Chinese Comparative Literature Research Articles

A Review of Chinese Comparative Literature Scholar Professor Jing-Yao Sun’s Research on “Paraliterature”

Professor Jing-Yao Sun, a prominent figure in Chinese comparative literature and a renowned scholar in the field, has made significant contributions to the study of “paraliterature,” an area often overlooked by Chinese scholars. Since the early 1980s, he has been at the forefront of exploring Suzhou Pingtan through a literary perspective. In the 21st century, he emerged as a leading authority in the comparative analysis of “paraliterature,” particularly through his examination of storytelling between China and America. Furthermore, his insightful exploration of the essence of Ion’s oral literary performance and Plato’s misconceptions has paved the way for a deeper understanding of “paraliterature.” Professor Sun’s methodologies have profoundly inspired subsequent generations of comparative literature students in China, motivating them to contribute more to the study of international comparative literature.

TIẾP NHẬN VÀ ỨNG DỤNG LÍ THUYẾT VĂN HỌC SO SÁNH Ở TRUNG QUỐC QUA CÁC THỜI KÌ

Based on the historical stages of the development of Chinese comparative literature, taking the establishment of the Chinese society of comparative literature in 1985 as a comparative point, this paper is a systematic study of the database of Chinese Comparative Literature and relevant historical events. On this basis, it summarizes the important characteristics of the acceptance and application of comparative literature theory in three stages of development in China: Pre historical period (1906-1949) - nonprofessional period and Externalization period (1949-1985) and Professional and International development period (1985 to present). At the same time, it depicts a vivid picture of comparative literature in China and its current development trend.

The Leading Role of Chinese Discourse in Global Context: The Variation Theory of Comparative Literature

Chinese scholar Cao Shunqing devoted himself to the construction of Chinese Comparative Literature discourse system and successfully established a new discourse of the variation theory of comparative literature in the eponymous book. This is the latest practice of President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping’s advocation to construct Chinese discourse theories. The variation theory of comparative literature is a significant concept that has been accepted and applied by the international society, in which its effects have conducted major contributions to the development of discourse system and literature theory with Chinese characteristics. And it has positively pushed the construction of Chinese soft power in the global context. As a new concept, a new field, and a new statement, the emergence of the variation theory of comparative literature has led to heated discussions and researches at the international academic level and received great feedbacks from various scholars, both national and international.

Universality, heterogeneity, and worlding: meanings of comparison in Chinese comparative literature

Comparison, either in the methodological or ontological sense, is the soul and the operational principle of comparative literature. Its meaning, however, has not always been transparent nor unchanging in the Chinese context. Tracing its signifying trajectory from “universality” to “heterogeneity,” the paper offers a mapping of historicity and culturality that underscores the Chinese theories of literature and the function of comparative literature as a discipline and as an instrument of intercultural communication. The authors further argue that the discourse of comparison, as a way of worlding, reflects a desire of Chinese comparatists to engage the world and yet to retain a distinctive theoretical space and discourse, in which the markings of a Chinese school can be inscribed.

A sugession For the Study of Korean-Korean chinese Comparative literature

A sugession For the Study of Korean-Korean chinese Comparative literature

Earl Miner: from comparative literature to comparative world literature

This essay is divided into two parts. The first one intends to make a summary of Earl Miner’s cross-cultural comparative poetics. The author asserts that Earl Miner, as a distinguished scholar in comparative literature studies, has made innovative contribution in three aspects: his proactive global vision, his pioneering research methods, and his insightful academic thoughts. The second part, starting from Miner’s pioneering work and his theory in comparative literature, focuses on the comparative studies in China. The author argues that comparative literature studies in China has generally ignored its uniqueness in discipline status and academic community, mainly on “the positioning of discipline” and the Chinese comparatists. Under the circumstances of Chinese comparative literature studies, moving toward a conscientious construction of world poetics, the author is committed to the idea of “comparative world literature” with the great help of translation. Such “a study of foreign literatures in translation” will enable scholars to conduct researches on literary relations, cultural studies and/or interdisciplinary studies.

The Rise of a Scholar and a Discipline in China: A Celebration of Yue Daiyun's Contributions to the Field of Chinese Comparative Literature

Chen Yuehong's essay and homage to the lifework of Yue Daiyun spans Yue's dynamic and incredibly prolific scholarly career from its origins in a tumultuous youth, to an intense period of theoretical studies abroad, and to a return to her base at Beijing University, from whence she has tirelessly pursued the creation of comparative literature programs, organizations, and journals, and has fostered new generations of younger scholars to pursue comparative literary studies in ways heavily influenced by Yue's own passionate vision.

Preface to Cao Shunqing’s The Study of Variation Theory

Without the Western world being aware of it,the comparative study of literature has been flourishing in China for several decades.In 1985 the First Congress of the Chinese Comparative Literature Association in Shenzhen was a major event in this development.As newly elected President of the International Comparative Literature Association,I attended the Congress and saw the energy and high expectations in the eyes of the young participants.However,even before that

Reflections on the Crisis of Comparative Literature as a Discipline

This paper discusses the so-called “crisis” and “death” of comparative literature as a discipline, arguing that the congenital deficiency and internal illogicality are the root causes that make comparative literature lose the disciplinary consciousness in its growth. The theoretical turn, great emergence of cultural studies and the flooding of deconstructive torrent within the past thirty years are the external causes that lead the discipline into “crisis” and “death.” The paper asserts that despite its crises, comparative literature is not dying, but growing rapidly. The paper suggests that only by effectively constructing its disciplinary theory can Chinese comparative literature possibly strive to be the representative of the discipline in its third stage after French and American schools.

An Eminent Specialist in Both Chinese Literature and Comparative Literature — An Interview with Prof. Stephen Owen

An Eminent Specialist in Both Chinese Literature and Comparative Literature — An Interview with Prof. Stephen Owen

Beginning of the New Century: Comparative Literature in the Cross-Cultural Context—comments on the 7th Triennial Conference of Chinese Comparative Literature Association and the International Conference

Beginning of the New Century: Comparative Literature in the Cross-Cultural Context—comments on the 7^th Triennial Conference of Chinese Comparative Literature Association and the International Conference

China in a Polycentric World: Essays in Chinese Comparative Literature (review)

Reviewed by: China in a Polycentric World: Essays in Chinese Comparative Literature Paula Varsano (bio) Yingjin Zhang , editor. China in a Polycentric World: Essays in Chinese Comparative Literature. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. xii, 307 pp. Hardcover, ISBN 0-8047-3509-1. Paperback, ISBN 0-8047-3509-3. "With each move, we are revealed"—"tout mouvement nous découvre"—wrote Michel de Montaigne in 1580. Every step we take toward knowledge, he cautions, not only reveals a previously unseen part of the world to us, but exposes us to the judgment and scrutiny of others. This is the risk that Yingjin Zhang has gamely accepted in editing and publishing China in a Polycentric World: Essays in Chinese Comparative Literature. Collected here are essays in the truest sense of the word, uniting "to assume a set of interrelated responsibilities": specifically, to "reflect on the status of Chinese comparative literature, reconfigure the boundaries of literature and other disciplines, refashion certain methodologies and theories, and reread selected canonical as well as marginal writers and texts from new perspectives" (p. 1). Faced with this daunting and, as he and his fellow contributors believe, incontrovertible challenge, Zhang might well have attempted to minimize "exposure" by presenting the scholarly equivalent of a united front. Instead, this volume treats its readers to the more engaging spectacle of the process of reflection itself, replete with the contradictions and questionings, and insights and misfires, that naturally accompany any earnest attempt to make headway toward establishing, understanding, and advancing a field of study still in the throes of self-definition: in this case, that of Chinese Comparative Literature (whose representative association has, since publication, tellingly changed its name to "The Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature.") The result is a collection whose strength rests in its usefulness as a snapshot of a dynamic and contested field at a particular moment, rather than in the false comfort of an airbrushed portrait. If the picture is messy in places, that is because it reflects a theoretical shifting, rendered both necessary and desirable by our collective presence in the "polycentric world" alluded to in the title. That world's multiplicity of interacting points of view (geopolitical, cultural, and academic) is not merely a fact of postcolonial life; it is its beneficial legacy, promising an end to the marginality that has so long been the fate of both Hong Kong (where, we are told, Chinese comparative literature first emerged) and the field of Chinese comparative literature itself. But this is where the good news of a happy coincidence between pragmatism and ideology ends and contradictions begin, as scholars of Chinese literature face what Zhang identifies as two ambient "ironies": "a general skepticism of the conventional generic categories" and "the putatively irreconcilable difference between 'Western theory' and 'Chinese text.'" In this context, some scholars are striving to [End Page 23] encourage dialogue and—to use Zhang's word—engagement, where there has traditionally been opposition and refusal: in short, to "re-envision Chinese comparative literature and cultural studies as a category broad enough to embrace multiple approaches currently adopted in the field." Each of the theoretical pieces contributed by Zhang Longxi, David Palumbo-Liu, and Eugene Eoyang does offer a somewhat different way to confront the ironies of the field. The eight remaining essays of practical criticism range widely in their subject matter (thus appearing to do away with the limitations of conventional generic categories), with the best among them either enacting or examining the literary and critical border-crossings presented here as constituting the very heart of the field. One is happy to find included an essay by Mark E. Francis on the formation of the traditional poetic canon, side by side with Palumbo-Liu's and Yingjin Zhang's expressed concerns about the feasibility of even including premodern literature in this field. "Fluid boundaries," then, are the order of the day; but, there is also a clear sense here that the boundaries must not be so fluid as to undermine the integrity of the field itself. Somewhat surprisingly, the resulting tension between the ideal of global inclusiveness and a marked resistance to specific types of literary scholarship remains unmentioned and even less resolved...

The (Im)possibility of Chinese Comparative Literature

The (Im)possibility of Chinese Comparative Literature

Comparative Literature in China

In their co-authored article, "Comparative Literature in China," Xiaoyi Zhou and Q.S. Tong present a brief intellectual and institutional history of the discipline. According to Zhou and Tong, main features of the history of comparative literature in China include the fact that as an academic discipline and a mode of intellectual inquiry imported to China from the West in the early twentieth century, the discpline has always been a priori strategically political and the proposition that the development of comparative literature in China is closely related to the formation of China’s literary modernity includes the parallel issue of national identity. Further, Zhou and Tong argue that built upon the politics of national identity construction and the development of modernity, Chinese comparatists tended to remain traditional and adhered up to recent times to scholarly practices of traditional comparative literature. Thus, the said ideological background indeed determines some of the concerns Chinese scholars in their analysis of Chinese-foreign cultural relationships inquire into and the authors present the argument that this situation produced scholarship of lesser rigour. Ultimately, Zhou and Tong argue for a redirection of Chinese comparative literature into a more culture-oriented and less traditional comparative literature in China, similar to the situation of the discipline in the West.

China in a Polycentric World: Essays in Chinese Comparative Literature. Edited by Yingjin Zhang. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. xii, 307 pp. $55.00 (cloth); $19–95 (paper).

Introduction: engaging Chinese comparative literature and cultural studies Yingjin Zhang Part I. Discipline, Discourse, Canon: 1. The challenge of East-West comparative literature Zhang Longxi 2. The utopias of discourse: on the impossibility of Chinese comparative literature David Palumbo-Liu 3. Canon formation in traditional Chinese poetry: Chinese canons, sacred and profane Mark E. Francis Part II. Gender, Sexuality, Body: 4. A feminist re-vision of Xu Wei's Ci Mulan and N&#252 zhuangyuan Ann-Marie Hsiung 5. Gender, subjectivity, sexuality: defining a subversive discourse in Wang Anyi's four tales of sexual transgression Helen H. Chen 6. Consuming Asian women: the fluid body of Josie Packard in Twin Peaks Greta Ai-Yu Niu Part III. Science, Modernity, Aesthetics: 7. Travel and translation: an aspect of china's cultural modernity, 1862-1926 John Yu Zou 8. Baoyu in Wonderland: technological Utopia in the early modern Chinese science fiction novel Feng-Ying Ming 9. The texture of the metropolis: modernist inscriptions of Shanghai in the 1930s Yingjin Zhang 10. The cult of poetry in contemporary China Michelle Yeh 11. Tianya, the ends of the world or the edge of heaven: comparative literature at the fin de siecle Eugene Chen Eoyang.

The Utopias of Discourse: On the Impossibility of Chinese Comparative Literature

The Utopias of Discourse: On the Impossibility of Chinese Comparative Literature