FOCUS: Through Chinese Eyes

Abstract

In this FOCUS, eight contemporary Chinese literature scholars, in four articles, give their view of (some aspects of) the reception of Chinese literature and theory in Europe during the twentieth century. In the first article, Shunqing Cao and Zhoukun Han discuss how Chinese literature has been read and misread in Europe, but also how it has given rise to literary innovations in European literature and theory. Peina Zhuang and Yina Cao detail how the earliest English-language history of Chinese literature at the turn of the twentieth century presented a very one-sided perspective of its subject. Qilin Fu and Shubo Gao trace the reception of Maoist Marxism in European literature and philosophy in the 1960s and 1970s. Yirong Hu and Lin Mei, finally, hold a plea for a redefinition of imagology to better account for the image of China in Europe and the West in an age of new global media.