2018 Vol. 1, No. 3

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The Pilgrim's Journey to the Underworld: A Comparative Reading of Some Episodes from Virgil's Aeneid and Dante's Commedia
ZHU Zhenyu
2018, 1(3): 351-366.
Abstract:
In Dante's Commedia, Virgil acts as a guide who gives the pilgrim instructions, suggestions and generous aid. Moreover, Aeneas' journey through the underworld in Virgil's Aeneid has provided Dante a paradigm of poetic creation. The article selects four episodes from Dante's Commedia which not only imitates, but also rewrites Virgil from the poet's biblical perspective. Through these rewritings Dante indicates his understanding of the elusive term "commedia," which, not only refers to the poem's move from sadness to happiness, but also refers to the inner connotation of Christianity which is the salvation.
[Abstract](834) [PDF 6359KB](558)
Reading the Four Books with Aristotle: A Hermeneutical Approach to the Translation of the Confucian Classics by François Noël SJ (1651-1729)
Henrik Jaeger
2018, 1(3): 367-376.
Abstract:
François Noël SJ (1651-1729) published the Libri Classici and the Philosophia Sinica in the very complicated context of the last decades of the Rites Controversy. In his spiritual fight for an accommodation that would allow Chinese Christians to be both Chinese and a member of the Roman Church, he searched for a hermeneutical approach to read the Confucian Classics with Aristotle. Therefore his translation was rather free-he tried to make a synthesis of Confucian text and Aristotelian ethics, not a translation in the literal sense. This synthesis was able to display meaningful similarities between the two cultures and universal truths above the cultures. It was this synthesis that inspired philosophers as Christian Wolff, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Voltaire. This is clearly a concept of reason that is not yet imprisoned by colonial or postcolonial thought, it is an example of a fruitful discourse in a time, when intercultural exchange was not yet defined by western modes of thought.
[Abstract](692) [PDF 972KB](497)
Literature and Cosmopolitan Imaginings: On the Diasporic Representation and Imaginary Cosmopolitanism in America is in the Heart and “One out of Many”
WANG Li
2018, 1(3): 377-385.
Abstract:
America is in the Heart (1946), the debut novel written by the contemporary Filipino American writer and poet Carlos Bulosan, has aroused heated discussion since its publication among the literary circles within and without America. This semi-autobiographical novel provides a lens to the early Filipino immigrants' life in the United States, and secures a shrine for Carlos Bulosan in the Philippine American writers as well as Asian American writers. This paper attempts to use "One out of Many," a short story by V.S. Naipaul, as the foil and contrasts it with America is in the Heart so as to pinpoint the fantasy and illusion of the American dream depicted by the writer in the novel. In a main WASP American society, the universal values are actually substantial cultural hegemony for the minority groups. In addition, Carlos Bulosan somehow internalizes the white consciousness and shows a distinct and colored gender prejudice in his narration, which can be seen from the different attitudes towards Filipino and American women respectively. Besides, the paper points out that assimilation cannot be offered as a strategy to solve the problem and explain the failure of Santosh, the average man among the great immigrants in "One out of Many." Thus the cosmopolitan world of socialism and brotherhood is nothing more than an imagination. Nevertheless, through the literary imagination, Bulosan is capable of depicting the bitter life experienced by Filipino immigrants and other ethnic minorities in the United States, and at the same time, it also reflects the promising and hopeful expectation that the author has in the future for his ethnic group.
[Abstract](736) [PDF 6419KB](599)
The Social Functions of Ancient Chinese Painting Inscriptions and the Social Factors in Their Development
WANG Wenxin
2018, 1(3): 386-399.
Abstract:
Inscriptions written on ancient Chinese paintings are considered as painting's integral part that integrates the image into a poetic unity. This essay questions the validity of these vague discourses and proposes to understand painting inscriptions in a social context. This essay illuminates the following three factors in the development of painting inscriptions in history:social interactions, regional competition, and identity making. This essay argues that the Ming Suzhou elite intensively brought painting inscriptions into their social intercourses to such an extent that inscriptions became a distinctive mark of Suzhou paintings. This is why inscription was the target when Gushihuapu, a painting model book printed in late Ming Hangzhou, criticized Suzhou painters. Behind social interactions and regional competitions was a desire to distinguish elegance from vulgarity and associate the inscriber himself with the side of elegance.
[Abstract](629) [PDF 6963KB](665)
The Virtue and Politeia in the Funeral Speech of Socrates: The Philosophical Education in Plato's Menexenus
LI Xiangli
2018, 1(3): 400-409.
Abstract:
It is usually thought that Menexenus, one of the Platonic dialogues, does not involve philosophical themes. By analyzing the paragraphs which include the myth of Athenian autochthony and the Athenian politeia in the Socrates' funeral speech in the dialogue, the author finds that there are a strong philosophical meaning and the implicit philosophical problem-what is the best politeia. In order to understand the relevant paragraphs and questions, this paper insists that it is necessary to pay attention to the dual context contained in the structure of the dialogue:on one hand, the surface rhetoric in Socrates' funeral speech is prepared for the public context; on the other hand, according to the drama plot in the dialogue itself, the private context set by the dialogue structure is for the philosophical education for Menexenus the future statesman of Athens.
[Abstract](3020) [PDF 4936KB](608)
Aristotle's Poetics and the Art of Fiction
CHEN Mingzhu
2018, 1(3): 410-419.
Abstract:
ἐποποιία is an important species discussed in the Poetics, of which the corresponding expressions are full of change and abstrusity. In the Poetics 1447a28-b2, there is a notorious sentence which has been regarded by a large part of the book's commentaries as difficult to protrude, so much so that many commentators took the word ἐποποιία as redundant and deleted it indiscreetly. But considering its coherence with other parts of the work, it should absolutely be preserved. Under the light of some examples of reading the Poetics, the esoteric technique in this sentence could be revealed, the obscurity of ἐποποιία's meaning could be clarified and ἐποποιία as a name could be justified. Furthermore, once the relationship between the word, its meaning and its reality was established, the mentioned statement could be interpreted accordingly and even deeper aspects of its theory could be exposed. So to show that by the ἐποποιία Aristotle's theoretical intention aimed at what we today call narrative literature, so the ἐποποιία even could include the literary form such as novel, and in some important aspects it would show many characteristics of novel as a mature form of narrative literature.
[Abstract](566) [PDF 4495KB](479)
A Novel that Transcends the Reality: An Interpretation that Goes Astray from the Novel
JIANG Linjing
2018, 1(3): 420-430.
Abstract:
Carl Schmitt is definitely one of the most controversial jurists in the 20th century as well as one of the most charismatic figures in the history of political thoughts. As a jurist, he remained absorbed in world literature, elaborated his thoughts through literature and even alluded some important ideas which might be awkward in academic context. By analyzing the battle between the whale and the whalemen in Moby Dick in his monograph Land und Meer (1942), Schmitt sublimated the geographic conflict between "land" and "sea" into the more fundamental existential antagonism, an eternal antagonism between Christ and Anti-Christ. Furthermore, we may find through his correspondence during the 40s that he strongly recommended Merville's novella Benito Cereno to his friends, especially his interpretation of this novel's symbolism. In the figure of Captain Cereno, Schmitt found the reflection of the very few European elites in the dilemmatic situation of his time, which might also refer to his own image during the Nazi-era. Literature has become a way of defamiliarization, which enabled him to make self-interpretation and even self-justification in a hidden way. His interpretation of Benito Cereno showed us the great symbolic power of this work, whose story originates from the real history but finally transcends the reality. However, his interpretation also contained crucial problem that goes astray from the real intention of the author.
[Abstract](552) [PDF 4494KB](518)
Dialectics of Melancholy: The Succession and Development of Erwin Panofsky's Interpretation of Dürer in Walter Benjamin
SU Yan
2018, 1(3): 431-444.
Abstract:
"Melancholy" is an important concept of Walter Benjamin. In Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, Benjamin elaborates his unique art-cultural criticism by reading Albrecht Dürer's Melancholie Ⅰ. Bypassing Freudian psychoanalysis of "melancholy," he takes the path of Erwin Panofsky's art-historical interpretation of Dürer. For Panofsky, Dürer's engraving has challenged the negative comments on "melancholy" prevalent since the medieval age and given it a positive value of humanism. By appropriating this humanist interpretation, Benjamin views Melancholie Ⅰ as the criticism of modernity in the early modern period. He argues that, "World of Things" and "knowing by sinking" in Dürer's engraving are both his reflections of the Enlightenment and Kantian confidence of human reason. He points out that, the so called human reason on the one hand leads to the separation of subject and object and produces a mechanical world, on the other hand, it also situates political communities in crisis with perpetual turmoil-both of them make it impossible to make true political decisions.
[Abstract](586) [PDF 6321KB](456)
Poetical Features in LUO-Fu's Images of Contiguity
CHIEN Cheng-chen
2018, 1(3): 445-458.
Abstract:
This paper discusses LUO-Fu's later poems with emphasis on the aspect of metonymic contiguity. On the one hand, in LUO-Fu's poetical works, the creation of images seems to reflect the interaction of selection and contiguity as maintained by Roman Jakobson; on the other hand, the density of poetical features surpasses the principles of theoretical terms. As contrasted with many other poets, although bearing some similarity with Jakobson's concept, LUO-Fu seems not to be conscious of these theories; therefore his images of contiguity are not confined by the theoretical framework. These images reflect his contemporaneity without forced attempt to assert himself as a contemporary poet. The poems are weighted with serenity of life and yet the poet strolls freely in vivid lively scenes. This paper will discuss the poetical features of his images in temporal contiguity, in spatial contiguity, in logical contiguity, in contrastive contiguity, in the interaction of selection and contiguity. The conclusion of this paper is:in LUO-Fu's later works, the poetical features of contiguity exist in its natural, moving, profound treatment of life.
[Abstract](564) [PDF 5171KB](531)
Dutch Sinologist Maghiel van Crevel and Chinese Contemporary Poetry Study
HAO Lin
2018, 1(3): 459-472.
Abstract:
From "text" to "context" to "metatext" is not only the process of Maghiel van Crevel's academic development, but also the three main dimensions of his contemporary Chinese poetry study. In Maghiel's research, he confirms the validity of "close reading" on one hand. On the other hand, he also pays attention to the social context outside the poetry itself. Through the mutual reflection of text and context, along with the interaction of the former two and the metatext, Maghiel van Crevel contructs his own theoretic framework of poetry in three dimensions.
[Abstract](493) [PDF 6974KB](479)
“East-West” in the Theories of “World-System”
WANG Xiangyuan
2018, 1(3): 473-486.
Abstract:
The "Modernization" theory and the "Tradition-Modernity" theory are new forms of contemporary west-centered theories. However, they are challenged by the "Attachment and Anti-attachment" theory and the dualism of "Center-Edge." On this basis, Wallerstein's "Modern World System" theory takes the "World System" as the basic unit, aiming to grasp the modern human society integrally. His ternary structure theory of "Center-Edge-Semi-periphery" exceeds the binary mode of "East-West" or "West-Non-West" theory and the west-centered view of history, forming a new pattern of global perspective and modern world history, and inspiring some scholars such as Abu-Lughod and Pomeranz to discover the "Early World System" before the "Modern World System," and thus a new explanation of the structure of world history is formed. Karatani Kojin's ternary structure theory, "Capital-Nation-State" and the vision of "Toward a World Republic" are further developments of the theory of "Modern World System" and further steps of the dualistic theory of "East-West."
[Abstract](648) [PDF 6742KB](544)
Heise, Ursula K. Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species
Sophie D. Christman
2018, 1(3): 489-491.
Abstract:
[Abstract](542) [PDF 491KB](480)
YANG Naiqiao. Contradistinction and Integration: Chinese-Western Comparative Poetics
HUANG Wan
2018, 1(3): 492-495.
Abstract:
[Abstract](516) [PDF 1800KB](465)
YAO Lianbing. A Study on the Role of Henry H. H. Remak in Comparative Literature
LIU Yunhua
2018, 1(3): 496-499.
Abstract:
[Abstract](637) [PDF 2105KB](458)
ZHU Yu. Wordsworth as a Listener
SUN Hongwei
2018, 1(3): 500-503.
Abstract:
[Abstract](709) [PDF 1893KB](494)
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