China in a polycentric world : essays in Chinese comparative literature / edited by Yingjin Zhang.

Format:

Book

Conference/Event

Contributor:

Zhang, Yingjin.

Conference Name:

International Conference on Literature, History, Culture: Reenvisioning Chinese and Comparative Literature (1994 : Princeton University)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Comparative literature--Chinese and European.

Comparative literature.

Comparative literature--European and Chinese.

East and West.

Genre:

Conference papers and proceedings.

Physical Description:

xii, 307 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, [1998]

Summary:

This collection provides a critical reexamination of the development and current status of comparative literature studies that engage the literary practices of both China and the West. In so doing, it attempts to refashion literary methodologies and cultural theories in Chinese studies and reread several noncanonical texts in ways that cut across disciplines, genders, and modernities.

Eschewing conventional taxonomies such as the study of literary influences and parallels, this volume shifts the emphasis from Chinese-Western comparativism to a critical rereading of Chinese or China-related texts using a variety of new critical approaches. Essays that draw on literary history, comparative poetics, modernist aesthetics, feminist studies, gender theory, and postcolonial discourse exemplify how multifaceted approaches can enrich our understanding of this field.

The essays are grouped in three parts: studies of disciplines, institutions, and canon formation; gender, sexuality, and the body; and technology, modernity, and aesthetics. They cover a range of subjects, including the challenge of East-West comparative literature, the impact of literary theory on Sinological research, canon formation in traditional Chinese poetry, gender and sexuality in Ming drama, contemporary Chinese fiction and television drama, the problem of translation, the influence of science fiction, and the "cult of poetry" in post-Mao China.

The introductory chapter traces the rise of the Chinese school of comparative literature and addresses the issues facing Western scholars of Chinese-Western comparative literature. A concluding chapter summarizes recent remappings of the geocultural world and outlines futurepossibilities for comparative literature.

Contents:

A Note on Romanization XIII

Introduction Engaging Chinese Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies / Yingjin Zhang 1

Part 1 Discipline, Discourse, Canon

1. The Challenge of East-West Comparative Literature / Zhang Longxi 21

2. The Utopias of Discourse: On the Impossibility of Chinese Comparative Literature / David Palumbo-Liu 36

3. Canon Formation in Traditional Chinese Poetry: Chinese Canons, Sacred and Profane / Mark E. Francis 50

Part 2 Gender, Sexuality, Body

4. A Feminist Re-Vision of Xu Wei's Ci Mulan and Nu zhuangyuan / Ann-Marie Hsiung 73

5. Gender, Subjectivity, Sexuality: Defining a Subversive Discourse in Wang Anyi's Four Tales of Sexual Transgression / Helen H. Chen 90

6. Consuming Asian Women: The Fluid Body of Josie Packard in Twin Peaks / Greta Ai-Yu Niu 110

Part 3 Science, Modernity, Aesthetics

7. Travel and Translation: An Aspect of China's Cultural Modernity, 1862-1926 / John Yu Zou 133

8. Baoyu in Wonderland: Technological Utopia in the Early Modern Chinese Science Fiction Novel / Feng-Ying Ming 152

9. The Texture of the Metropolis: Modernist Inscriptions of Shanghai in the 1930s / Yingjin Zhang 173

10. The Cult of Poetry in Contemporary China / Michelle Yeh 188

11. Tianya, the Ends of the World or the Edge of Heaven: Comparative Literature at the Fin de Siecle / Eugene Chen Eoyang 218

Reference Matter

Character List 283.

Notes:

Papers delivered at the International Conference on Literature, History, Culture: Reenvisioning Chinese and Comparative Literature, held at Princeton University on June 24-26, 1994.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 235-282) and index.

ISBN:

0804731861

0804735093

OCLC:

39182131