2023 Vol. 6, No. 3

column
  Previous Issue | Next Issue 
Display Method:
Articles
Patriarch Subodhi's Oral Formulas and Their Related Images in the Xiyou ji
LI Sher-shiueh
2023, 6(3): 7-32. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20236301
Abstract:
The novel Xiyou ji deals with Xuanzang's pilgrimage to India for Buddhist scriptures. Curiously, the story does not begin with the appearance of Xuanzang; instead, it starts with the birth and the quest for immortality of one of his fictitious disciples, Sun Wukong. As one gets into the crucial role Wukong plays in the novel, one finds that Subodhi's oral instructions, and other major, related images as well, may have to do with one of the multiple layers of allegory the story of Wukong develops: the allegory of internal alchemy, the search for an elixir capable of prolonging life indefinitely. The allegory is reinforced in the second chapter when Subodhi recites for Wukong oral formulas that allude to internal alchemy. One of the rhetorical devices of these instructions highlighted is paired images with strong sexual intimations. This paper attempts to decode those and other relevant images in the oral formulas, pointing out their significance in the allegorical framework of the novel.Furthermore, this paper ends with the poetics that lies behind these paired images: “piyu,” an analogy, simile, or more precisely, metaphor. Should one grasp the connotations of these elixir images related to Subodhi's oral formulas, the adept of internal alchemy suggests that one forget them, since they are no more than piyu. In other words, they are not real.
[Abstract](11) [PDF 1995KB](4)
“History Ends” or “History Begins Anew”? Analyzing the Theoretical Framework and Realistic Significance of Dahrendorf's Conflict Theory
ZHANG Qingxiong
2023, 6(3): 33-50. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20236302
Abstract:
Ralf Dahrendorf passed away in 2009, but his “conflict Theory” is particularly relevant today. He absorbed Marx's theory of class and social relations, and integrated Parsons' theory of structure and function and Popper's critical rationalism, so his thought has broad inclusiveness. Dahrendorf was quite observant of social realities.He focused on a series of major problems in industrialized societies since the second half of the twentieth century, such as class conditions, social conflicts, limits to growth and globalization, and sought sound mechanisms for resolving these intractable problems.This paper takes his criticism of Fukuyama's “the end of history” as the key point to show the realistic significance of his conflict theory in the analysis of the world situation, and then attempts to clarify the theoretical framework of Dahrendorf's conflict theory.Finally, combined with his analysis of today's social dilemma, this paper comments on the value and significance of his conflict theory in dealing with social realistic problems.
[Abstract](12) [PDF 1751KB](2)
The Early Boom of Comparative Literature in China and the Debate over Poetic Paradigms
JI Jianxun
2023, 6(3): 51-74. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20236303
Abstract:
The period from 1919 to 1949 had witnessed a rapid development of Chinese literature, during which scholars who consciously engaged in comparative literary studies emerged one after another. Their works developed in both breadth and depth in comparison with previous studies, and comparative literature truly emerged as a discipline in China. The thirty years from the May Fourth Movement in 1919 to right before the founding of New China can literally account for the initial rise of Chinese comparative literature. The early stage of Chinese comparative literature was based on spontaneous literary comparisons and sporadic theoretical reflections. With the expansion of the scope of literary exchanges between China and foreign countries, as well as the development of creative and academic awareness, the critical and theoretical thinking involved in conducting studies in comparative literature has been greatly enhanced.Moreover, curriculum in comparative literature has also been established and developed in higher education. Comparative literature as a critical approach has been consciously applied in literary research, and researchers in comparative literature have formed a certain scale of academic communities. The research vision and research methods in comparative literature have influenced the way in which Chinese literature destroys the old and establishes the new. The debate over the poetic paradigms for comparative literature in its early booming phase has had a profound impact on the history of comparative literature in China, and has become the starting point for the construction of the theoretical system of comparative literature as a discipline today.
[Abstract](21) [PDF 1768KB](3)
Culture and Nonverbal Communication
FENG Hairong
2023, 6(3): 75-97. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20236304
Abstract:
In today's multicultural pluralistic world, a greater cultural sensitivity in both verbal and nonverbal communication is essential. This paper reviews literature on nonverbal communication from a cultural approach. It begins with an overview of cultural approaches to the study of nonverbal communication, and follows by reviewing recent efforts of theorizing culture and nonverbal communication. It then addresses cultural influences on channels of nonverbal behavior, including kinesics, proxemics, haptics, gaze, silence, paralanguage, and chronemics as well as the nonverbal behavior of facial expressions across cultures. The paper also reviews cultural space as a particular form of nonverbal communication and examines how cultural space defines our identity. Finally, this paper discusses implications for nonverbal communication in intercultural encounters.
[Abstract](18) [PDF 1710KB](2)
Exploration of Ideas and Methods in the Study of the History of Sino-German Literary Exchange
TAN Yuan
2023, 6(3): 98-112. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20236305
Abstract:
The systematic academic study of Sino-German literary exchanges, especially the acceptance of Chinese culture by German-speaking writers, began in the 1920s. Initially, the leading role was played by a group of German Sinologists, who mainly took stock of the Chinese elements in German-language literary works. Since the 1970s, a large number of East Asian scholars have traveled to Germany to pursue their doctoral degrees, which has led to a great development in the study of the image of China in German-language literature by drawing on the methods and theories of comparative literature and other disciplines. And Chinese scholars in particular have made in-depth excavations of the relationship between important German-language writers and Chinese culture. In the past two decades, Chinese scholars have focused on the national strategy of “cultural outreach” and “telling the Chinese story and spreading the Chinese voice,” and have made multi-perspective and multi-level attempts in the field of Sino-German literary relations and cultural translation studies. The research has covered a wide range of fields, from the translation of Chinese texts to the influence of Chinese culture on Germany, from the Western transmission of Chinese stories to the change of Chinese image in the German-speaking world, and the results have been very fruitful. In addition, from the perspective of “exchange and mutual appreciation between Chinese and foreign civilizations,” researchers have also conducted in-depth studies on the spread of German literature in China. This article summarizes the recent research on the history of Sino-German literary exchange and offers some new reflections on the research on the history of Sino-German literary exchange in the new era. The paper points out that in terms of research methods, the study of Sino-German literary exchange must pay attention to all aspects from the discovery of historical materials, the comparison of multilingual translations to the restoration of the “knowledge field.” In terms of theory, it must pay attention to the “spiritual resources” behind the history of literary exchange. In terms of working attitude, it must insist on developing new fields of research on the history of literary exchange. Only in this way can researchers make more new breakthroughs on the basis of their predecessors and push the study of Sino-German literary relations forward.
[Abstract](9) [PDF 1731KB](0)
Chinese Emperor, Chinese Characters and Footbinding: Freud's Dialogue over Distance with China
XU Yin
2023, 6(3): 113-125. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20236306
Abstract:
Sigmund Freud shows a keen interest in Chinese art in his later years and makes deliberate efforts to include Chinese elements in his working and daily life, but China is rarely mentioned in his writings. By examining several of his China-related discourses, this article summarizes three features as follows: Firstly, Freud's knowledge of China comes indirectly from the written narratives of nineteenth-century Western sinologists. As part of the Orientalist system serving Western hegemony, China is imagined therein as an exotic world to be conquered. This distorted articulation with colonialist overtones also enters indirectly into Freud's writings about China. Due to his unique Jewish identity, though Freud shows a certain interest in Eastern thought, he is conservative about the pan-Oriental path. For this reason, he intentionally keeps his relationship with the Orient aloof and fails to make an in-depth study of Chinese civilization. Secondly, Freud emphasizes the psychological value of words and conducts textual archaeology in his work. Influenced by previous studies on paleography, he believes that primitive hieroglyphs contain intrinsic psychological patterns and tries to illustrate the psychological mechanism of dreams by exploring the way how the Chinese language avoids semantic ambiguity. He argues that the ambiguous dreams can be interpreted and carry a singular explanation. However, this attempt remains unsuccessful as his knowledge of Chinese is quite limited. Thirdly, Freud focuses on the traditional rites and customs of archaic peoples and regards them as cultural relics of universal psychological significance. Within this context, he interprets the footbinding custom for Chinese women as an alternative form of castration complex. This statement, seemingly full of contradictions, is in fact in line with his perception of gender, organ and totem worship, and serves as an inevitable result of his paradigm shift from individual psychological studies to socio-cultural studies. In conclusion, Freud appropriates Chinese culture for his own purpose, which also left regrets due to his cognitive limitations.
[Abstract](70) [PDF 1701KB](11)
The Story of “Sun Ce's Angry Beheading of Yu Ji” from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Transformations, Adaptations and Interpretations in Europe
YUAN Si
2023, 6(3): 126-137. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20236307
Abstract:
In the second half of the 19th century, different versions of the story of “Sun Ce's Angry Beheading of Yu Ji” in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms were translated, adapted, literarily reconstructed and textually interpreted in England, France and Germany. The story's circulation in Europe exemplifies the inheritance, openness and expansibility of Chinese stories in the process of circulation in the world's literary systems. In the English-speaking world, selections from the story have been translated and commented on by sinologists such as Joseph Edkins, C. H. Brewitt-Taylor and Francis Lister Hawks Pott. The story's circulation in the cultural and literary contexts of the English-speaking world has seen a relatively stable inheritance. In the Frenchspeaking world, the French sinologist Theodore Pavie(1847-1925) showed his concern for the status of Taoism in the story in his translation of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Pavie constructed a new narrative framework for the story in his novel YuKi le magicien, adapting it to the discourse of world literature, and making some additions to the details of the characters' daily lives, which allows the story to take on an exotic flavor. In the German-speaking world, Paul Heyse's literary reconstruction of the storyline of “The Young Warlord Beheads Yu Ji” embeds German poetics and cultural contexts in the Chinese story, demonstrating a unique aesthetic reconstruction of its form and cultural connotation. On another front, the quotation within and interpretation of this storyline by the German sinologist Carl Arendt(1838-1902) and contemporary sinologists manifest the intentional construction of the East in assent with Western ideology, which seeks to have Chinese stories conform to the logic of Western discourse, thus confirming and reinforcing the cultural values of the Westerners. The transformations, adaptations and interpretations of the story of “Sun Ce's Angry Beheading of Yu Ji” in Europe evince the contradictions that need to be dealt with when Chinese stories are integrated into the Western cultural contexts. This research provides an important insight into the study of how Chinese stories in world literature present their cultural values in the Western cultural and literary contexts.
[Abstract](22) [PDF 1710KB](4)
Modern Europe's Epic Journey of Self-Discovery: The Representation of Chinese Cultural Space in The Travel Diary of a Philosopher by Hermann Keyserling
ZHENG Jiaxin
2023, 6(3): 138-160. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20236308
Abstract:
The Travel Diary of a Philosopher(1919) by the German philosopher Hermann Keyserling is a report of his travel around the world, which records what he saw and felt when he traveled to China in 1912. This paper analyzes the narrative mode and rhetorical strategy of the text considering the political and historical context to explore the role of its representation of Chinese culture in the reconstruction of the broken subjectivity of modern individuals. In the text, the discourse strategy of constructing Chinese culture reflects the cultural symptoms of European metaphysical crisis and implies the role of the representation of Chinese culture in the construction of German national consciousness and the development of European modernity. The narrative mode of the Bildungsroman in the text demonstrates Keyserling's search for German national identity and the European spiritual unity. The Chinese cultural space constructed in the text is static, essentialist, de-historical, and de-politicized. In this other-oriented discourse, the relationship between China and the West is placed within the framework of the “traditional/modern” binary opposition. As a result, the domination of Western voice in the interpretation of modernity as well as the prospect of the Westernstyle modernization have been confirmed in the new order of the world's cultural territory. By adopting this mindset, the imagination of the unity of Western civilization and the vision of modernization project are established. The purpose of Keyserling's critique of modern civilization was to find a way out for the Western culture in crisis.But when he circled the earth and finally returned to the original point, he conceded that the way out for Europe is still modernization. However, the “Eurocentric” position of Western intellectuals in their representation of Chinese culture by no means indicates that Chinese culture is always in a subordinate and passive position. Instead, the bidirectional interaction of Chinese and Western cultures suggests that global modernity is not merely driven by “advanced” Europe alone. Modernity is a dynamic process that is made possible by the simultaneous interaction of Chinese and Western cultures.
[Abstract](25) [PDF 1768KB](4)
Women after Love and Family without Love: Medium Space in the Context of Capital
DONG Linlu
2023, 6(3): 161-170. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20236309
Abstract:
The female roles and family space in Jelinek's writing focus on the situation of female individuals in several binary relations, such as society-family, citycountryside, capital-love, family relationship-individual development: centering on the text of Women as Lovers, this paper analyzes and explains the medium degree of capital domain and spiritual domain: Family space and its basis of existence, the main functions and the reasons for its variation. It identifies “human,” “desire” and “emotion” as the main factors in observing the domestic space, which actually becomes an economic space controlled by capital: human being(as a labor force), desire(lower emotional needs dominated by physiology and animalism, which are represented by sex and violence in the family), and emotion(love as a higher emotional level that reflects human nature) as the three levels of relationship patterns between family members are all arranged by the logic of capital. Even human beings, love and desire further forms the link of “equivalent” exchange between themselves, which also fundamentally establishes the hegemony of capital. Not only the female master of the family, but also the male master of the female master is a slave of capital. Chasing Love is the most important motive of women's individual behavior, and it also indicates the possibility of a dynamic route of Qiao-Yi: the starting point of love-chasing is the original family of women, and its ending point is the family space built with men. Family space is an important node(or end point) of women's Qiao-Yi-Route, with a “moderate” nature between individual space and socio-economic space, connecting individual women with external social space, linking individual “biological instincts” with “social humanity,” containing the role of a mediator in the field of power and value initiation.
[Abstract](24) [PDF 1621KB](1)
Faust and The Decline of the West: An Exploration of Goethe's Influence on Spengler's Philosophy of History
LIU Shan
2023, 6(3): 171-185. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20236310
Abstract:
Combining morphological methodology with studies of culture and history, Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West is a unique contribution to the field of historical research. Throughout The Decline of the West, “Goethe, as a prominent presence, encompasses everything.” Goethe's influence on Spengler is not only reflected in methodology. His philosophy of nature and the spiritual connotations of his masterpiece “Faust” are deeply internalized in The Decline of the West as well. Firstly, Goethe's idea of “morphology,” on the methodological level, greatly influenced Spengler's historical research. Building upon this foundation, Spengler proposed the concept of "morphology of world history" as well as views on cultural organicism and primordial phenomena. He also introduced research methods such as analogical method, intuitive method, and panoramic method, breaking away from the linear evolution model that had long dominated Western historical philosophy centering around Western history. Secondly, on the ideological level, Goethe's masterpiece Faust not only became a primary text utilized by Spengler in analyzing Western culture, but also served as the spiritual core in examining modern Western thought in The Decline of the West.Based on this, Spengler coined concepts such as the “Faustian soul” and “Faustian culture,” which have been widely adopted in subsequent studies of historical culture.Under Goethe's influence, Spengler emphasizes the need for intuitive examination of historical cultural forms and highlights the metaphysical comprehension of historical forms through symbols and analogies. This approach has rendered him a controversial figure in the field of historical philosophy. However, it is undeniable that Spengler's proposal of “the morphology of world history” has offered a fresh perspective and methodology for historical research, initiating a tradition within Western historical philosophy to study history based on cultural units. Moreover, the critical reflections and warnings on modern Western civilization in The Decline of the West also hold valuable insights and lessons for our present society.
[Abstract](54) [PDF 1692KB](16)
Book Reviews
XU Xinjian. Rich Garden of Chinese Literature
Mark Bender
2023, 6(3): 189-193. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20236311
Abstract:
[Abstract](4) [PDF 514KB](0)
WU Zilin. “The Pythagorean Genre”: The Innovation and Creation of Academic Style
ZHU Jun, LYU Tong
2023, 6(3): 194-198. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20236312
Abstract:
[Abstract](11) [PDF 1244KB](0)
Copyright

Copyright © Editorial Office of International Comparative Literature

沪ICP备05052062号-1

Supported by: Beijing Renhe Information Technology Co. Ltd  

Past Issues
Contact Information

Official Website & Online Submission：icl.shnu.edu.cn

Address：Room 202A，Building No. 10，Shanghai Normal University（Xuhui West Campus），
No. 100，Guilin Road，Shanghai，China

Phone：+86（21）6484 2932Postal Code：200234

Chinese：chinaicl@163.com ENGLISH：icl2018@163.com

WeChat Official Account