Wang Shizhen was famous in the history of criticism for the term shenyun. Later, this term was interpreted in Casual Remarks from North of the Pond as “poetry is valued for its clarity and profundity”, which was further clarified by Qian Zhongshu. Based on shenyun, Qian Zhongshu reconstructed the theory -- “poetry is valued for its clarity and profundity” -- on three levels: the source (Xie He’s Record of Appreciating Ancient Paintings), the turning point (using the southern painting theory to “discuss poetry through painting”), and the mechanism (Fan Wen’s “aftertaste is charm”). All of Qian’s source materials are taken from cultural heritage across millennia, but his poetic framework and connotation is highly integrated as a modern theory.
Vitality defends life feeling, will and emotional differences, and guarantees cultural creativity. Chinese aesthetics of vitality aims to transform traditional Chinese and western life aesthetics for the purpose of life from the history and reality that vitality has been despised and rejected by Confucianism and Taoism. First, from the Sui and Tang dynasties onwards, the relationship between the strength of individual life and that of the state was put forward in the history of Han Chinese, who were invaded outside and enslaved inside. Individuals could not defend their will and emotional dignity, and lost their fighting strength. The second part is a summary of the excellent culture of respecting vitality in Chinese literary classics formed by the worship of the divine power of life in ancient China, such as The Classic of Mountains and Rivers, National Style in The Book of Songs and Yuefu Ballads, putting forward the modernity issue of respecting vitality related to creativity. The third is to examine the pre-Qin philosophy under the influence of The Book of Changes, which led to small differences in philosophical problems caused by the life feeling of great unity and raised philosophical problems on utilitarianism, concluding with the necessity to establish belief in the complexity of life beyond utilitarianism. The fourth part is based on the fragile, nerdy and indignant phenomena of contemporary youth to analyze the strength and weakness of vitality, arguing that the strength of individual vitality is the foundation for individual construction in modern China.
Schelling is one of the four masters of German classical aesthetics. He was not only a transitional figure from Kant to Hegel, but also departed from the continental tradition of rational determinism to embark on ontology. For the first time, he proposed the concept of ontological “philosophy of art,” and constructed art under the principle of the “philosophy of identity.” His research focused on the ontological philosophy of mythology, which regarded myth as the absolute poetry. His Philosophy of Art creates a sublime view of tragedy, which regards the spiritual sublimation resulting from the tragic protagonist’s voluntary punishment as the ultimate goal. Schelling advocated the ideas of “nature as subject” and “holistic” natural aesthetics. His aesthetics and artistic thoughts transcend times and have far-reaching influence on future generations.
“Qiyun” (Spirit resonance) is a key concept in ancient Chinese painting theory, and empathy is an important conceptualization in Western modern aesthetics. During the Meiji and Taisho eras, Japanese scholars delved into both the eastern and western aesthetics, and tried to compare and connect “spirit resonance” and empathy. Ise Senichirō and Sono Raizô were among the first to attempt to find the similarities and dissimilarities respectively, while Kinbara Seigo and Oonishi Yoshinori further elaborated on this issue. The approach of Japanese scholars inserted deep impact upon Chinese scholars studying in Japan. They generally followed Japanese approach, and among them, Teng Gu, Ma Cai and Feng Zikai primarily introduced and translated the research, while Deng Yizhe and Xu Fuguan had developed and expressed their own understanding. Zong Baihua was perhaps one of the few who were not influenced by the Japanese approach and made significant contributions in the field. To do justice to Chinese scholarship on the relationship between spiritual resonance and empathy, it is essential to put it into perspectives that includes an East Asian one.
While Picasso and Stravinsky are renowned in their respective fields for their primitivism, Adorno’s evaluation of them seems to be in sharp contrast, with one being endorsed and the other repudiated. His criticism of Stravinsky, in particular, has been under attack as well. It is thus necessary to explore the dialectical reasoning and critical engagement underlying Adorno’s antithetical judgement as well as its justification. Based on the dialectic of enlightenment, Adorno regards Picasso’s primitivism as a strong return of the ugly in modern art, which can be traced to the primitive fear. It is also regarded as a critique of enlightenment as well as an inherent need for the spiritualization of art and artistic autonomy. In contrast, regarding the primitive elements and expression of ugliness and discord in Stravinsky’s art, Adorno denounces them as regressive, a fabrication of new myths, and even complicit with fascist ideology. Such a view is relevant to Adorno’s critique of the collective unconscious in psychoanalysis and authenticity in phenomenology, an extension of his critique of identity in art. In contrast to his positive evaluation of Picasso, Adorno’s negation of Stravinsky should not be regarded as mere denigration and demonization. The alienation and falsehood expressed in Stravinsky’s primitivist music is indeed avant-garde as its truth content. Adorno’s “negation” of Stravinsky, therefore, should also be considered as dialectical.
Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, dark ecology has emerged out of context of global warming and anthropocentrism of deep ecology. It draws up the idea of object-oriented ontology, outlines the new pattern of future coexistence, and highlights the aesthetic dimension of ecology. Ontologically, dark ecology connects causality with aesthetic dimension through the tension between the “withdrawn” and the “present” of “hyperobjects”. Epistemologically, it considers the “world” as an aesthetic effect and traces it back to the rise of agrilogistics in Mesopotamia. Methodologically, it explores the abyss between the thing-in-itself and its sensory appearance with the artistic methods of “paradox” and “irony”. In the age of “asymmetry” and “hyposubjects” revealed by dark ecology, aesthetics acts as a guide for ecological thought and future coexistence.
The ecology of games is a new and crucial trend in recent theory on videogames. As a branch of media ecology, it not only reflects the two related aspects of the “apparent” and the “latent”, but also implies a deep concern with the underlying gray and dark dimensions. However, in the early studies of the ecology of videogames represented by Ian Bogost, the emphasis on subjectivity is overshadowed by a return to operation system and its materiality. Therefore, this article uses Timothy Morton’s landmark contribution to dark ecology to reflect on the two related points of subjectivity and experience. It then focuses on the ecology of videogames, clarifying the fundamental difference between “game feel” and “game experience” and further illustrating the dark poetry that centers on the atmosphere of nightmare and the experience of suffering on the basis of several recent games, in order to understand the unique artistic and aesthetic characteristics of videogames.
Since the beginning of the new millennium, there has been a blossoming of research on literary representations of climate change in Western scholarship. Critics have analyzed the narrative innovations and thematic strategies of climate fiction and climate poetry in four aspects, namely, philosophy, history, affect, and politics. They have established six major theoretical routes: climate deconstructionism, climate historicism, holistic climate criticism, climate cognition and affect criticism, climate justice criticism, and empirical climate criticism. Critics generally situate humans and nonhumans in a shared process of planetary development. Their major purpose is to observe the interrelationship between climate (change) and the production/transmission of literature in order to explore the role of literature in climate change mitigation and sustainable development, and thus to initiate a new critical paradigm in the Anthropocene. This article surveys Western theories and practices regarding literary representations of climate change and the latest research findings in the field of Chinese eco-criticism. The article argues that the globality of climate change affords the possibility of transcending the national and regional boundaries in traditional literary history. Climatic events with global significance provide the basis to construct a new theoretical framework for the writing and transmitting of world literary history.
Why would a thousand readers yield a thousand versions of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in their understandings? This question touches upon a core issue in modern literary theory: Is a text an enclosed space of unity, harmony, and at most a balance of opposites, which allows only for nuanced and coherent exegeses, or an open space of different views, voices, values, attitudes, and ideologies, which invites different and conflicting interpretations? Formalism and structuralism believe that a literary work is an autotelic, free-standing, self-contained enclosure of self-sufficient meanings. Contrary to this conviction, post-structuralist theorists have argued that a literary text is essentially an open entity. In the heated debates over post-structuralist textual interpretation, however, only a few theorists are directly involved in the discussion of literary openness. Moreover, their debates and discussions did not come to any conclusion. If we reflect on the inner logic and mechanism of literary openness in terms of psychology, semiology, hermeneutics and the textual production of meaning and other issues, we may find answers to the question of why a thousand readers will produce a thousand versions of Hamlet.
The debates on foreign literature research in the early 1990s have formed an assumption of binary opposition between the “homegrown” and the “foreign”. Chinese scholars realized that Western issues cannot be taken as self-evident. However, when highlighting the transformation of Western theoretical paradigms from the local perspective, they tend to overprioritize the homegrown experience as the focal point to construct a form of discourse that in fact becomes a copy of the Western narrative of identity. This article takes the logical contradiction inherent in the debates as the point of departure, conducts a critical interpretation of them, and proposes a decentered antagonistic narrative after deconstructing the identification principle of “the homegrown”.
François Jullien suggests that the tradition of indirect writing (l’écriture indirecte) exists both in China and the West. In China, the tradition of Bi-Xing (explicit comparison and implicit comparision) originated from The Book of Songs forms the indirect way of expressing emotion in poetry. Such way of expression combined with other original categories of Chinese poetics contributes to the “alterity” of the Chinese literary tradition by creating an “allusivity” in the text. Its Western counterpart is found in symbolism, which nevertheless showcases the heterogeneity between traditional Chinese and Western poetics. Chinese lexical equivalent to “indirect writing” is wanyan (indirect words), a concept rooted in the tradition of Bi-Xing, especially Xing. This essay proposes that Bi-Xing and symbolism are two original parallel concepts in Chinese and Western poetic traditions, between which a Sino-Western dialogue on poetic discourses is made possible.
For most Chinese comparatists, parallel studies is a methodology put forward by the allegedly American School in the mid-20th century, which compares literary phenomena of little factual connection. However, this is a misunderstanding that originated in Taiwan and found its way to the mainland. The term “parallel studies” was coined by comparatists in Taiwan in the 1970s, which has never been accepted by representative American comparatists and their practice has not supported the theorization. The claim of parallel studies, on the one hand, is an oversimplification and misunderstanding of the methodology practiced by American comparatists, and on the other hand, refers to the comparative studies between the East and the West or between China and the West. Such understanding or misunderstanding of “parallel studies” was connected to the American school in the 1980s in mainland China. As a formation of knowledge, “parallel studies” demonstrates how Chinese scholars approach comparative literature, and while parallel studies may not define American methodology, it points to how Chinese comparative studies may be defined.
Comparative literature has been constantly drawing inspirations from other disciplines to revitalize itself. This article proposes a comparative study of the two seemingly different but affinitive disciplines — literature and dance — in the interdisciplinary context. By analyzing the reasons why comparative studies of literature and dance have been neglected by the academia, this article investigates the possibility of such kinds of comparisons, and provide four approaches: firstly, to compare literary works and their dance adaptations; secondly, to unravel the textual functions of dance elements in portraying characters, creating plots, and developing themes; thirdly, to investigate dance’s engagement with literary creation in terms of generating new terms and concepts; fourthly, to examine the role of dance in ethnic literature concerning identity crisis and representation. Interdisciplinary studies of literature and dance, with its focus on literary criticism, can complement the theories of comparative literature, and shed new light on its theoretical reconstruction.
Semiotics and phenomenology play fundamental roles in Euro-American performance research. The former, which began in the early twentieth century after the rise of avant-garde theatre, focuses on the production of meaning and has constantly responded to shifting theatre practices. Around the 1990s, the semiotic approach became less useful for the analysis of contemporary theatre and performance art that deemphasize or defy signification. As a complement to semiotics, phenomenology was introduced to performance analysis. It suspends the conceptual system on which semiotics is based and highlights the first-person experience, the flow of affect, and thingness in the theatre. Both methodologies take real effect after their integration with critical theories, to address the ethical, social, and political issues in theatre works without overlooking aesthetics.
The concept of theatricality is one of the core notions of theatre studies and the theory of arts. It has been discussed and debated for a long time in Chinese and Western contexts. Drawing on the works of Wang Yuli and others, this article examines the evolution of this concept in the Western context, especially in the second half of the twentieth century. This article provides a comparative review of the definitions of theatricality from different perspectives by Josette Féral, Ragnhild Tronstad, Samuel Weber, etc., which are important but less introduced in Chinese. The most pivotal issue in the concept is the dialectical unification of semiotic methods and autonomic aesthetics. Then this article analyzes the notion in detail on four levels: first, theatricality as the categorical feature of theatre as art; second, theatricality as appeared in other art disciplines; third, theatricality as a notion in relevant humanities; fourth, theatricality as a term to describe the nature of life and society in general. Using these theoretical discussions to analyze the practical problems reflected by the theatrical-literary conflict, I argue that it is inappropriate to prescribe theatricality in literary terms.
The collectives of Western avant-garde theatre were an attempt to practice an ideal community. By borrowing from Antonin Artaud’s innovative ideas of theatre, they employed a ritualistic presentation to alter the traditional performer-spectator relationship and further to construct a new community involving both parties. Members of the collectives used collective improvisations during their rehearsals and creations, aiming at eliminating hierarchical relationship as well as building an artist community of equality and freedom. The collectives contributed to what Erika Fisher-Lichte referred to as the “performative turn” of theatre arts. The new form of theatre represented by “performance art” is more focused on showing a dynamic performance process than the collectives, which provides a new way to exploring “community.”
In the mid-Tang dynasty, the theory of yuanqing (conveying emotions) was popular again, due to the further development of jintishi (regulated verse), especially the qiliangti (a popular style of poetry in the Qi and Liang dynasties). As authors of ancient-style prose, Dugu Ji and Liang Su advocated that the essence of literature was yanzhi (expressing aspiration). In Dugu’s opinion, aspiration expressed in literature should embody the Confucian morality. In the same vein, Liang “prioritized morality over literature”. Both, however, also followed the tradition of yuanqing in the Six dynasties, while developing the traditional ideas of yanzhi and bixing (metonymy and metaphor). Although Quan Deyu inherited the theory of yanzhi greatly from Dugu Ji, he advocated “conveying emotions heartily”, approved florid rhetoric, and even claimed that “florid rhetoric has changed the poetic style of the times”. Considered together with his other writings, the essence of literature according to Quan Deyu was largely more inclined to yuanqing. In such a complex context with multiple pursuits, the interpretation of traditionally orthodox yanzhi was further enriched; and more importantly, a new meaning was given to yuanqing that had traditionally been seen as the source of the ornate style in the Six dynasties. It can be said that at some point the theories of yanzhi and yuanqing were unified again in the writing of poetry and prose in the mid-Tang dynasty.
Linguistic conditions and the refinement of language style are the prerequisite and facilitator for the popularity of specific poetry styles in Chinese classical poetry. The formation of four-character sentence was the linguistic prerequisite for seven-character poetry, and was also the fundamental reason for the decline of four-character poetry relying on “two-two” rhythm. The improvement of seven-character style resulted from imperial order was an important impetus for the rapid development of seven-character poetry. The grammatical reason behind the parallel between seven-character poetry and five-character poetry highlighted their difference, making seven-character lines more suitable to write about scenery, emotion and argument because of its representation space and grammatical density. In terms of prosody, the “four-three” structure of seven-character line formed an expressive feeling that was more decorative and explicit than five-character sentence.
There are numerous interpretations of the word “却/que” in the following stanza of Du Fu’s poem, “Qiang Village”: “My darling child clutches my knee; dreading that I will leave again (Jiaoer bu lixi, Weiwo fu quequ).” However, barely any accurate explanations were given in classical annotations. The controversy over the ways in which the word should be annotated has continued in contemporary scholarship for over 60 years, contributing another case to the list of scholarly debates in history. Despite such research that comprehensively delineates and reviews these debates, including several voluminous publications of annotations to Du Fu’s poetry in recent years, the philology of the word “que” as such in terms of its sound and meaning remains obscure. This article attempts to offer an apporach to interpreting “que” through the lens of the Minnan dialect. It argues that “que” in Du Fu’s poem semantically means “again” or “once more,” which should be pronounced close to “搁/ge” and written as “卻” with “却” as its vernacular form.
Despite the loss of tunes to ci-poetry during the Qing Dynasty, poets still composed a large number of new ci-poems, and ci-poetry in Chinese classical poetry has been considered as lyrics to music in contrast to regulated poems. Based on the ci poetry of the Tang and Song Dynasties, Qing-dynasty poets developed two main methods to compose the new tunes for ci-poems, which were “tuning on the consideration of tones of every word” and “blending tunes to create a new tune.” These two methods enabled the poets to compose lyrics before revising the melodies. Thus, the poets in the Qing Dynasty, when composing ci-poems according to their newly invented tunes, could free themselves from the constraints in the Tang and Song ci-poetry, so they could compose and improvise according to the prosody and rhythm of words, and harmonize the lyrics and tunes to ensure better performance. Critical surveys of music in ci-poetry that were prevalent in the Qing Dynasty informed us that the music in the ci-poems was mainly created in the Qing Dynasty. This means that ci-poetry was essentially the tune, that is, music was highlighted in the composition of ci-poetry. In other words, the distinction between lyrics and tunes in ci-poetry was not an important issue for ci-poets in the Qing Dynasty. The fact that ci-poets composed their own tunes in the Qing Dynasty was closely connected to the upsurge of song lyrics at that time. This illustrated the pursuit of musical beauty among the ci-poets in the Qing Dynasty and their dissatisfaction with the constraints of ci-poetry conventions. Their pursuit and practice were in fact part of the revivalism literary action and an indication of the urge to return to an orthodox literary order.
Wu Weiye’s (1609-1671) ci-poetry, distinctively characterized by directly inheriting the style of ci-poetry from the Song dynasty rather than the Ming dynasty, brought about a number of developments to ci-poetry. These mainly included the mature awareness ci-poetry style, the refinement of eroticism, the drive behind alluding to classics and history, the sentiments behind his identification as a leftover subject from the previous dynasty, the intermingling of different genres, and the enhancement of narrative function of ci-poetry. These were also important elements in scholars’ ci-poetry, which made Wu Weiye with his ci-poetry the foundation for scholars’ ci-poetry in the Qing dynasty. Wu Weiye became the pioneer of scholars’ ci-poetry because of several reasons: his profound knowledge, his dual- identity as a leftover scholar from the Ming dynasty and an official of the Qing court, his rich and excellent experience in composing chanting poetry, his ideal that represented a generation of scholars, and his academic expertise in the history of the Northern and Southern dynasties.
Wan Shu’s writings of ci-poetry use various tunes, styles, and rhythms, aiming to pursue changes, while his theoretical work Rules of Ci-poetry emphasizes standardization, trying to explore established rules of the style, rhyme, and syntax in ci-poetry. Between his creation and theory there is thus an obvious contradiction, which can be explained, on the one hand, by the anxiety of influence derived from his compilation of Rules of Ci-poetry, and on the other, by his distinct creative personality and experience as an aide of generals. As a result, Wan Shu made efforts to subvert the tradition in the style of ci-poetry, seeking novelty and change to break the rules established in Rules of Ci-poetry. Qing poets’ evaluation of Wan Shu’s ci-poetry changed obviously over time, ranging from celebration of his contemporaries to criticisms of posterity. Such a shift of the scholarly evaluations of Wan Shu’s creation of ci-poetry in fact registered the canonizing process of his Rules of Ci-poetry.
