"This singular work presents the most comprehensive and nuanced study available in any Western language of Chinese aesthetic thought and practice during the Six Dynasties (A.D. 220-589). Despite a succession of dynastic and social upheavals, the literati preoccupied themselves with both the sensuous and the transcendent and strove for cultural dominance. By the end of the sixth century, their reflections would evolve into a sophisticated system of aesthetic discourse characterized by its own rhetoric and concepts." "Chinese Aesthetics will fill a gap in Western sinological studies of the period. It will appeal to scholars and students in premodern Chinese literary studies, comparative aesthetics, and cultural studies and will be a welcome reference to anyone interested in ancient Chinese culture."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The Problem of a Chinese Aesthetic calls for and applies a new model of comparative literature - one that, instead of taking for granted the commensurability of traditions and texts, gives incompatibility and contradiction their due. Exposing contemporary literary theory to the risks of ancient Chinese literature (and vice versa), this book considers a linked series of case studies. To what degree does the translation between languages and texts that we call comparative literature depend on allegory or translation within a single text or language? The author offers an important, new perspective on the reading of the Shih-ching or Book of Odes and the question of allegory and metaphor in the Chinese poetic tradition.
Li Zehou (b. 1930) has been an influential thinker in China since the 1950s. Before moving to the U.S. in the wake of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Li published works on Kant and traditional and contemporary Chinese philosophy. The present volume, a translation of his Huaxia meixue (1989), is considered among Li’s most significant works. Apart from its value as an introduction to the philosophy of one of contemporary China’s foremost intellectuals, The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition fills an important gap in the literature of Chinese aesthetics in English. It presents Li’s synthesis of the entire trajectory of Chinese aesthetic thought, from ancient times to the early modern period, incorporating pre-Confucian and Confucian ideas, Daoism, Chan Buddhism, and the influence of Western philosophy during the late-imperial period. As one of China’s As one of China's major contemporary philosophers and preeminent authority on Kant, Li is uniquely positioned to observe this trajectory and make it intelligible to today’s readers. The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition touches on all areas of artistic activity, including poetry, painting, calligraphy, architecture, and the "art of living." Right government, the ideal human being, and the path to spiritual transcendence all come under the provenance of aesthetic thought. According to Li this was the case from early Confucian explanations of poetry as that which gives expression to intent, through Zhuangzi’s artistic depictions of the ideal personality who discerns the natural way of things and lives according to it, to Chan Buddhist-inspired notions that nature and words can come together to yield insight and enlightenment. In this enduring and stimulating work, Li demonstrates conclusively the fundamental role of aesthetics in the development of the cultural and psychological structures in Chinese culture that define "humanity."
This concise introduction to Chinese poetry serves as a primer for English-speakers eager to expand their understanding and enjoyment of Chinese culture. James J. Y. Liu first examines the Chinese language as a medium of poetic expression and, contrary to the usual focus on the visual qualities of Chinese script, emphasizes the auditory effects of Chinese verse. He provides a succinct survey of Chinese poetry theory and concludes with his own view of poetry, based upon traditional Chinese concepts. "[This] books should be read by all those interested in Chinese poetry."—Achilles Fang, Poetry "[This is] a significant contribution to the understanding and appreciation of Chinese poetry, lucidly presented in a way that will attract a wide audience, and offering an original synthesis of Chinese and Western views that will stimulate and inspire students of poetry everywhere."—Hans H. Frankel, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies "This is a book which can be recommended without reservation to anyone who wants to explore the world of Chinese poetry in translation."—James R. Hightower, Journal of Asian Studies
Drawing on the British Museum's extensive collection, this book explores the traditional hierarchy of materials and techniques reaching back as far as the Han Dynasty in the third century BC. In the history and character of the works under scrutiny, this sumptuously illustrated book conveys an understanding of Chinese art in all its great variety.
Winner, 2022 AATSEEL Best Book in Literary Studies, American Association of Teachers of Slavic and European Languages Honorable Mention, 2022 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies, Modern Language Association Following the failure of communist revolutions in Europe, in the 1920s the Soviet Union turned its attention to fostering anticolonial uprisings in Asia. China, divided politically between rival military factions and dominated economically by imperial powers, emerged as the Comintern’s prime target. At the same time, a host of prominent figures in Soviet literature, film, and theater traveled to China, met with Chinese students in Moscow, and placed contemporary China on the new Soviet stage. They sought to reimagine the relationship with China in the terms of socialist internationalism—and, in the process, determine how internationalism was supposed to look and feel in practice. Internationalist Aesthetics offers a groundbreaking account of the crucial role that China played in the early Soviet cultural imagination. Edward Tyerman tracks how China became the key site for Soviet debates over how the political project of socialist internationalism should be mediated, represented, and produced. The central figure in this story, the avant-garde writer Sergei Tret’iakov, journeyed to Beijing in the 1920s and experimented with innovative documentary forms in an attempt to foster a new sense of connection between Chinese and Soviet citizens. Reading across genres and media from reportage and biography to ballet and documentary film, Tyerman shows how Soviet culture sought an aesthetics that could foster a sense of internationalist community. He reveals both the aspirations and the limitations of this project, illuminating a crucial chapter in Sino-Russian relations. Grounded in extensive sources in Russian and Chinese, this cultural history bridges Slavic and East Asian studies and offers new insight into the transnational dynamics that shaped socialist aesthetics and politics in both countries.
This ambitious work is a multimedia, interdisciplinary study of Chinese modernity in the context of globalization from the late nineteenth century to the present. Sheldon Lu draws on Chinese literature, film, art, photography, and video to broadly map the emergence of modern China in relation to the capitalist world-system in the economic, social, and political realms. Central to his study is the investigation of biopower and body politics, namely, the experience of globalization on a personal level. Lu first outlines the trajectory of the body in modern Chinese literature by focusing on the adventures, pleasures, and sufferings of the male (and female) body in the writings of selected authors. He then turns to avant-garde and performance art, tackling the physical self more directly through a consideration of work that takes the body as its very theme, material, and medium. In an exploration of mass visual culture, Lu analyzes artistic reactions to the multiple, uneven effects of globalization and modernization on both the physical landscape of China and the interior psyche of its citizens. This is followed by an inquiry into contemporary Chinese urban space in popular cinema and experimental photography and art. Examples are offered that capture the daily lives of contemporary Chinese as they struggle to make the transition from the vanishing space of the socialist lifestyle to the new capitalist economy of commodities. Lu reexamines the history and implications of China’s belated integration into the capitalist world system before closing with a postscript that traces the genealogy of the term "postsocialism" and points to the real relevance of the idea for the investigation of everyday life in China in the twenty-first century.
Translating Chinese Art and Modern Literature examines issues in cross-cultural dialogue in connection with translation and modern Chinese art and literature from interdisciplinary perspectives. This comprises the text-image dialogue in the context of Chinese modernity, and cross-cultural interaction between modern literature in Chinese and other literatures. This edited collection approaches these issues with discrete foci and approaches, and the ten chapters in this volume are to be divided into two distinct parts. The first part highlights the mutual effects between literary texts and visual images in the media of book, painting, and film, and the second part includes contributions by scholars of literary translation.
