2019 Vol. 2, No. 4

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Mirror of Enigma and Mirror of Magic: Textual Evidence for Setting the Ground of East-West Comparative Literature
ZHANG Longxi
2019, 2(4): 601-613.
Abstract:
Given the huge linguistic, cultural, historical, and social differences between the East and the West, what constitutes the ground for comparison poses a serious challenge to any comparative work. For Chinese-Western comparative studies, it is very important not just to make theoretical claims, but to establish the validity of comparison through a display of concrete examples as textual evidence to reveal the comparability of different literary traditions. Without textual evidence, comparisons may sound empty and unconvincing, and jumping from abstract concepts to jargon-laden obscurantism only reduces the value of comparative literature and damage its respectability. Through discussion of the comparability of a concrete image—that of the mirror—this essay will show the importance of textual evidence as methodologically meaningful for East-West comparative studies.
[Abstract](475) [PDF 1608KB](445)
The Formation of the Concept of Language Family from the Perspective of Comparative Language History in Europe
Daniel Petit,
2019, 2(4): 614-632.
Abstract:
This article aims to provide a brief overview of the different milestones of language comparison in Europe from Antiquity to the present day. Whereas Ancient Greeks and Latins were relatively indifferent to language comparison and scholars of the Middle Ages stuck to a Biblical model treating Hebrew as the source of all the world’s languages, the European Renaissance saw the mushrooming of various new theories regarding the linguistic prehistory of Europe. Only in the nineteenth century were these theories elaborated in a rational framework, allowing linguistic families to be identified on a scientific basis. In the twentieth century, the notion of the linguistic family was accompanied, and sometimes superseded, by other approaches to linguistics, such as geographical, typological, or cognitive linguistics.
[Abstract](387) [PDF 2941KB](702)
China after Japan’s “Dawn to the West”: Modern Japanese Literature through the Eyes of a Chinese Scholar
ZHENG Guohe
2019, 2(4): 633-657.
Abstract:
It may be argued that every reader of foreign literature is a comparatist. In his effort to interpret a foreign writer or identify the dynamics and characteristics of a foreign tradition, he cannot but proceed through the lens of his own cultural background. The title of Donald Keene’s Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era, for example, not only pronounces a central theme of the volume by the most prominent scholar of Japanese studies in the West, but also testifies to the fact that it is modern Japanese literature viewed by a“blue-eyed Tarōkaja.” This article approaches modern Japanese literature from a different perspective—through the eyes of a Chinese scholar—by considering three subjects: Kajin no kigū, a Meiji political novel by Shiba Shirō, Sekibetsu, a wartime novel by Dazai Osamu, and short stories by Shiga Naoya. Widely different from each other otherwise, these works share a common trait: they are all related to“China” in a broad sense. In examining them together, I intend to challenge some views of modern Japanese literature commonly accepted in the West.1
[Abstract](476) [PDF 1854KB](325)
Renaissance towards Classical Spirit: On the Inner Logic and Intellectual Roots of Li Changzhi’s Reevaluation of the May Fourth Movement
JIN Lang
2019, 2(4): 658-670.
Abstract:
During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Li Changzhi’s reevaluation of the May Fourth Movement and his welcoming of the Chinese Renaissance were mutually exterior and interior. Although Li Changzhi denied the popular saying that the May Fourth Movement was the Renaissance of China, instead of excluding the absorption of Western culture, he demanded its comprehensive absorption, which showed the difference between Li Changzhi and the forces of cultural conservatism. By drawing lessons from German Classicism’s longing for Ancient Greece in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and its transcendence of the Enlightenment Movement, Li Changzhi not only aimed his criticism at“superficial rationalism,” but also regarded the integration of rationality and emotion in the classical spirit as the goal of the Renaissance, thus devoting himself to the Zhou and Qin dynasties to explore the spirit of Chinese traditional culture. It is the interchange of classical spirit between Chinese and Western cultures that makes Li Changzhi’s criticism of the May Fourth Movement not turn to cultural conservatism, but to the creative transformation of Chinese traditional culture based on aesthetic modernity.
[Abstract](409) [PDF 1520KB](303)
Formative and Alternative Reading of Scripture: Ichij Kaneyoshi’s Interpretation of the Nihon shoki in Fifteenth-Century Japan
Tokumori Makoto
2019, 2(4): 671-683.
Abstract:
The Nihon shoki, or Chronicles of Japan, was originally compiled in 720 as the official history of the origin of Japan and the imperial family. Since then, up to and including modern times, numerous recurring lectures and interpretations of the narrative have established it as an authoritative text. This paper focuses on Ichijō Kaneyoshi’s fifteenth-century interpretation of the text, titled Nihon shoki sanso. He provided a valuable contribution to the conception of the first two volumes of the Nihon shoki (named“The Age of the Gods” ) as self-sufficient world scripture through comparison with discourses of Buddhism, Confucianism, and other texts. Nevertheless, the retrospective approach to interpreting scripture adopted by the eighteenth-century scholar of the classics, Motoori Norinaga, constituted the mainstream approach to the Kojiki, another ancient narrative compiled in 712, as well as to the Nihon shoki. Kaneyoshi’s comparative reading of scripture remains unorthodox in studies of the Nihon shoki.
[Abstract](568) [PDF 1764KB](256)
Different Modes of Waiting for the Same Moses: Review of Mo Yan’s “Waiting for Moses” from a Cross-Textual Perspective
LIU Ping
2019, 2(4): 684-711.
Abstract:
This paper conducts a comparative study between Mo Yan’s “Waiting for Moses”(2018), a contemporary Chinese version of the prodigal son narrative, and the Torah, or the“Five Books of Moses,”and the Book of Ruth from the Hebrew Bible / the Tanakh from a cross-textual dialogue perspective. Starting with the name-change episode in the early times of the Great Cultural Revolution, Mo Yan’s work portrays over sixty years in the lives of two Chinese peasants (Moses Liu and his wife Xiumei Ma) in a northeastern village, only to reveal two typical dilemmas of contemporary Chinese society: Where is the home for a man’s soul? How to complete the Exodus for the individual and the nation-state in this world and this life? It is thus to be argued that the waiting for a Moses in Mo Yan’s allegorical story points to the motif of twenty-first-century Chinese society: such a waiting pertains to both the individual and the nation-state. As is demonstrated in the story, for the same Moses there exist different modes of waiting, and of all the possibilities, Xiumei Ma’s is still the paradigm most likely to be acknowledged and even admired by public opinions of the day.
[Abstract](530) [PDF 1620KB](895)
Aesthetics and Hermeneutics: Between Symbol and Allegory
José F. Zúñiga
2019, 2(4): 712-727.
Abstract:
In this article I argue that in the Western tradition there have appeared three different conceptions of art that correspond to three different philosophical positions: according to the first, the Platonic-Christian, there would be a close relationship between art and truth; according to the second, which corresponds to Modernity, art would be autonomous with respect to the truth; and finally, in its form—we could say—ultramodern, there would be a discrepancy between art and truth. Furthermore, I argue that in each of these interpretations of art and philosophy, our relationship with tradition is transformed and, with it, hermeneutics is also transformed into its function of preserving and transmitting said tradition. The main thesis consists in affirming, in the first part of the article, that aesthetics transforms hermeneutics and therefore philosophy itself. In the second, I describe the three different conceptions of philosophy that have occurred in the West and their different conceptions of art. I also argue that tradition must be preserved, but not because it possesses the truth that has to be accepted without any dispute, but because, among other things, following a suggestion from Nietzsche, art defends us from the truth. Here I highlight the tension between the Platonic-Christian tradition and the Greek tradition and I indicate, in the last part of the article, a possible synthesis between the two, distinguishing between symbol and allegory.
[Abstract](387) [PDF 1659KB](451)
Fat Women, Surprise of the Wild: Reflection on the Western Female Body in Jenny Saville’s Paintings
SU Dianna
2019, 2(4): 728-750.
Abstract:
By using the method of iconography, visual culture, and feminist theory, this essay presents a case study of the bodies of“fat women” in Jenny Saville’s representative works, aiming to investigate the formulation and significance of Western female body image with the aesthetics of savage culture. The author proposes reflections on a series of questions: what impact do the diversified explorations and expressions of the female body by contemporary artists (such as Jenny Saville) have on our way of perceiving the world, on human activities of transforming social, cultural, and natural worlds, and also their own understandings of sexuality and identity?
[Abstract](565) [PDF 6467KB](611)
Methods of Narrating Disaster: Poetry of the Siege of Leningrad
ZHANG Meng
2019, 2(4): 751-764.
Abstract:
The poetry written during the Siege of Leningrad consists not only of the mainstream poems distributed through official media sources, but also of “underground writings” that have received attention from researchers in recent years. Comparing the official poems of Olag Bergholz with the underground poems that represent a kind of“post-avant-gardism,” we observe a sharp difference in the methods of narrating disaster: the former has a more obvious audience, applies dialogue in the writing, expresses care for the besieged citizens, and espouses beliefs such as patriotism, collectivism, and morality to encourage and strengthen a“body of collectivism”; the latter applies various kinds of experimental writing techniques in describing the conditions of the besieged area, reveals a despairing mood between the lines, and uses the siege as a symbol for the end of the world, especially highlighting the circumstances of the“individual body” in the disaster. The difference between these two narrative perspectives reflects the deviation between the officials and the people in understanding the disastrous events of the siege.
[Abstract](505) [PDF 1625KB](278)
Topological Meaning of the Concept of “Place”
SHI Yan
2019, 2(4): 765-788.
Abstract:
In this paper, we borrow the concept of“place” from spatial critique in humanistic geography and architectural phenomenology, and use it to analyze the“images of place” in literature. Meanwhile, we compare the differences between the two concepts of“place” and“scene.” Under the framework composed by the mutual interaction between poetic discussion and critical methedology, we attempt to srcutinize the term“literary topo-analysis，” which is the next step for our research plan with the vision of phenomenology.
[Abstract](444) [PDF 1691KB](370)
An External Perspective on China: Interview with Professor Eric Reinders
Eric Reinders, CHEN Tingting
2019, 2(4): 791-802.
Abstract:
Professor Eric Reinders elaborates on his view of classical literature and literary translation by combining theological investigation and practical research based on his philosophical background and experience of translation and religious study. Professor Reinders believes literary theory should be properly utilized as an instrument to facilitate academic study, not as the boundary for limitation. He also suggests that the definition of literature is an open topic, which lies within the sphere of literature but simultaneously overlaps and contradicts with many other domains. The indispensable element for classical literature is not the test of time but the revelation of universal human power. In that case, translated works of Chinese literature should possess the capacity of regeneration in the transplantation of language. He articulates that reverse translation as the basic empirical method will represent the process of this transplantation between cultures.
[Abstract](364) [PDF 1755KB](261)
LI Qiang
2019, 2(4): 805-807.
Abstract:
[Abstract](320) [PDF 1379KB](283)
CHEN Fangdai
2019, 2(4): 808-810.
Abstract:
[Abstract](332) [PDF 829KB](298)
WANG Bin
2019, 2(4): 811-814.
Abstract:
[Abstract](275) [PDF 1427KB](259)
ZHANG Ning
2019, 2(4): 815-820.
Abstract:
[Abstract](314) [PDF 1433KB](261)
WANG Qin
2019, 2(4): 821-826.
Abstract:
[Abstract](293) [PDF 1482KB](283)
GONG Haomin
2019, 2(4): 827-828.
Abstract:
[Abstract](269) [PDF 817KB](253)
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