Jun 2007, Volume 1 Issue 2
    

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  • The avant-garde elements in the May Fourth New Literature Movement
    CHEN Sihe
    2007, 1(2): 163-196. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11702-007-0008-4
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    The May Fourth new literature  appeared in the early twentieth century China while the avant-garde was sweeping over the West. Both could be defined as radical literary movements by such characteristics as storming criticism of politics, subversive standpoints on traditional culture, language experiments for thoroughly novel forms and criticism with the aestheticism for l art pour l  (art art for art s sake). The avant-garde elements in the new literature, by contrast, are believed able to help us see two kinds of shifts in the course of twentieth-century literature, that is, to see how it shifted from classical to modern literature in the last century: one change was the natural flow of the mainstream literature, subject to the social development and changes, and the other is an avant-garde movement that took a radical stance against the status quo, and was led by ideals of social reforms aiming to realize beyond the generation.
  • “Western discourse” and contemporary Chinese culture
    WANG Furen
    2007, 1(2): 197-212. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11702-007-0009-3
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    Starting with the differentiation between the basic terms such as discourse and discourse hegemony, and Western culture and Western discourse, this paper gives a survey of the relationship between contemporary Chinese culture and Western culture. It holds that we should be opposed to the hegemony of the Western discourse while affirming the general tendency that Chinese culture is shifting from being closed to being open. However, this tendency should not be entirely attributed to China s submission to the hegemony of Western discourse when China accepts the influence from the Western culture in the process of renovating Chinese contemporary culture.
  • Taste and resistance: Lu Xun’s scholarly style and its reception
    CHEN Pingyuan
    2007, 1(2): 213-249. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11702-007-0010-x
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    Lu Xun s achievements as a philosopher and writer were confirmed in the twentieth century in China, but little attention has been paid to Lu Xun as a scholar. Admittedly, the revolutionary nature of his A Brief History of Chinese Fiction (Zhongguo xiaoshuo shil?e) has been universally acknowledged in scholarly circles and the book has been quoted in many works. However, Lu Xun s scholarly ideals, his methods, and the distinctive scholarly style that he employed have not received enough attention. Lu Xun s choice of a particular scholarly style, as a philosopher, a writer, and a scholar, is closely interrelated with the development of the scholarship in China. This article is therefore limited to Lu Xun and attempts to expose one side of Chinese scholarship that has been overlooked while analyzing the origins and development of Lu Xun s scholarly style (忦[fe嘜Sshuxue wenti)1.
  • A review of the modern literary studies in the 1980s from the perspective of the disciplinary history
    WEN Rumin
    2007, 1(2): 250-271. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11702-007-0011-9
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    This article reviews and sorts out the major trends of the research on modern Chinese literature in the 1980s. The author deems that the research had come through the phases of reassessment  and the resuscitation of the discipline, the prevalence of the study on literary trends and schools, the theory and methodology craze, the suggestion of an integral view on literary history as well as the adjustment of the disciplinary structure. This article comments on the representative works of each phase with the attention to the relationships among all the sectors of the academic production  and changes as well as the spiritual and cultural causes that had brought about the transitions.
  • Borges and contemporary Chinese avant-garde writings
    ZHANG Xuejun
    2007, 1(2): 272-286. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11702-007-0012-8
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    This paper intends to explore the influences of Borges on contemporary Chinese avant-garde writing in three aspects, namely, the recurrence and cyclical nature of time, the narrative labyrinth, and metafiction. The recurrence and cyclical nature of time avant-garde writers emphasize on constituting a self-contained circular structure, while the design of a labyrinth unfolds the chaos, obscurity, and indeterminacy of the world. Metafiction undermines the authenticity of traditional novels by exposing the fictitious nature of fictions.
  • Sartre studies in China: From the new period to the new century
    SONG Xuezhi, XU Jun
    2007, 1(2): 287-299. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11702-007-0013-7
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    This essay, from four aspects of initiation study, author study, textual study and drama study, attempts to make a comprehensive, systematic and concise survey of the enormous research on Sartre and his existentialist literature done in China from the new period to the new century. Meanwhile, it also makes an objective analysis of the problems arising in the studying process, and offers constructive suggestions for future studies.
  • The ideal of Esperanto and the translation of the literatures of minor nationalities into Chinese
    SONG Binghui
    2007, 1(2): 300-313. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11702-007-0014-6
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    Esperanto movement presents a specific language and cultural phenomenon in the history of intercultural communication, which once exerted an extensive influence on modern Chinese culture. As an artificial international auxiliary language with a tinge of idealism, Esperanto has displayed complex cultural functions of translingual practices. In the 20th century, Esperanto was used in China as a medium to translate foreign literatures, mostly those from minor nationalities in central and eastern Europe, in which the contradiction between the cosmopolitism and antagonism of minor nationalities is reflected, and the inherent tension of modernity of the Chinese literature is exposed, which is worth noting for those engaged in the studies of the relations between Chinese and foreign literatures.