|
Abstracts Section B: Literature (classical and modern)
B1: Author-Related Questions in Literature
(Schedule)
Stafutti, Stefania (chair)
Weightman, Frances: Venting
indignation: compulsive writing and the authorial stance
Storm, Carsten: Arranged
Spontaneity. Formal Aspects of Fictional Diaries
Pozzi, Silvia: About 'Gerenhua
Xiezuo' and the Tendency towards Autobiographism in Chinese
Contemporary Literature
Major, Kornelia: Who am
I? Interaction beetwen past and present in recent works of
Chen Yingzhen
B2: Violence and Literature (Schedule)
Eifring, Halvor (chair)
Eifring, Halvor: Sentimentality
and Violence in The Red Chamber Dream
Diefenbach, Thilo: Physical
Violence in Recent Chinese Literature
Bech, Lene Sønderby: Fiction
as a Skilful Means
Paoluzzi, Anna Maria: Scapegoats
and collective violence in three short stories by Wang Zhenhe
B3: Classical Poetry and Text Exegesis (Schedule)
Lomova, Olga (chair)
Li, Yunchung: Monk Poets or
Poet Monks? : A Study of the Self-Image of Guanxiu and Qiji
Kirkova, Zornica: Landscapes
of Paradise in the Six Dynasties Poetry
Lomova, Olga: Early Medieval
Funerary Texts and Lyrical Poetry
Schimmelpfennig, Michael: The
Limits of Subcommentary Exegesis: The Subcommentaries to the
Classic of Filial Piety (Xiaojing) by Sima Guang and Xiao
Bing
B4: Modern Poetry (Schedule)
Lupke, Christopher (chair)
Gálik, Marián: The Bible
and Modern Chinese Poetry of the Twentieth Century
Katz, Sophia: Life in the
Fast Lane: Urban Verse in Taiwan
Tamburello, Giusi: Poetry
in translation:Chinese poetry of the Sixties
B5: Republican Era Literature (Schedule)
Lin, Pei-yin (chair)
Andrs, Dusan: Narrative
Voice in Shi Tuo's Guoyuan cheng ji: Prose of the Republican
Era and its Generic Characteristics
Hong, Jeesoon: Gendered
Politics of Translation-A Comparative Reading of the Chinese
and English Versions of Ling Shuhua's Short Stories
Wong, Lawrence Wangchi: A
Very Different Nanlai zuojia Story: Ye Lingfeng in Hong Kong
and his Hong Kong zhanggu
Sertoli, Alessandro: High
tides: Yu Hua's suibi between literature and music
B6: Literary Intellectuals (Schedule)
Pozzi, Silvia (chair)
Pesaro, Nicoletta: On
the Expressive Forms of Theory of Fiction by Wenxue yanjiu
hui
Iaconello, Metella: Midnight
and the "Report to the Marxist Literary and Artistic
Society": Mao Dun's alternative to the 'conterrevolutionary'
May Fourth
Veg, Sebastian: Lu Xun's
anti-romanticism in "Wandering"
Lupke, Christopher M.: Kicking
the Habitus: Ritual, Refracted Memories, and Representability
Among China's Elites
B7: Pride and Prejudice: Women and Money
in China (Schedule)
Mittler, Barbara (organizer and chair)
Mittler, Barbara: Does
money open all doors? Nightmares, Dreams, and Realities for
New Women in Republican China
Fong, Grace S.: Conjoining
Wealth and Talent in a Single Woman: Lü Bicheng and Print
Media in the Late Qing and Early Republican Period
Zamperini, Paola: Forbidden
Games. Women, Gambling, and Sexuality in late Qing Shanghai
Berg, Daria D.: Best/selling
the Private World: Body Writing in Contemporary China
B8: Modern Literature: Individual Papers (Schedule)
Lin, Pei-yin (chair)
Kaikkonen, Marja: Black
Book, White Book: Why a Profitable Book is a Good Book
Yang, Lan: Towards Modernity:
A Linguistic Perspective of Post-Cultural Revolution Chinese
Literature
Lin, Pei-Yin: A Forgotten
Canon?: Wu Mansha, Wind and Moon and Popular Literature in
Taiwan's Japanese Period
Kwong, Connie, Ho Yee: Border
Crossing: Structuralist Narratology and Chinese Literary Studies
(1985-2000)
B9: Travel Literature and Vernacular Fiction (Schedule)
Gálik, Marián (not yet confirmed) (chair)
Kloepsch, Volker: From
Observation to Examination: New Developments in Travel Literature
(youji) of the Song Dynasty as seen in Fan Chengda's Wu chuan
lu
Betz, Karin: The Eastern
Dwarfs re-visited: travelogues on Japan in the Late Qing
Altenburger, Roland: Water
Myth in the Early White Snake Tradition: A Regional Re-Contextualization
Keulemans, Paize: Listening
to the Acoustic Spectacle in Jin Shengtan's "Outlaws
of the Marsh": Storyteller Voice, Print-Culture, and
the Rise of Vernacular Fiction in Late Imperial China
ABSTRACTS
B1: Author-Related Questions in Literature
Stafutti, Stefania (chair)
Weightman, Frances: Venting indignation: compulsive writing and the authorial stance
This paper is part of a longer project analysing authorial prefaces, looking specifically at authors’ declared motivations for writing fiction. The view of the establishment, however variously this is defined, is largely inclined towards a didactic purpose for writing, that writing should convey the dao (wen yi zai dao) and so on, and many later writers invoked this authority in their prefaces. By claiming the security of textual privilege and functionality, writers effectively distance themselves from their texts, and an authorial voice is rarely perceptible.
However, writers who felt excluded from the orthodoxy, for a variety of reasons, could adopt alternative formulations of why they wrote. In this paper I will consider examples of those authors who declare in their prefaces that their writing is purely a channel of emotional release, often of pent-up frustration. There is a long-standing tradition in China, subscribed to by less orthodox intellectuals, that writing which does not spring from deep emotion is of no literary worth. The flip-side to this is that those writers apparently afflicted by such emotion have no choice but to write. It is interesting to compare such stances with European romantic notions of inspiration, since both concepts are simultaneously entirely subjective, while also claiming to be compulsions resulting from an external force, which lack any personal discretion.
Through an analysis of a selection of authorial prefaces, I hope to demonstrate that such constructed declarations of intent, by siting the motive for writing within the person of the writer, offer additional insights into the discourse on the existence or otherwise of a Chinese authorial voice.
Storm, Carsten: Arranged Spontaneity. Formal Aspects of Fictional Diaries
During the Republican era, from 1912 to 1949, the
“fictional diary” was a very popular literary form. Lu Xun’s “A Diary of a
Madman” and Ding Ling’s “Miss Sophie’s Diary” are two of the most famous
examples. The 1919 iconoclastic crash of the “old” culture and the evolving
necessity to construct a new modern consciousness may be seen as two
explanations for the general favour encountered by such literary form. Indeed,
the fictional diary easily allows the description of an isolated self in search
for individuality.
However, at a technical level, the employment of such an autobiographical genre
may cause problems. Characteristics of “real” diaries are: fragmentation,
spontaneity in the writing process, lack of internal plot, fortuity in content,
and an image of authenticity. These characteristics are obvious obstacles for a
well composed novel.
A close reading of republican fictional diaries elucidates that the authors are
dealing with the problem of form by transforming event describing patterns into
literary modes. In the essay I will set up and analyse a list of literary
devices such as fictitious editorship, construction of a teleological mode of
reality, “reduction”, the usage of letters and dreams etc. While keeping an
image of authenticity, these devices allow to compose a well structured novel
by transcending the strong limitation in terms of time, space and characters
inherent in single diary entries.
Pozzi, Silvia: About 'Gerenhua Xiezuo' and the Tendency towards
Autobiographism in Chinese Contemporary Literature
In Western Countries autobiography suffered critical
neglect until the eighties of last century, when literary critics began
considering this mode of literature either as a distinct one and for its
complex ties to other modes, as James Olney argued. Recent works in Chinese and
English languages are progressively making up for the lack of studies in
Chinese autobiographical writing – women’s autobiographical writing above all.
Yet, further analyses on autobiography are essential and consequential,
especially where a multiplex contamination with other genres, such as novel,
short stories and poetry takes place.
Much of Chinese contemporary literature shows a clear tendency – almost an urge
– towards autobiographism. The clash between autobiographical and fictional
themes gives way to all sorts of literary works which come to form a mixed,
wide, and plastic phenomenon.
This tendency is large enough to represent one of the main clues to reading
Chinese contemporary literature. An individualistic and introspective
autobiographism that marks a dramatic shift from the individual self having
been denied against the specific needs of the mass.
This paper aims at inquiring into this complicated field by focusing a group of
young women writers whose works are generally referred as to 'Gerenhua Xiezuo'
(Individualized Writing). These authors, namely Chen Ran, Hai Nan, Hong Ying,
Lin Bai, Xu Xiaobin, and their huge literary production, provide a wide range
of interpretations of autobiography as a mode, and combined with other literary
modes as well.
Major, Kornelia: Who am I? Interaction beetwen past and present in recent
works of Chen Yingzhen
Chen Yingzhen (b. 1937) has always been known as a
Taiwanese embracing Chinese consciousness and as a writer resolutely addressing
social issues, while also demonstrating the complex psychology of alienated
characters thrown by various social and existential factors. In his recent
fiction he combines these topics with sensitive subject matters drawn from the
(recent) past of Taiwan. Critics usually emphasize Chen’s intention to
commemorate the past experience of the Taiwanese people. Some also interpret
these stories as Chen’s encounter with his own ideals. I would like to go
beyond these opinions and adopt a different approach to his works. In my view
Chen attempts to confront the Taiwanese with their present by exposing them to
their past and, by doing this, he expresses a deep concern about their future.
Chen reaches his goal by using an elaborate structure wich, I believe, is
already present in his Shan lu trilogy.
This common structure lying behind the different stories in the Shan lu and
Zhongxiao trilogies consists basically of the interaction between the past and
the present. Recollection, memory and reflection play a key role. The past
experience sheds new light on the present situation and vice versa. Altough
Chen Yingzhen is by no means a postmodernist writer, what he does is a real
decomposition of ideals, values and human existence leading the protagonists to
question their own identity. Does an adequate answer exist to this question? In
my article I would like to explore the answers Chen Yingzhen gives in his
Zhongxiao trilogy. I maintain that his quest for an identity is relevant not
only for the Taiwanese and Chinese but for any individual or community seeking
to determine his place in the world.
B2: Violence and Literature
Eifring, Halvor (chair)
Eifring, Halvor: Sentimentality and Violence in The Red Chamber Dream
The sentimental and the violent are closer relatives than
we usually like to admit. When critics look at the self-expressive nature of
the 18th-century Chinese novel The Red Chamber Dream, they usually talk about
its sentimental depictions of innocent love and tearful descriptions of grief
and sorrow. But love and tears are not the only emotional expressions found in
the novel. Lust and violence play an equally central part, and though often
displaced outside the novel's sphere of sympathy, they belong to the same
psychological universe.
In this talk, I will look into the polarity between Baoyu and Xifeng, between
love and violence, and how these are played off against each other throughout
the novel. I will also discuss the death of Qin Keqing and argue that her
death, as well as the deaths of Jia Rui and Qin Zhong in the neighbouring
chapters, reflect attempts at killing off sexual desire to pave the way for the
apparent innocence of the Prospect Garden idyll, which constitutes the central
part of the novel. Violence against lustful impulses is a precondition for the
lyrical and sentimental ideals of the garden. When the idyll begins to crumble,
this signals not only the return of the sexuality that has been suppressed, but
also of the hidden violence that was necessary to keep it under control. This
is what happens when the lascivious sisters You Erjie and You Sanjie take their
own lives, and their story largely functions as a mirror image of the story of
Qin Keqing.
Diefenbach, Thilo: Physical Violence in Recent Chinese Literature
The depiction of violence forms a substantial part of all
literary traditions. Chinese literature is no exception to that: portrayals of
violence and cruelty are to be found even in the earliest written texts.
Especially novels from the Ming- and Qing-period are full of brutal scenes. The
20th century has also produced a significant number of novels rife with
aggression and bloodshed. However this is not a mere continuation of older
traditions of literary violence, as its contexts – i.e. the functions and
ideological frameworks – have undergone important transformations over the
years. Up to now virtually no research on this topic has been done by western
scholars.
In my paper I will pay special attention to changes in the moral contexts which
took place in the late 1970s. Until then, depictions of violence were usually
embedded in a rigid ethical framework. ‘Good’ and ‘evil’ could always be
clearly distinguished, and the legitimacy of violence (against ‘evil’) was made
obvious to the reader. Moreover, novels almost always ended with the victory of
‘the good’. These features had remained relatively constant over the centuries,
irrespective of whether the basic moral yardstick was grounded in traditional
ethics or in socialist ideals. This continuity was broken only after the end of
the Cultural Revolution: Since then, literary descriptions of recent Chinese
history turn older conventions upside down and depict a world without heroes
which is determined by ruthless individuals violently pursuing their personal
interests. I will analyse this phenomenon in some more detail, using novels by
Zhang Wei, Chen Zhongshi, Li Rui and Liu Xinglong as examples.
Bech, Lene Sønderby: Fiction as a Skilful Means
For centuries Chinese literature has been dominated by a
Confucian poetic of "literature as a vehicle to convey the way." But
literature as a didactic means to disseminate the ethical way of Confucianism
has been challenged by literature as a skilful means to transmit Buddhist
truth. The opposing strategies of these two approaches are among the leitmotifs
in the celebrated Qing dynasty novel Honglou meng (The Dream of the Red
Chamber/The Story of the Stone) by Cao Xueqin.
This paper will discuss the motif of skilful means in the Honglou meng and
argue that the spiritual quest that lead the protagonists to liberation is
repeated in the metafictional story about the monk Kongkong daoren's readings
of the novel. The monk is a fictive image of the reader and this paper
discusses how the expedient means that enable the protagonists to leave their
fictive world behind are also a direct challenge to the reader.
The author stresses, that the ultimate meaning of his novel can be understood
only by starting off in its conventional expression. Kongkong daoren, who
yearns to renounce the world, is a pedantic Confucianist who focuses on the
didactic and ethical values of the novel. But he is enticed to venture into and
believe in the novel’s world of passions, whereby he makes the fictive real. In
the manner of a zenmonk pondering a koan, he becomes absorbed by and attached
to the story and struggles with it until he finally realizes its intrinsic
emptiness and is liberated.
My paper explores the structure of the spiritual quests in Honglou meng and
argues that it is its fictive and non-verifiable status, that is the driving
force behind its success as a skilful means.
Paoluzzi, Anna Maria: Scapegoats and collective violence in three short stories
by Wang Zhenhe
Wang Zhenhe 王禎和
(1940-1990) is considered one of the most significant writers in the panorama
of Taiwan post 1949 literature. One of the main themes of his fiction works,
set mostly in the northeast part of Taiwan, is the alienation of individuals
isolated by a hostile or indifferent environment at best or ghettoized and
subjected to a sort of social lynching at worst. In this paper I will examine three
of Wang Zhenhe’s short stories and attempt an analysis of the mechanism of
projective identification, which leads a group of people to direct the
aggressiveness generated by frustration and self-shame toward a person chosen
as scapegoat because of distinctive features arranged in categories by René
Girard in his essay “The Scapegoat” (1982).
In the first of these short stories, “An oxcart for dowry” 嫁妝一牛車, the main character, Wanfa 萬發,
afflicted by deafness, is betrayed by his wife A-hao 阿好 and therefore becomes the laughing-stock of his fellow villagers; the
short and arrogant A-xiao 阿蕭 of “Two tigers” 兩隻老虎 not
only is ridiculed by his neighbors, but ends up going bankrupt and losing his
mind; A-duan 阿緞, the widowed mother of “She’s a sorceress” 伊會唸咒, is subjected to the outrages and abuses of all her neighbors until a
sudden accident and some coincidences lead people to label her as “sorceress”,
a status quo which gives an end to all the vexations but at the same time
condemns her to be shunned by everyone.
The analysis of the three stories will be carried on through a
socio-psychological approach based on the theories of Freud, Klein and Girard;
a particular attention will also be paid to the three works’ specific features
that depict a realistic portrayal of Taiwan in the 1960s.
B3: Classical Poetry and Text Exegesis
Lomova, Olga (chair)
Li, Yunchung: Monk Poets or Poet Monks? : A Study of the Self-Image of
Guanxiu and Qiji
Buddhism is the most influential foreign culture introduced
into China. The introduction began in the Han dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) and was officially
recognised by the emperor Liu Zhuang 劉莊 (58-75
AD). The spread of Buddhism flourished along with the continuing translation of
the Buddhist canons into Chinese. From the third to the sixth century, Buddhism
was a constant topic in the philosophical discussions among and between the
learned aristocrats and Buddhist monks. During this time Buddhism was
interwoven with the Chinese philosophies and accepted widely in society, though
not without occasional oppression. The absorption of the religion in China
reached its height in the Tang dynasty (618-907) as many of the Tang emperors
believed in Buddhism and encouraged its spread. However, the integration of
Buddhism into Chinese culture manifests itself not only in the reception of
religion but also in the literary production, for example, poetry.
The first Buddhist monk who wrote poetry was Zhidun 支遁 (314-366) during the Eastern Jin period (317-420). He was known to be
learned in literature and associated himself with many famous literati of the
time. After Zhidun, monks who could write poetry continued to appear in the
Chinese history. Their poetry was initially intended as a means for Buddhist
mission, and its content was the Buddhist teaching. In the early stage, the
style of the monk poetry was influenced by the Buddhist sutra and usually did
not fall into the Chinese orthodox poetic styles. However, the number of monks
writing poetry grew, and the style of their poetry gradually shifted closer to
that of the ordinary Chinese literati. In the Tang dynasty, when Chinese poetry
prospered at its historical height, a great number of monks who wrote poetry
emerged. They brought new inspiration from their Buddhist background to Chinese
poetic writing, and their poetry conformed into the Chinese poetic tradition.
Their poetry was recognised by the Tang literati, and some of monk poets were
even claimed to be among the best of their time. Monks who could write good
poetry, once recognised, were well respected by their contemporaries and
sometimes by the governmental authority. This pattern continued to the end of the
Qing dynasty (1644-1910).
Shiseng 詩僧 was the Chinese term for the monks
who are poets. It appeared in the Tang dynasty in recognition of monks with
poetic fame. However, the dual identities of the shiseng, at once monk and
poet, raise a fundamental question for the interpretation of their poetry:
should these monks be regarded only as monks whose poetry falls into the
general agenda of Buddhist teaching? Or should they be regarded as well poets
as serious in writing poetry and whose purpose of writing poetry is more than
religion?
Shiseng was commonly used by both literati and monks to address monks who are
poets. The precise characteristics of shiseng are not agreed. There have been
studies on the motivation of shiseng to write poetry, and they offer different
views of the characteristics of the identity of shiseng. Most of the studies do
not provide a specific definition of shiseng. However, they share a general
understanding that shiseng are monks who write poetry. Some scholars describe
the Tang shiseng as “poets who wear the costume of monks” , taking poetic
writing more seriously than the learning and teaching of Buddhism. Some
scholars have argued for the even narrower definition that shiseng were only
poets during the Tang and the Song dynasties who were influenced specifically
by the Buddhist school of Chinese Chan. However, yet others argue for the view
that shiseng were monks who are renowned religious teachers as well as poets .
Different views of the identity of shiseng will lead to different
interpretations of their poetry. The results may contradict each other when
interpreting the poetry of shiseng, for example their Chinese Chan poetry: is
Chinese Chan the aim to achieve through poetry writing? Or is Chinese Chan merely
an inspiration for writing poetry?
The above discussions of the identity of shiseng are mostly based on exterior
evidence, that is, the social activities with which shiseng were involved and
the opinions of their contemporary literati. However, to have a better
understanding of the characteristics of shiseng, the investigation of the
self-image of shiseng is essential. It is important to understand the view of
the shiseng of their motivations to write poetry. It is important to know how
the shiseng saw the relationship between religion and poetry writing and how
they struck the balance between being monks and being poets at once. These
provide a more reliable background to determine the purpose of shiseng when
interpreting their poetry. The self-image of shiseng also offers an interior
view how Buddhism and Chinese poetry develop hand in hand together.
In this paper I investigate the self-image of two shiseng: Guanxiu 貫休 (832-912) and Qiji 齊己 (864-943?).
They were two of the most renowned monks and poets during the late Tang and the
Wudai shiguo period (907-979). A significant amount of their poetry survives.
They were both devoted and self-conscious in poetic writing. Guanxiu wrote many
poems relating to the social issues and relatively fewer poems of religion, and
poetry was a means by which he associated himself with literati and political
figures. Qiji, compared to Guanxiu, wrote more poems relating to Buddhism and
fewer poems of social problems. He enjoyed his friendship with other poets, but
he was disinterested in politics. I investigate Guanxiu and Qiji’s self-images
of being monks and poets at once in their poetry. I examine their opinions on
the relationship between Buddhism and poetry writing. Finally, the result of
this investigation argues that an analysis of the poets’ self-image forms an
important aspect of the understanding of their poetic writings.
Kirkova, Zornica: Landscapes of Paradise in the Six Dynasties Poetry
The rise of the landscape poetry, shanshui shi, in the Six
dynasties period (222-589 AD) was paralleled by a current of imaginary
landscapes of paradise realms, which became prominent within the youxian,
“wandering into immortality” genre. While the Tang poetical accounts of
otherworldly realms have been the focus of many studies, their Six dynasties
antecedents have so far remained largely neglected. This paper will examine
descriptions of paradise vistas in different poetical forms (shi, yuefu
ballads, rhapsodies fu, eulogies song, inscriptions ming), tracing the
constitution and transformation of their topography, imagery and formal
devices. My inquiry will proceed simultaneously in two directions – the
otherworldly visions of the secular poets will be discussed in the light of the
changing religious context of the period on one side, and in their relation to
the perception of nature in the zhaoyin and shanshui poetry on the other. It
will draw attention to both their religious and symbolic significance and their
aimed aesthetic impact as highly artificial, decorative scenes. Special
attention will be given to the transformations of imaginary landscapes between
the two poles of fantastic cosmic vistas and natural mountainous sceneries.
Lomova, Olga: Early Medieval Funerary Texts and Lyrical Poetry
This article will focus on prosimetric genres connected
with funerary rituals in early medieval China, mainly dealing with their place
in the history of Chinese literature. It is based on the Prince Zhaoming Anthology
of Refined Literature (Wenxuan). Occasionally also other similar compositions
from Han and the Wei–Jin-Nabeichao period will be taken into consideration.
My main concern is a possible interplay between the ritual texts and lyrical
poetry. Two hypotheses will be examined in some detail: the impact of certain
conventions developed in ritual texts on similar conventions in poetry, and the
transformation of certain ritual texts into literary genres independent of any
ritual needs.
Schimmelpfennig, Michael: The Limits of Subcommentary Exegesis: The Subcommentaries
to the Classic of Filial Piety (Xiaojing) by Sima Guang and Xiao Bing
The origin of subcommentary writing shu in China is
generally traced back to Buddhist sutra interpretation and its influence on a
particular commentary form that developed during the Six dynasties. Yet only
from the Tang dynasty onwards an increasing number of subcommentaries was
created. These commentaries were written to texts that were already equipped
with a reading that was considered canonical, that predetermined
subcommentarial exegesis, and that substantially set limits to further
interpretation.
For an examination by which means, and to what degree these limits could be
extended, the Xiaojing zhijie by Sima Guang (1019-1086) constitutes a
particularly interesting example: Sima Guang believed he had found an old
version of the text without commentary that had escaped what he considered to
be the misinterpretation and distortion by commentators of the Han and later
dynasties. However, when he wrote his commentary, the Classic of Filial Piety
was firmly linked with the exegesis of the Tang emperor Xuanzong. Moreover, its
canonical status had recently been reconfirmed by the subcommentary of Xiao
Bing (931-1010), the Xiaojing zhengyi. By completely taking over the canonical
interpretation and integrating it with his own understanding, Sima Guang chose
an approach that differed considerably from established subcommentary writing
as examplified by the commentary of Xiao Bing.
The paper will present the particularities of Sima Guang's approach by
comparing his work with the subcommentary by Xiao Bing.
B4: Modern Poetry
Lupke, Christopher (chair)
Gálik, Marián: The Bible and Modern Chinese Poetry of the Twentieth
Century
During the May Fourth Movement (and even shortly before
that time) modern Chinese poets and critics started to read the Bible, its
poetry, and its aesthetic and ethical legacy had quite powerful, although up to
now not enough studied impact among many Chinese critics beginning with Zhou
Zuoren in 1920s and ending with Haizi in 1990s. More attention was devoted by
the literary historians to fiction and drama. The Song of Songs was certainly
most influential among the Chinese writers, both playwrights and poets, and
prayer as a literary form, addressed to God, was very popular among the Chinese
poets, whether they were Christians or not. Among these poets we find Zheng
Zhenduo, Yu Pingbo, Bing Xin, Guo Moruo, Wang Yiren, Wang Duqing, Feng Naichao,
Feng Zhi, Liang Zongdai, Chen Mengjia, Xu Zhimo, Ai Qing, Mu Dan, and Taiwanese
women poets Rongzi and Siren. Except of Haizi many other Chinese poets of the
last years were enthralled by the religious poetry, including that influenced
by the Bible, but their works, often published as samoizdats, are mostly
unknown and difficult obtainable outside of China.
Katz, Sophia: Life in the Fast Lane: Urban Verse in Taiwan
The rapid advance of urbanization and the development of
mass media, internet, and modern technology have given rise to changes in
interests and priorities as well as new forms of thinking and expression. In
China, the link between painting, calligraphy and poetry has always been strong
but over the past twenty years, the traditional forms of Chinese poetry in
Taiwan have undergone a number of transformations.
Modern Taiwanese verse is characterized by a fascinating blending of
traditional and modern modes of expression. Today one can speak of the
appearance of new cultural phenomena such as visual poetry, digital poetry,
poetry which combines various arts (dance, music and painting), public
transportation poetry, etc. Modern verse has appeared on a variety of new
subjects but in particular the theme of urban life "in the fast lane"
has become central.
In my paper, I analyze these developments in contemporary Taiwanese poetry, and
examine a number of related questions such as: What are the topics that modern
poets prefer to write about? What is the role of the poet in modern Taiwanese
society? Does the use of new tools and arenas change the language of a poem and
does it affect and influence the reader's reaction? Has the dialogue between a
poet and a reader become more open and free? Do the new dynamics reflect the
needs of modern times? Is there still a place for traditional topics and forms
of writing? And finally what, in fact, is poetry?
Tamburello, Giusi: Poetry in translation:Chinese poetry of the Sixties
During the late Sixties in China, underground poetry was
produced which marked a turning point in poetic style. Until now, little
research has been done on the sources that led to such a change. Despite
political control, young Chinese poets found ways to read foreign poetry and
they read it in translation. This paper will first present the work of a
Chinese woman translator of French poetry, and secondly it will characterize
the influence translation has had on the process of creating new poetry. It
will become evident how important it was for Chinese poets to read Western
poetry in translation. The study could open up a broad field of further
research, at long last analysing the range of western influences on the Chinese
literary production that began in the mid-1960s and which expanded enormously
in the mid-1980s.
B5: Republican Era Literature
Lin, Pei-yin (chair)
Andrs, Dusan: Narrative Voice in Shi Tuo's Guoyuan cheng ji: Prose of the
Republican Era and its Generic Characteristics
With only two Western and a handful of Chinese studies
published so far, Shi Tuo (Wang Changjian, 1910-1988) is still relatively
little studied Chinese writer of the Republican Era. The paper focuses on
Guoyuan cheng ji (Records of Orchard City, 1946), the last of the six
collections of short stories Shi Tuo wrote before 1949. The reason for the
choice of the collection of eighteen pieces for an analysis is twofold: 1) The
stories written and published separately over the period of eight years (1938 –
1946) show, with few exceptions, a considerable degree of thematic and motivic
unity. Besides sharing a common setting and a persistently melancholic tone,
the pieces are marked by a shared theme of “homecoming” and “home-remembering.”
2) Most of the pieces have a similarly distinct spatial quality and make use of
a peculiar narrative voice. The paper attempts at viewing the collection as a
coherent whole and pointing out those characteristics that would allow putting
forward a well substantiated thesis about its unique artistic format and
generic characteristics.
The definition of the collection’s format is based on a scrutiny of an
intricate fabric of the meaning of individual pieces. A special attention is
paid to the nature and function of Shi Tuo’s narrator. Inspired by Huter’s
analysis of Shi Tuo’s story “Yi wen” (A Kiss) that draws attention to the
ability of the “remote and even somewhat mysterious narrative voice” to
undermine the Chinese tradition of authoritative narration, the paper focuses
on the communicative aspect of the narrative voice. In distinction to Huter’s
approach, proposed analysis foregrounds not only a dialogical quality of the
narrative voice as a means that allows the author to communicate to the reader
his uncertainty about the knowability of the world; the analysis allows us to
view the dialogical quality of the narrative voice as a form of the narrator’s
self-address. Seen from this viewpoint, Shi Tuo’s stories can not only be read
as fictional narratives employing Bakhtinian polyphony of voices, but also as
lyrical pieces resorting to a reflective form of a second-person form
self-address: Rather than searching for a projected addressee of the narrator’s
utterances, the writer by addressing himself invites the reader to be the
witness of his own confession.
Proposed reading of Shi Tuo’s pieces can contribute to a much needed but so far
underdeveloped scholarly discussion that would shed more light on one of the
most striking features of the Republican Era Chinese prose: its generic
fuzziness. The results of the analysis can provide evidence necessary for a
better understanding of the rationale behind Chinese writers’ and editors’
apparently intuitive use of generic labels such as xiaoshuo and sanwen.
Hong, Jeesoon: Gendered Politics of Translation-A Comparative Reading of
the Chinese and English Versions of Ling Shuhua's Short Stories
Ling Shuhua’s long-lasting relationship with the Bloomsbury
group has begun to attract attention from some scholars of Chinese and English
literature. Ling, from the very beginning of her writing career, pursued her
aim of being a trans-national writer, and her love affair with Julian Bell,
Vanessa Bell’s eldest son, enabled her to form enduring relationships with
other members of the Bloomsbury group, including Virginia Woolf.
This paper will deal mainly with the different linguistic versions of Ling’s
three short stories, “A Poet Goes Mad,” “Writing a Letter,” and “What is the
point of it?” translated by herself and Bell and submitted to the British
journal, The London Mercury, in 1936. Through a comparative reading of the
Chinese and English versions—including those published in Beijing’s English
journal, Tien Hsia Monthly, this paper asks questions such as what her
selection of these particular stories among her more celebrated ones signifies;
how her modernist aestheticism blending the artistic vision of traditional
Chinese painting and the aesthetics of some British female modernists was
translated into English and appreciated in the foreign literary field; what was
the role of Julian Bell in this; and whether the feminist voice is accentuated
or mitigated by her strategy of trans-cultural production. Exploring these
questions involves another comparative reading of her work, Ancient Melodies,
whose production was helped greatly by the Bloomsbury group, and the
corresponding short stories in Chinese.
This study, based on a wide selection of historical materials and writings by
Ling Shuhua, challenges the two representative views on her communication with
Bloomsbury: one which highlights semi-colonialism and the other which
celebrates international modernism, and brings forward the question of how the
complex politics of gender, class and nation functioned in a female modernist’s
trans-cultural practices.
Wong, Lawrence Wangchi: A Very Different Nanlai zuojia Story: Ye Lingfeng in Hong
Kong and his Hong Kong zhanggu
Ye Lingfeng started his literary career as one of the
“young chaps” of the Creation Society (Chuangzaoshe xiaohuoji) in Shanghai in
the 1920s. For a time he wrote fiction similar to those written by the other
Creationists, in particular Yu Dafu, whom he admired immensely. In 1930, he was
expelled from the Chinese League of Left-wing Writers. Drawn close to the
Xiandai School, he published several new sensational stories. In 1938, he moved
to Hong Kong and stayed there until his death in 1975.
Unlike most nanlai zuojia (writers who went to Hong Kong, the south, from
Mainland China), Ye apparently went to Hong Kong not for political reasons, at
least not as a political exile, although at the time when he left China, the
country had just broken out war with Japan. Yet the greatest difference between
Ye and other nanlai zuojia lies in the fact that he seemed to have little
problems in settling himself in the British colony. More significantly, he
started to write about Hong Kong as early as 1947, when almost all other Mainland
Chinese writers would only write on and for China during their involuntary, and
often brief, stay in Hong Kong. He adopted a very special genre, the zhanggu
(historical anecdotes), to tell his version of Hong Kong story, which was
patriotic and anti-imperialistic. This anti-British and nationalistic sentiment
in his works, which became extreme during the great riot against the British
colonial rule in 1967, would have put him in danger at a time when censorship
and political control was severe in Hong Kong. Then, ironically, in the late
1980s, his zhanggu were revised and republished, posthumously, to meet the
nostalgic mood of the Hong Kong people when the British rule there was to be
ended with the return of sovereignty to China.
The present paper attempts to look into Ye Lingfeng’s Hong Kong years
(1938-75), paying special attention to the Hong Kong zhanggu he published from
the 1940s to 1970s. The politics behind his discourse, placed against Hong
Kong’s socio-political background, will be discussed in details. The
“repackaging” of his zhanggu in the 1980s would be examined to see how they
were adapted and modified to suit the need of society. It is hoped that the
role and contributions of Ye in the literary and cultural history of Hong Kong
could be identified more clearly.
Sertoli, Alessandro: High tides: Yu Hua's suibi's between literature and music
My paper focuses on contemporary writer Yu Hua’s suibi
collection, Gaochao (YU Hua, Gaochao, Beijing, Huayi chubanshe, 2000).
Yu Hua is undoubtedly better known for his avant-garde short-stories (e.g. “One
Kind of Reality” [Xianshi yizhong], “The Past and the Punishment” [Wangshi yu
xingfa], etc.) and for the extremely popular and internationally acclaimed
novels “To Live” (Huozhe) and “Chronicle of a Blood Merchant” (Xu Sanguan
maixue ji), whilst his essays have raised little or no interest in the West.
Nonetheless, I believe his recently published collections of suibi’s deserve
our attention.
The short essays published in Gaochao explore the relationships between
literary narration and musical narration. The author believes both music and
literature to be works of “narrative nature”, whose intrinsic dynamism makes it
possible for them to strive, through different media, for the same goals and
results.
On these premises, Yu Hua traces out analogies between artists so different as
Hawthorne and Sostakovic, Bach and Homer, Mendelssohn and Dante.
It’s interesting to note that Yu Hua turns his attention exclusively to the
literature, the classical music and the literary and musical critique of the
West. However, the way the author tackles his topic would be unacceptable to a
Western scholar. Though Yu Hua is no literary critic or musicologist -nor does
he pretend to be one, for that matter-, he deals freely with language, lexicon,
melody, harmony, narrativity and semantics with no clearly detectable
methodological means, floating casually from topic to topic on the basis of
intuition and emotion, without taking into consideration “more orthodox”
critical categories. The suibi’s typically flexible structure, style and content
matter all go to his advantage.
Gaochao’s opening essay, “Peaks”, well represents the collection’s leitmotiv.
It is a parallel analysis of how Russian composer Dmitrij Sostakovic’s Seventh
Symphony and American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter work
their way to the climax. The analogy simultaneously extends to (or stems from?)
the two artists’ life experiences, blending together art, technique, fate and
emotions.
B6: Literary Intellectuals
Pozzi, Silvia (chair)
Pesaro, Nicoletta: On the Expressive Forms of Theory of Fiction by Wenxue
yanjiu hui
This paper analyses the different types of texts produced
during the 1920s by the members of Wenxue yanjiu hui (Literary Research Association)
in constructing their new theory of fiction.
One can find an extraordinary variety of texts when collecting primary sources
in this field. This happens mostly because in the Twenties this field of
research was still new, and young scholars and intellectuals were still looking
for new forms to express their theories of fiction.
In my research I’ve identified five types of theoretical texts: a) short
articles and literary manifestos; b) debates published in newspapers and
magazines; c) correspondence between members of the Association; d) criticism
of fiction; e) manuals and monographs.
In order to stimulate the birth of a new fiction these authors not only gave
great publicity to their new ideas but they also tried to express their views
by adopting each time the more convenient form and text structure. The creation
of theoretical texts was twofold: on one hand we find some traces of the
traditional commentary form and on the other hand we find the influence of more
systematical manuals of theory from Western literature.
My opinion is that not only the content but also the form of these texts may be
helpful in the study of modern Chinese theory of fiction.
Iaconello, Metella: Midnight and the "Report to the Marxist Literary and
Artistic Society": Mao Dun's alternative to the 'conterrevolutionary' May
Fourth
Midnight is perhaps Mao Dun’s most famous novel and,
consequently, one of the his most analysed works. However, the majority of its
critics emphasized its large-scale portrayal of near-contemporary Chinese
society and focused either on the influence of European literary history and
mythology (Marian Galik) on the novel, or on the authors’ mastering (mostly
naturalist and realist) literary techniques and forms (Hsia, Prusek). They only
slightly touch upon the role played by Mao Dun’s ideological convictions in the
shaping of Midnight and seldom took into account the place of this novel within
Mao Dun’s criticism of the near contemporary Chinese literary trends.
However, Mao Dun’s 1931 article ‘A Self-criticism of the May Fourth Movement: a
Report to the Society for Marxist Literary and Artistic Theory Studies’ shows
some of Mao Dun’s main ideological and literary convictions at the time of the
composition of Midnight and throws a new light on the meaning of this novel.
Here the author describes in a kind of ‘instant Marxist analysis’ the birth of
the Chinese bourgeoisie, its early development, and its subsequent struggle
against the feudal powers and foreign imperialism. Mao Dun argues that this
newborn bourgeoisie was inherently weak as shown in its close links to
‘feudalism’ (the warlords) and ‘imperialism’ (the West and Japan). It never
went against ‘imperialism’ as such, but only against one of the powers, while
leaning on the support of the other; this in turn caused the Chinese
bourgeoisie to vacillate, resort to compromise, and to gradually loose its weak
‘progressive’ energies altogether. Mao Dun also describes the beginning of the
working class’s struggles, paralleling the decline of the bourgeoisie. The
literature of the period, ‘May Fourth literature’ reflects this weakness of the
Chinese bourgeoisie, and therefore is, with very few exceptions,
‘counterrevolutionary’. Since these are also the main issues in Midnight, I
argue that the article is indeed the blueprint of the novel.
Mao Dun argues that the May Fourth movement embodies the new born Chinese
bourgeoisie’s opposition to the feudal powers and to one specific imperialism
(that is the Japanese one), an opposition which was doomed to fail within a few
years. May Fourth literature reflected the ideals and thinking of this new born
Chinese bourgeoisie in the ‘superstructure’ and consequently had no optimistic
and strong spirit, but was rather depressed and decadent. He even labels May
Fourth spirit as ‘counterrevolutionary’ in today’s society and mentions Yu
Dafu’s “Chenlun” as one of the worst examples of its literature. Making the
most of the analogies between the article and the novel and of the literary and
the ideological convictions expressed in it, I argue that Midnight in terms of
content fictionalises the fate of the Chinese bourgeoisie described in this
article, and in terms of form tries to offer an example of properly revolutionary
realistic treatment. It constitutes Mao Dun’s response to what he denounced as
the defeatist wing of May Fourth literature.
Veg, Sebastian: Lu Xun's anti-romanticism in "Wandering"
In this paper, it will be argued that a close analysis of
Lu Xun’s second volume of short stories "Wandering" (Panghuang),
reveals a far more subtle and contradictory political and literary stance than
generally associated with this author. The collection is structured around its
two longest stories "The Loner" (Guduzhe) and "Regrets"
(Shangshi) which fictionalize the failure of modernization. In "The
Loner", the hopes that two young intellectuals place in political reform
are shattered by poverty, hypocrisy and isolation. In "Regrets", the
hero’s attempt to live with the woman he loves regardless of traditional values
entails growing indifference between them. The epigraph from Qu Yuan’s
"Lisao" echoes this association between sentimental and political
failure.
As in Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, this stance reflects deep-set doubts
about romantic ideals that associated freedom for the individual and historical
progress. Like Flaubert, Lu Xun satirizes writers who believe in empty slogans
endorsing immediate and radical political reform. His use of the form of the
diary in "Regrets" is a scathing attack on what he saw as the selfishness
and vanity of the "romantic generation" (L. O. Lee) of May Fourth
intellectuals. In the same way, the "loner" Wei Lianshu ends up
relinquishing his beliefs and working for a (reactionary) warlord. In this
context, romanticism can only foster false hopes ; for Lu Xun the only possible
ethical stance is loneliness : writing texts that engage only the individual.
Lupke, Christopher M.: Kicking the Habitus: Ritual, Refracted Memories, and
Representability Among China's Elites
How does one render the silent gulf between the writer and
the object of depiction? The problem of representation, and the amalgam of
vested interests that together amount to the representational apparatus,
increasingly has stimulated the interest of Western scholarship on Chinese
literature. As Yi-tsi Feuerwerker has noted in her recent study, this object
often is “seemingly beyond the conscious level of language.” Yet the
pre-linguistic system of dispositions known as ritual, particularly filiality,
remains a conundrum that nearly all intellectuals of the twentieth century feel
compelled to address in writing.
Drawing on Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, I investigate how ritual, memory,
representability, and cultural critique coalesce in the work of Lu Xun, Ding
Ling, Bai Xianyong, and Wang Anyi, casting doubt on their own abilities to
deliver to their readership even as they subtly work to maintain their elite legitimacy
by reinforcing a sense of “distinction.” What are the stakes for Sister
Xianglin who unwittingly stymies the narrator in Lu Xun’s “New Year’s
Sacrifice”? Why should Ding Ling’s Miss Sophia simultaneously reveal and
conceal her identity? Are the exhausted scholars in Bai Xianyong’s “Winter
Nights” symptomatic of a cross-generational malaise? How does Wang Anyi’s
portrayal of Bao Renwen in the role of mediating agent between the
unrepresented peasant and the educated elite affect the structure of her
narrative? As readers, do we unconsciously reinforce the hierarchy in this
representational enterprise? My interpretation suggests these questions impact
upon the whole status of elite discourse in China.
B7: Pride and Prejudice: Women and Money in China
Mittler, Barbara (organizer and chair)
One
of the most striking personae of the New Woman who appears in media discourse
from the Republican period is the stylish spendthrift who is at once proud of
her wasteful way of life and who transforms outer appearances into inner
values. An uninhibited consumer, overstepping legal as well as moral
boundaries, she is always portrayed in a negative fashion, But she is far from
simply being a cipher of male misogyny. The discourse around her is created and
circulated both by male and female authors: indeed, it is often the case that
the most violent attacks against these arrogant and wasteful women appear in
publications by women.
But where did this figure come from? And what is her legacy? Who are her
models? And who does she model for? Did she always appear most prominently in
female rather than male writings? And why?
By addressing these and other related questions, our panel will try to
reconstruct the creation and transformation of this character in both discourse
and reality from a number of different sources (women's magazines, daily
newspapers, private letters, novels, film, poetry, travel writing and popular
literature) dating from the late Qing to the beginning of the 21st century, in an
attempt to conceive of a first chapter in a history of gender-based prejudice
in China.
Mittler, Barbara: Does money open all doors? Nightmares, Dreams, and Realities for New Women in Republican China
By presenting no more and no less than completely
contradictory images of the New Woman, her virtues and her vices, Chinese
women’s magazines in the Republican period did little to alleviate the
tremendous problem of redefining womanhood for women in the Republican Period.
But SHE is there and everywhere: the well-dressed wastrel. In news reports,
jokes, photographs and graphics, comic strips and advertisements her image is
invoked and decried. She is the downside of modernity, the symbol of depravity
and decline. But who is she? The successful doctor, the film star, the lawyer?
How does her image relate to lived realities of New Women in Republican China?
By discussing different images of this New Woman in women’s magazines from the
Republican period, my paper intends to uncover her genealogy in traditional
prejudice and her function within the polyphonic context of Chinese modernity.
It also tries to establish her somewhat precarious relationship to the “real”
New Woman in Chinese history.
Fong, Grace S.: Conjoining Wealth and Talent in a Single Woman: Lü Bicheng and Print Media in the Late Qing and Early Republican Period
Lü Bicheng (1883-1943), the talented daughter of an
official-gentry family from Anhui, broke away from the life of a sheltered
guixiu (flourishing talent of the inner quarters) to become one of the first
women journalists and educators in the last decade of the Qing. By the early
Republican period, she had amassed a fortune through conducting business in
Shanghai and turned to pursue an extravagant lifestyle that combined the social
and artistic pursuits of traditional literati, such as painting, poetry, and
travel to scenic sites, with the luxuries of Western-style living and
conspicuous consumption available in cosmopolitan Shanghai of the teens.
As a single woman circulating among literati circles such as the Nanshe, Lü
became the subject of rumor and gossip. In this paper, I propose to explore the
contested site of Lü’s image as a wealthy unmarried woman by research into her
representation in the writings of her contemporaries—both men and women, and
her own self-representations in her poetry and travel writings. While some of
these sources are preserved in correspondence, many are essays and poems
published in newspapers and magazines of the period.
By focusing on the case of Lü Bicheng, I aim to show the role the proliferation
of print media played in constructing fluid and ambiguous new subject
formations and circulations of desire made possible in the cosmopolitanisms
rapidly taking form in and transforming the social and cultural space of modern
Shanghai.
Zamperini, Paola: Forbidden Games. Women, Gambling, and Sexuality in late Qing Shanghai
The proposed paper analyzes representations of women
gambling in Shanghai casinos and their implications, as well as early cinematic
depictions of women addicted to gambling, in an effort to unravel narratives
about the body and gender at the turn of the twentieth century. With the
arrival of westernized modernity in the late Qing, Shanghai offered more and
more places of consumption exclusively for upper class women, and one of them
is the gambling den, that we find depicted in early twentieth century novels
often as a sexualized space where women of “respectable” families could go to
satisfy not only their appetites for dangerous games, but also to meet
and form liaisons with strange men. By exploring the social and moral
implications of the trope of the gambling woman, we will trace its development
from the late Qing to the Republican period, in movies such as Xin Shanghai, to
open up the relationship between women, desire, money and sexuality.
Berg, Daria D.: Best/selling the Private World: Body Writing in Contemporary China
Focusing on the ‘brand-new generation’ (xinxin renlei) of
young urban writers, this paper explores the discourse on body writing (shenti
xiezuo) in China during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Critics have hailed the
1990s as an era of cultural pluralism in the People’s Republic of China. A
flood of fictional and non-literary narratives debates the economic boom and
the idiosyncrasies of postmodern consumerism. The commercial publishing
industry has expanded rapidly, catering to investors’ interests and consumer
demands. While official censorship and state control still limit the freedom to
create and to disseminate, the market assumes a greater role in cultural
production and consumption. The novel Shanghai Baby (1999) by Wei Hui appears
at the centre of the late 1990s body of texts labeled ‘body writing’. This
paper traces reaction and resonance in other banned bestsellers by young urban
writers such as Mian Mian, Jiu Dan and Chun Shu. The internet has also changed
the dynamics of literary production and consumption. The online diary by
Muzimei has taken the concept of body/book as commodity further, exploiting a
new vehicle for an unofficial and interactive discourse that renders the
government ban on her writings futile. Analysis of these texts and their
cultural context explores how a new generation of urban writers churns out
bestsellers by peddling urban dreams and nightmares while breaking the silence
on the darker sides of city life and inscribing taboo topics into the
postmodern discourse. The study of the cultural poetics—the social network of
negotiations and exchange surrounding the production and consumption of such
works—shows how China’s young urban writers embrace the spirit of
entrepreneurialism and the new consumer culture.
B8: Modern Literature: Individual Papers
Lin, Pei-yin (chair)
Kaikkonen, Marja: Black book, white book: Why a profitable book is a good
book
From the beginning of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1978 it
took only a few years until a black book branch - not only a market - had been
firmly established in China. The production of popular literature had rapidly
grown to such an extent that Xinhua Shudian, the viscous state monopoly of book
distribution and sales, did not manage to cope with the new situation. Other
actors had to be allowed to cater to the grown demand, and this opened for
shady transactions on all levels.
What was peculiar with the new situation was that many state units participated
in the black market activities quite openly, thus acting against their own
authority. The lack of laws and regulations as well as of inspection created a
grey zone of activity, where it simply seemed to be laudable to earn money for
the state unit. On the surface, the state has made great efforts trying to
create a consciousness about the blackness of this black branch and enforcing
regulations. But when it comes to practice, Chinese courts do not always judge
in favor of writers sueing pirates.
This paper examines the phenomenon as well as the pros and cons of the double
standards, and tries to locate the “arch pirate”, the mechanism that
perpetuates it all.
Yang, Lan: Towards Modernity: A Linguistic Perspective of
Post-Cultural Revolution Chinese Literature
Contemporary Chinese literature is conventionally divided
into three phases: pre-Cultural Revolution (CR) literature, CR literature, and
post-CR literature. Deviating from the first two phases, which represented
Chinese socialist realism, the post-CR literature, or the “new-era” literature,
has developed towards the modernity shown by modern/contemporary Western
literature. In this development, the stylistic transformation of literary
language occupies a prominent position, which represents not only the dynamic
process of the “new-era” literature’s development, but also significant
characteristics of the literature. This paper intends to investigate the
linguo-stylistic transformation of the post-CR literature. By demonstrating
experimentalistic syntax patterns regarding word order, sentence lengths,
sentence structures, rhythms, rhyming, punctuation, etc. and displaying innovative
lexical styles involving idiomatic lexicon, metaphors, symbolic expressions,
etc., it aims to explore the literature’s literary characteristics from a
linguistic perspective and to determine the role played by the language changes
in the development of the post-CR literature. A comparison will be made of the
“new-era” literature with pre-CR and CR literature, and both quantitative and
qualitative analysis will be applied to this study.
Lin, Pei-Yin: A Forgotten Canon?: Wu Mansha, Wind and Moon and Popular
Literature in Taiwan's Japanese Period
In Taiwanese literary history, Wu Mansha (b. 1912) is a
name known by very few people. His writings fit in with the so-called popular
literature (tongsu wenxue) and are consequently disregarded from literary
history where works containing “serious” critical realism are hailed as the
mainstream. This paper addresses the ignored world of Chinese popular fiction
in Taiwan’s Japanese period with a focus on Wu Mansha. It consists of four
parts. Firstly it analyses the general literary field of that period and the
various writings. Secondly it examines Wu’s fictional works such as Liming zhi
ge (Song of the Dawn), dadi zhi chun (Spring of the Earth), and Jiucai hua (Scallion
Flowers), arguing how Wu used popular literature as a means to express his
anti-colonial stance. Thirdly it discusses Wu’s recent Wu Mansha de feng yu yue
(Wind and Moon of Wu Mansha), looking at how Wu’s oral history complements the
grand narrative and serves as an object of social reflection and inquiry. It
also considers the journal Wind and Moon as a link between Taiwanese writers of
different generations. The last part offers different readings of popular
literature and examines its role as a medium of negotiation between an emerging
mass culture and colonial literature. It also reviews the canon formation of
the currently existing anthologies and criticisms on Taiwanese literature
during the Japanese occupation period.
Kwong, Connie, Ho Yee: Border crossing: Structuralist Narratology and Chinese
literary studies (1985-2000)
Since the rise to power of Deng Xiaoping and the subsequent
commitment to a policy of modernization of China’s economy in the 1980’s, the
Chinese critics and writers, taking advantage of the more relaxed literary
policies, introduced the newly accessible and immensely popular world-wide
literary trends from which they had been cut off. Having emerged from the
modern linguistics founded by Ferdinand de Saussure in the early 20th century,
Structuralist Narratology, first gained ground in France in the 1960’s and
later in the United States, Netherlands and Israel, went on to become one of
the most influential “imported” literary theories in this post-Mao era. Within
four years, from 1988 to 1991, all the principal theoretical works on
Narratology were translated into Chinese including those by T. Todorov, G.
Genette, S. Rimmon-Kenan and W. Martin. In the following ten years, around
twenty studies on the narrative in Chinese literature were published, in which
scholars attempted not only to introduce the western literary theory, but also
to re-examine both Chinese modern and classical literature, and to re-establish
a so-called “Chinese Narratology” on the basis of two thousand years of
literary as well as historical works.
Narratology, however, is a methodological model mainly derived from the
linguistic study of European languages and narrative traditions. Therefore, to
an extent, there is a central “impossibility” in employing Narratology to
analyse Chinese literary works. This paper looks at the difficulties and
problems that arose when the narratological method was applied to Chinese
literary studies in China between 1985 and 2000, and attempts further to define
both the promise and the limitations of western theories when they are used to
study modern Chinese literature. In other words, this paper investigates the
“translatability” of theories between different cultures.
B9: Travel Literature and Vernacular Fiction
Gálik, Marián (not yet confirmed) (chair)
Klöpsch, Volker: From Observation to Examination: New Developments in Travel
Literature (youji) of the Song Dynasty as seen in Fan Chengda's Wu chuan lu
Travel records In China do not boast of a long literary
tradition and are neglected by literary critics. Established as a literary
genre during the Tang by poet-literati such as Liu Zongyuan and Li Ao travel
literature in the succeeding centuries showed a remarkable development from
mere observation (guan) to critical (and sometimes scientific) examination
(kao) of nature and natural phenomena. The experiences and effects of
travelling on the traveller's mind show a growing self-awareness of Song
authors, transforming their "Anschauung der Welt" (observation of the
world) into a new "Weltanschauung".
The paper traces these changes of the genre in the works of Shen Gua, Wang
Anshi, and Su Shi, before offering a closer reading of Fan Chengda's Wu chuan
lu, a work particularly characteristic of its author's keen critical mind.
Betz, Karin: The Eastern Dwarfs re-visited: travelogues on Japan in the
Late Qing
It is generally acknowledged that the influence of post-
Meiji- reformed Japan played an important role in the modernisation process of
pre-Republican China. Recently, more scholars have shed light on the cultural
interaction taking place between the two nations in the Late Qing and the Chinese
perception of Japan shifting from ‘a nation on the cultural periphery of China’
to the self-conscious admiration of its progressiveness in the early 20th
century.
A closer look into the travel accounts and diaries of Chinese liuxuesheng at
the time provides new insights to understand this changing image as part of the
modernist struggle for cultural identity and emancipation. In their writings
the Chinese exchange students in Japan continued a tradition set up by the
first diplomats in Japan in the 1880s and 90s who not only wrote precise
geo-political accounts of the country, but usually accompanied them by
illustrating poems and youji (travelogue-style) narrations.
This paper wants to examine how their Japanese experience lead the students,
some of which became famous figures of the Reform-movement or well-known
writers, to acknowledge Japan’s cultural difference, thus making it an
inspiration for their own writings as well as for popular fiction by authors
who had never been to Japan.
Altenburger, Roland Thomas: Water Myth in the Early White Snake Tradition: A Regional
Re-Contextualization
“White Snake” (Baishe) stands out among the subject matters
of Chinese folk literature. The earliest surviving texts in its tradition,
presumably documenting its proto-stages, can be dated to the early to middle
Ming. All of these early texts share the common side-theme of aquatic myth, the
traces or remnants of which can be recovered from the extant texts, but have
been suppressed in later versions. This thematic strain of water myth deals
with the difficult coexistence and latent antagonism between the spheres of
human beings and aquatic creatures that are normally strictly separated from
each other. Their equilibrium is endangered by mutual acts of transgression,
represented by a cluster of motifs, such as obstruction of the water flow or fishing,
on the one hand, and flooding or drowning, on the other. These themes were set
in the wider context of demonology.
The water theme also links the early “White Snake” tradition to the cultural
history of Hangzhou’s West Lake (Xihu), which provided its local setting. The
cult of liberating live aquatic creatures (fangsheng) had been an important
element of West Lake folklore since the early Song. Moreover, at least one line
of the tradition conceived the snake character as the aquatic deity of West Lake,
commonly imagined as a dragon. Therefore, the “White Snake” tradition is also
meaningfully re-contextualized by local dragon lore. As indicated by a Southern
Song tale, which included all the main elements of the narrative, but could do
without the snake motif, the regional setting would appear as the tradition’s
most stable element who had never been to Japan.
Keulemans, Paize: Listening to the Acoustic Spectacle in Jin Shengtan's
"Outlaws of the Marsh": Storyteller Voice, Print-Culture, and the
Rise of Vernacular Fiction in Late Imperial China
At the heart of late-imperial vernacular fiction stands a
dramatic conceit, namely the lie that, despite the written form of the text, a
storyteller is speaking to the reader as if a live, oral performance is taking
place. If the storyteller figure represents a dramatic conceit, then when was
it invented, and for what purpose? In this paper, I focus on one seminal text
from the late-Ming period, Jin Shengtan’s commentaries to the vernacular novel
"The Outlaws of the Marsh," to demonstrate how, during a period of
rapid print dissemination and a growing literacy rate, Jin, as a member of the
literati elite, came to celebrate the vernacular as a new form of writing and
re-invented the vulgar voice of the oral performer to embody this new writing.
In particular, I argue that Jin Shengtan’s elite interest in the spoken voice
of the oral performer represented a way of shoring up traditional literati
domination over textual knowledge.
Jin’s unorthodox championing of the vernacular text is most often understood as
an iconoclastic embrace of the popularization of written culture that took
place during the late-Ming. In contrast, I argue that Jin explicitly constructed
vernacular fiction as a spectacular acoustic illusion created by the
storyteller voice. This rhetorical move allowed the exalted late-Ming reader to
enjoy the popular, vernacular text, while still differentiating this tasteful
enjoyment from the vulgar pleasures associated with the common crowd of
readers. Whereas a vulgar reader would simply be mesmerized by the illusory
verisimilitude of the text, accepting the acoustic spectacle of the
storyteller’s voice as reality, the literati reader could distinguish himself
by recognizing the fundamental illusion of fiction, instead appreciating the
marvelous, written technique upon which the illusion of acoustic liveliness was
based.
By emphasizing the importance of acoustic spectacle in Jin Shengtan’s commentary,
I not only seek to place this seminal vernacular text in its late-Ming
print-cultural context, I also aim to balance the recent scholarly interest in
visuality with a discussion of the acoustic aspects of late-imperial vernacular
culture. Recent scholarship, from Robert Hegel’s Reading Illustrated Fiction to
Craig Clunas’s Pictures and Visuality, have increasingly begun to unravel the
importance of visual reproduction in late-Ming print-culture. While such
studies have contributed to our understanding of late-imperial vernacular
culture, I argue that in emphasizing the visual aspect of printed reproduction,
they have overlooked one aspect of the vernacular text that per definition
cannot be seen, the spoken voice.
Last update: Jun 30, 2004 (MA)
|
