Dec 2007, Volume 1 Issue 4
    

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  • How did itinerant poets in the Southern Song Dynasty make a living?
    FEI Junqing
    2007, 1(4): 477-500. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11702-007-0022-6
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    How did itinerant poets in the Southern Song Dynasty make a living? This is still a question yet to be further explored. People used to think that itinerant poets made a living primarily by calling on noble and influential people and appealing to them for help. However, this presumption is not without its flaws. Based upon a large quantity of historical data, this paper reveals some of the means of support by which the itinerant poets made a living, while further probing into their livelihoods during this time period.
  • The rise and development of Lunwenfu in successive dynasties
    XU Jie
    2007, 1(4): 501-522. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11702-007-0023-5
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    Lunwenfu 嫼e噸K (discussing literature in the style of fu) of successive dynasties is not only a prominent phenomenon in the history of fu 岾, but also an important aspect of ancient literature and art. The rise of lunwenfu connects with the development of the literary form, while the production of this style goes together with the appearance of the fu exam in the imperial examination system (keju kaofu zhidu y袾>€岾R6^?). From the writing theory of lunwenfu, it can be found that the purport of which is that shi 嬜 and fu have the same origin while wen e? is used to give expression to the dao 怱. As far as writing skills are concerned, the elaboration and description of literary theory coming from lunwenfu connect with the depiction, the space structure and the zeitgeist particular to the art of fu. The authors chiefly write pianfu 殘岾 and lüfu _媿K which enhance a reader’s sense of aesthetic appreciation.
  • Art history: A Western discipline’s centennial experience in China
    SHAO Hong
    2007, 1(4): 523-542. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11702-007-0024-4
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    In 1882, the American scholar E. F. Fenollosa first introduced the new western discipline art history  to Japan in a series of lectures entitled The True Meaning of Fine Art  in Tokyo. The next year, the French word esthetique was translated into Japanese using Kanji by Nakae Chomin. The term fine arts  first appeared in the Chinese language in a translation by Wang Guowei, who put the words in a glossary attached to the Chinese version (1902) of Motora Yujiro’s book Ethics. From the time when Wang employed the term in his famous article Confucian’s artistic education  (1904), then Huang Binhong and Deng Shi co-compiled The Library of Fine Arts (1911), to the year of 2003 when Fan Jingzhong began his monumental work The Shapes of Art History, the introduction of the western discipline has a history of one hundred years, which demonstrates the rich understanding of art history  which has played an increasingly prominent role in East Asian cultures.
  • Primitive and modern: Two faces of Shanghai in Chinese and Western literature
    CHEN Xiaolan
    2007, 1(4): 543-554. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11702-007-0025-3
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    Many Chinese writers deem Shanghai of the early 20th century as the most westernized and the most modern city in China, while in the imagination of their Western counterparts Shanghai is still oriental, primitive, barbarous and uncivilized. Despite such an irreconcilable difference, one point shared by those writers, both at home and abroad, is that Shanghai is a chaotic and unrestrained wilderness in terms of morals, which is closely related to the imagined image of an alien land and in conformity with the heterogeneity of both Chinese and Western cultures. This unique feature of Shanghai has become a dominant factor shaping the perception of writers from different backgrounds.
  • An analytical analysis and summary of historical literary works—use of silver in the fi ction and operas of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties
    SHEN Bojun
    2007, 1(4): 555-570. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11702-007-0026-2
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    The royal courts of the Yuan and early Ming period pursued a paper currency policy and prohibited silver from being circulated by royal decree. But the uses of silver in daily life and commercial activities could be often seen in the fictions and operas of this era. This is an active reflection of social life of that time, and indicates that the binding force of the royal decrees over the subjects was rather limited. From this we can see that it may not be reliable to take the circulation of silver in fictions as a ground to prove that Outlaws of the Marsh was completed in the first years of Emperor Jiajing’s reign (Jiajing Huangdi V 梀v嘵 CE 1522–1566). The difference between the royal laws and decrees and their effects on real life deserve more analyses by researchers.
  • Withering of the spirit of contemporary Chinese drama
    DONG Jian
    2007, 1(4): 571-580. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11702-007-0027-1
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    Since the 1990s, contemporary Chinese drama has exhibited the following characteristics: real decadence lurks behind the mask of seeming prosperity, and jolliness in appearance fails to hide its poverty at heart. The root of all these problems lies in the withering of the spirit of drama, or the loss of drama’s soul. The cultural alienations in China today take the forms of sham and mediocrity, materialization  and non-individuality .
  • Buddhist-Taoist rivalry and the evolution of the story of Lü Dongbin’s slaying the Yellow Dragon with a flying sword
    WU Guangzheng
    2007, 1(4): 581-609. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11702-007-0028-8
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    Going through the evolution of the body of stories about Lü Dongbin’s slaying the Yellow Dragon with a flying sword from a perspective combining the history of religion and the history of literature, this paper suggests that those stories are religious myths constructed during the prolonged rivalry between Buddhism and Taoism, and that they reflect not only the inherent conflict between the Zen theory of mind and spiritual nature (xinxing) and the theory of the integrated cultivation of spiritual nature and bodily life (xingming shuangxiu) of the interior elixir  (neidan) school of Taoism, but also the changes in Taoist theory of alchemy and in the discourse of Buddhism and Taoism. For Taoism, the meaning of the story eventually changed from cultivation in seclusion (qingxiu) to cooperative cultivation between men and women with sexual intercourse (nannü shuangxiu), and the meaning was gradually secularized as the religious backdrop of the story faded. Meanwhile, such conflict and changes not only furnished basic themes and materials for literature, but, more importantly, provided literature with means of expression, figures of speech, and power of literary construction.
  • Evaluative standard for the eight-legged essay in the imperial examinations of the Qing Dynasty
    GONG Yanming, GAO Mingyang
    2007, 1(4): 610-631. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11702-007-0029-z
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    The eight-legged essay was the dominant portion of the imperial examinations in the Qing Dynasty (Qing Chao ng CE 1644–1911). However, the study on the evaluative standards for the eight-legged essay is often neglected and insufficiently discussed. Based on an investigation of A Complete Collection of Vermillion Examination Essays in the Qing Dynasty, the author of this paper proposes that the four aspects of purity, truthfulness, refinement and appropriateness  constitute the overall requirements of the examination essay and the four elements of principle, rules, diction and qi  form the operating standards of the examiners in grading the ranks and quality of the eight-legged essay.