Media Transition of Aesthetic Imagination and the Restoration of Literary Independence: On the Renaming of Regional

    Journals of “Literature and Art”

    Yin Lin
    2022, 42(1): 52-69.
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    Around 1978, literary journals of China were renamed for the third time. This trend of renaming manifested a turn of the newperiod literature. It demonstrated the public yearning for reconstruction after a decade of disaster and the inextricable connection between the mainstream literature and art in the seventeenyear period. Meanwhile, it also reflected the transition in the journals’ operational principles and aesthetic imaginations. From then on, literature has become independent from the fixed models of arts and literature, with instrumental functions downplayed. Literature starts to address the issues of “reform” and intellectuals. The understanding of national character by the literary circle has also shifted from utilizing national form to analyzing national ethic. Using literary journals as media, the newperiod literature has revived and transformed by turning from the function of mobilization to that of enlightenment.
    • Issue in Focus：Education and Literature in Early Modern China
  • Issue in Focus：Education and Literature in Early Modern China

    The Origin and System of Modern French Aesthetics: A Reinvestigation Based on the Literature

    Liu Xiaojun
    2022, 42(1): 61-71.
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    School education is especially important in the spreading of modern Western learning into the East. The establishment of educational creeds, the setting of curriculum standards, the compilation of textbooks, and the classroom exercises and assessments would impact the formation of students’ concept of literature. The national language education in e middle schools shape the concept of new literature among the widest group of students. Literature became the art of expressing human emotion and imagination, reflecting social reality and expressing life aspirations, and fiction is a very important genre of literature. The selected texts of both Chinese and translated fictions, together with fiction theories, provide the students with good exposure to the genre, while the interpretation of the texts help them to embrace modern fictions and try to practice this new form of literature, with better understanding of the concept of modern fictions.
  • Issue in Focus：Education and Literature in Early Modern China
    Teaching of Western Literature and New Literature in Modern China: A Case Study of English Education at St. John’s University, Shanghai
    Yu Laiming, Yan Huan
    2022, 42(1): 72-83.
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    St. John’s University, Shanghai was the first missionary school in China with classes taught in English, and from its inception it placed great emphasis on Western humanistic thought. Since the late 19th century it started to promote lecturing in English and liberal arts education, and such a model has contributed significantly to the development of students’ literacy in Western literature. On the one hand, the Western literature courses focused on extensive reading of works in their own original language; on the other hand, the emphasis on English masterpieces in the entrance examinations reversely encouraged candidates to start reading English and other Western literary works at a young age and with indepth comprehension. At the same time, students’ English stories and poems published by school journals before the May Fourth Movement exhibited features of new literature under the influence of Western literary works, particularly in terms of ideas and writing techniques. Students’ performance of Shakespearean and Chinese plays pioneered new drama in China, which was an integral part of the history of the modern theatre movement.
  • Issue in Focus：Education and Literature in Early Modern China

    Between “Practical Use” and “Vain Text”: A Textual Research of the Newly Compiled Epistolary Guidebooks in the Late Qing

    Dynasty and Early Period of the Republic of China

    Lu Yin
    2022, 42(1): 85-95.
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    In pace with the influx of Western learning, school education, as well as typographic and lithographic printing agencies flourished, which resulted in a large number of newly compiled epistolary guidebooks in the late Qing dynasty. Informed by English letterwriters as well as the stylistic rules and layout of the newly introduced textbooks, the traditional epistolary genre was first embraced by the newstyle literary education as part of children’s readers and textbooks. Since then, a particular kind of “epistolary textbooks” emerged, followed by a variety of primers introducing different types of epistolary writing such as students’ letter writing, women’s letter writing and vernacular letter writing. All those newly compiled textbooks focused on teaching the forms of letter writing. As a form of “practical writing”, traditional epistolography fit well with utilitarian education that had gained greater momentum since the early modern times. However, the tension between “practical use” and “vain text” gradually manifested itself along with the collapse of moral order and etiquette, ending up with a reform of the traditional epistolary genre. Such a process was not accomplished overnight. For a certain period of time, the new content and style of epistolary writing coexisted with the old forms.
  • Issue in Focus：Education and Literature in Early Modern China

    Disputes over the Concept of “Literary Study” in Pre-tertiary Education in the Early Years of the Republic of China

    Li Min
    2022, 42(1): 96-105.
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    The new style schooling system in the early Republic of China continued to learn from Japan in the late Qing Dynasty, but various sources of influence from intellectual background and educational ideologies resulted in the complicated concept of literary study (wenxue). Although the pretertiary education, which comprised of primary school, junior high school and teacher training school, focused on the general education of the common people, the understanding of the concept “literary study” was varied in terms of its connation, nature and criteria for inclusion. The new educational system designated that the Chinese subject for pretertiary schools should aim at “cultivating interest in literary study (wenxue)”, but there were doubts about the pragmatic feasibility of literary study in national education when it was to be related with the study of the language. Hence a coursebook A History of Chinese Literature, primarily informed by Western learning, was developed but its method of compilation and selection of materials prompted great controversies. The issue behind the phenomenon involves the conceptualization of literary study as an educational discipline and how the study transforms over time in the context of new introduction of different intellectual resources since the 19th century.
    • Modern and Contemporary Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
  • Modern and Contemporary Literary Theory and Cultural Studies

    Where Are We and What to Write?: An Interview with Professor Ha Jin

    Li Zhenling, Ha Jin
    2022, 42(1): 106-113.
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    In this interview, Professor Ha Jin not only shares his thoughts on such key terms related to overseas Chinese writing as cultural position, language, translation and tradition by looking back on his life experience and writing career, but also unfolds his writing concerns and strategies by examining his early writing on China and later works on immigration. Jin distinguishes exile from immigration, emphasizing the dynamic shifting between the two; he emphasizes the transcendental, inclusive and metaphysical aspects of migration, holding that migration is the universal condition of human life. Jin insists on the translatability of language, thinking that it is very important for migrant writers to make use of their “defect”, i.e. to build their mistaken or flawed English as their style, and being willing to exist in different languages and traditions. Jin believes in the universal aspects of his stories but argues that literature is by no means about type, but about individuality and peculiarity. Jin points out that overseas writers should give more attention to the frustrating experience of the new arrivals and gender issues among them rather than the obsolete theme of the American Dream and racism.
  • Modern and Contemporary Literary Theory and Cultural Studies

    From “Political Man” to “Free Man”: The Transformation of the Nature of Man in Wang Meng’s Fictions and Its Crisis

    Shen Xingpei
    2022, 42(1): 114-124.
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    A clear trajectory can be drawn from Wang Meng’s fictional characterization in his novels from his early representative Long Live Youth (1953) to The Laughing Wind (2020). The range of characters in his novels reflects the development from the bound spirit to the freed spirit. Underlying these characters is the historical transformation from the political man to the free man, and the value displayed is also transformed from a political revolution oriented ethic to an individual freedom oriented ethic. The political man in Wang Meng belongs to the onedimension personality type, with implicit dichotomies between political assimilation and freedom impulse and between individualism and collectivism. However, the heroes in his recent novels such as A Love of Life and Death and The Laughing Wind represent the free man who pursues freedom through determined action, and they configure a new discourse of his study of man with new dimension of values. Wang Meng investigates the price, boundaries and dilemmas of freedom through the mishaps in the marriage and life of the heroes. This article attempts to track the historical transformation of Wang Meng’s characters from “political man” to “free man” and to interpret the cultural characteristics and internal crisis within the historical background.
  • Modern and Contemporary Literary Theory and Cultural Studies

    The Criticism of Fortress Besieged between 1946 and 1949 and Its Significance in the History of Modern Chinese Literature

    Xie Lizhe
    2022, 42(1): 125-133.
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    The reception of Qian Zhongshu’s novel Fortress Besieged before 1949 was swayed by the leftist, centrist and the rightist perspectives. This paper investigates the critiques of Fortress Besieged from 1946 to 1949 and discusses its significance in the transition period between the modern and the contemporary Chinese literary history and in the process of its canonization. The centrists and the rightwing critics, from the perspective of liberalism, preliminarily summarized the merits and demerits of the novel but had not achieved high theoretically, while the leftwing critics approached the novel with criticism varied from radical censure to ingenious observations. The reception of this novel may be seen as an example of the confrontation between the liberalist views and the leftwing views in literary criticism during the moderncontemporary transition period, and it proved that the canonization of Fortress Besieged was the continuation of the liberal values of literature.
  • Modern and Contemporary Literary Theory and Cultural Studies

    New Media Literary Spectacle and the Materiality of Literature

    Zhou Caishu
    2022, 42(1): 134-144.
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    New media literature is created on the basis of such media as words, images and network languages. It breaks away from the traditional literature that builds solely upon texts, but instead forms a literature in which words, sounds and images are interrelated. The materiality of literature determines the symbolic system of language, as well as the social context for literary creation and reception. Such literature is understood from the perspective of media which identifies its material basis and ideographic symbol. Hypertext, ergodic literature, digital literature and electronic literature are varied forms of the new media literature, which is composed of printed text, video text and hyperlink text. The digital literary context has shown three trends of development： industrialization and communalization, socialization and communityformation, and aesthetic infiltration of linguistic dimension to visual dimension in the literature.
    • Issue in Focus：Studies in French Theories
  • Issue in Focus：Studies in French Theories

    The Eternal Return of Camus

    Philippe Roger
    2022, 42(1): 145-154.
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    Albert Camus’s achievements as a novelist and a playwright are uncontested in modern French literary history, but his political and ethical thought was illreceived and marginalized by almost all of his contemporaries. Camus's reflections on the relationship between revolt and violence, between liberty and justice, however, remain an object of reference and continue to generate debates in current affairs. This paper first emphasizes Camus’s unique place in twentiethcentury intellectual history by looking at Camus’s personal experience, the bitter dispute he had with Sartre after the Second World War, as well as the changing reception of Camus’s thought over time. The article will then focus on two core aspects of Camus' concept of the “pensée de midi”: “principle of autonomy” and “measure”. How does the recourse to ancient Greek culture and to the Mediterranean imagination transform the“ pensée de midi” into a “speculative geography” that rethinks critically the German philosophy of history and dialectics?
  • Issue in Focus：Studies in French Theories

    Literary Style and the Appearance of the Others: On Merleau-Ponty’s Development of the Theory of Literary Engagement

    Jia Wei
    2022, 42(1): 156-164.
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    As a continuation of the debate over humanism, JeanPaul Sartre’s theory about literary engagement with the aim of “the freedom of the Others” is antithetical to the “egology”  of Martin Heidegger’s “Poetics” . In fact, the theory of literary engagement, which is based on absolute freedom, has ultimately homogenized the Others, so it cannot really transcend “solipsism” . Maurice MerleauPonty’s phenomenological reduction of literary style to the “stylesystem”  not only transcends the debate between Sartre and Heidegger, but also confirms that, as the extension of “body posture” , literary style reveals the otherness of one’s own speech action. This conclusion helps us understand the true fundamental connection between the self and the Others. In other words, literature takes the responsibility for the Others by breaking through the restriction of “I Think” .
  • Issue in Focus：Studies in French Theories

    Mourning, Vision, and Effusion: Georges Bataille’s Writing of Tears

    Wei Guangji
    2022, 42(1): 165-171.
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    The experience of tears runs through the oeuvre of Georges Bataille. In his last book The Tears of Eros, tears become the embodied sameness between eroticism and death, and lend the expression of passion into mourning. Tears in his first novel The Story of the Eye are the basic element of the narrative of desire and the fundamental impulsion to produce vision. Bataille’s sociological studies maintain that tears, together with laughter, reveal the sacred core of the social structure. As an important form of the unknowing, tears reflect the sovereign value of human being. It represents the effusion of being and the dimension of its exhibition toward the outside. Thus, tears become the limit of being, and the limit between thinking and writing. Bataille always writes at the limit of tears.
  • Issue in Focus：Studies in French Theories

    The “Incarnation” of Immanence: On the Genealogy and Sense of Gilles Deleuze’s “New Christ”

    Shi Hui
    2022, 42(1): 172-180.
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    As a staunch antitheological philosopher, Gilles Deleuze paradoxically uses many theological expressions to analyze Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby the Scrivener”, and even considers Bartleby as the “New Christ” in our time. This seems to contradict his principle of immanence. In fact, Deleuze explicates Bartleby in the Christological genealogy of SpinozaNietzscheLawrence. Through an interpretation of the formula “I would prefer not to”, he makes Bartleby the “New Christ” whose “nothingness of the will” dispels transcendence and embraces immanence. The life of “New Christ” was expressed visually in Francis Bacon’s Crucifixion paintings. Moreover, in accordance with Benedict de Spinoza’s Ethics, what the “New Christ” preaches is a gospel “beyond good and evil”, inspiring human beings to proceed from passivity to activity. Therefore, the “New Christ” throughout Deleuze’s works on philosophy, literature and art is the “incarnation” (which means "logos became flesh") of immanence. In this case, “logos” indicates the logic of immanence and “flesh” signifies “body without organs”.
  • Issue in Focus：Studies in French Theories

    Translucency and Quasi-Temporality: The Accident of Literature from the Perspective of Technical Theory

    Zhang Zhizhong
    2022, 42(1): 181-188.
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    Accident, one of Paul Virilio’s essential concepts, embodies his radical attitude that “it must be otherwise”. To be specific, the accident of technology interrupts the established illusion of eternal progress of human practice, and the accident of art reshapes our vision of the world. As a technique of writing, the accident of literature involves the transition of perception in different dimensions. In terms of external effects, the translucency of literary technique has paradoxical senses which are comprised of embodiment and otherness, so that the mediation approach of the technical world replaces the binary model of the natural world. Hence, the accident of literature emerges when the perceptual system alters. On the other hand, the inner logic of accident adjusts the recipient’s attitudes towards the world of the literary texts. That is, the divisional paradigm of spacetime is no longer reliable; instead, the dynamic vision of quasitemporality reveals the compromise equilibrium between narratives and intentions. The accident of literature manifests itself in the tension between time and antitime.
    • Ancient Literary Theory and Theoretical Study of Ancient Literature
  • Ancient Literary Theory and Theoretical Study of Ancient Literature

    A Probe into the Modern Evolution of the Conceptualization of “Image” and Its Interaction with “Artistic Conception”

    Jiang Ronggang
    2022, 42(1): 189-198.
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    The prevailing belief concerning the conceptualization of “image (yixiang)” has been that the modern evolution of image in China was primarily informed by the Western idea of imagism whereas the latter was in turn inspired by Chinese traditional thought or categorization of image. This paper tries to argue to the contrary. The translation of the Western learning into China initiated the encounter with the traditional Chinese notion of “image”, and the process of translation is key to the modern evolution of “image”, with the influence of the Imagism being one of the tributaries. In the meantime, the modern construction of “image” inevitably involves a similar concept of the “artistic conception (yijing)”, which resulted in their longstanding entanglement. A clarification of their relation may not only help to reveal the process in which the traditional concepts of “image” and “artistic conception” were transformed with  the introduction of Western concepts but also provide reference for us to understand the gains and losses in the modern construction of the two concepts and the current theoretical reconstruction.
  • Ancient Literary Theory and Theoretical Study of Ancient Literature

    Huang Tingjian’s Prose Writing Methods and the Rise of Prose Theories in the Southern Song Dynasty

    Le Jinjin
    2022, 42(1): 199-207.
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    As an uncelebrated prose writer, Huang Tingjian’s prose writing techniques fell into oblivion. However, his theory of prose writing had far reaching impact on the establishment of writing studies in the Southern Song dynasty. Huang Tingjian systematically discussed prose writing methods based on the classic works of the ancients, and applied these methods to the teaching of his apprentices. His instructions on prose writing involved two dimensions: the primary techniques for beginners and the ultimate objective of being unique. In addition, Huang Tingjian taught scholars to study ancient prose to acquire writing techniques useful for the imperial examination, which anticipated the practice of using ancient proses for pedagogy. He introduced the general rules of writing, but also made great attempts to free himself from his predecessors’ conventions,  which later gave rise to Lü Benzhong’s theory of huofa (unfixed method). Huang Tingjian’s compositional purport, mediated by Lü’s theory, developed into resources that could resist the conventionalization of the prose writing methods in the Southern Song Dynasty.
  • Ancient Literary Theory and Theoretical Study of Ancient Literature

    A Study of the Gong’an School’s Notion of Exceptional People and the Making of Their Literary Positioning

    Chen Gang
    2022, 42(1): 208-217.
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    Influenced by Wang Yangming’s “doctrine of the mind” (xinxue), literati of the Gong’an school held the opinion that the normal (chang) and the exceptional (qi) are concepts derived from people’s cognitive process rather than the material attributes of things, Hence, they maintained that the world could not be defined and measured by any individual's views. To achieve the spiritual goal of “seeing the normal in the exceptional”, the Gong'an school literati sided with the exceptional and vehemently attacked the normal. For the Gong’an school, the exceptional people fell into three types: religious recluses, heroes with practical statecraft, and literati with integrity and taste, and common to all the three types of people was their independent spirit. Overall, literati of the Gong’an school built their unconventional literary dispositions in late Ming literature by introducing the independent personalities to literary creation.
  • Ancient Literary Theory and Theoretical Study of Ancient Literature

    Turn and Transcendence: The Language Perception of “Changing the Bones and Snatching the Embryo” in Northern Song

    Dynasty Poetics

    Fang Shuya
    2022, 42(1): 218-226.
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    The term Huangu duotai (literally, “changing the bones and snatching the embryo”) refers to a writing strategy at the turn of poetry language during the Northern Song dynasty. Compared with Mei Yaochen’s (1002-1060) pursuit of yixin yugong (lit. “original meaning and measured language”), huangu and duotai downplay the “originality of meaning” and highlight poetry language itself. The artistic techniques of “language making” and “describing the content” aim at changing the language style or enhancing the poeticness, and eventually the composition of poetry would be improved in terms of both dimensions of language and meaning. The advancement on the syntactic level is both the internal norms resulted from huangu duotai and the internal standard accepted by most Songdynasty poets. Therefore, from the perspective of the language perception of Northern Song poetics, the concept of huangu duotai departs from conventional interpretations of language and meaning, hence the significance of returning to the historical context to explore them.

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