1,721,031 research outputs found
Il romanzo cinese e la Cina "liquida" di Yu Hua
No full textThis article is focused on the artistic development in the novels written by the Chinese writer Yu Hua during the last decades. Following the recent turbulent evolution of Chinese society and culture, Yu Hua's fiction has gone through different phases from the avantgarde, the postmodern experimental fiction of the 1980's, to the so-called neorealistic phase in the late 20th century, up to the recent hyperrealistic works, which perfectly reflect and embody Z. Bauman's theory of liquid modernity
Il romanzo cinese degli ultimi trent'anni: tra globalizzazione e localismi
No full textThe article provides a detailed overview of therein trends of the Chinese novel during the last three decades. The proposed analysis encompasses a variety of elements, from themes to style, to the narratological devices employed by the authors in order to represent the changing society and articulated culture of post-socialist China through the form/genre of the "changpian xiaoshuo" . The analysis is also suitably based on a clear distinction, in terms of literary genres, between the Western/European concept of novel and the Chinese category of xiaoshuo
Fang Fang e le altre: la narrazione femminile del virus in Cina
No full textLa pandemia attuale ha suscitato una ridda di reazioni nel mondo letterario cinese, soprattutto a Wuhan, la città che per prima è stata sferzata dal virus diventando un simbolo a livello globale di resistenza, sofferenza e politiche controverse. Ciò che colpisce maggiormente è che il contributo più importante proviene da due donne e che entrambe abbiano adottato la forma diaristica per esprimere le loro opinioni – talora molto critiche – da una prospettiva estremamente personale. In questo modo, Fang Fang e Chi Li, le due romanziere più importanti di Wuhan, sono diventate due figure, tra le altre (poche per la verità), di intellettuali che hanno tentato di restituire alla letteratura un ruolo di denuncia e di servizio pubblico, senza rinunciare a quello di umana testimonianza. Nel contributo vengono prese in esame altre figure femminili di spicco del mondo letterario cinese, che si sono rivolte alle autorità cinesi così come alla società tutta con atteggiamento sia di sostegno sia di disapprovazione. Lo scopo di questo studio preliminare sulla narrazione del COVID-19 in Cina è quello di analizzare come queste intellettuali cinesi abbiano tentato di distogliere la narrazione nazionale del virus dalla propaganda politica per spingerla verso questioni etiche più generali, come la necessità di comportamenti più scientifici e razionali, l’ambiguo ruolo della tecnologia nelle società moderne, la giustizia sociale, la sostenibilità ambientale, la solidarietà umana e la ricerca di verità.The current pandemic has triggered an immediate response from the literary world in China. Writers from Wuhan, the first big city to be hit by the virus and which has unavoidably become a globally resonant symbol of resistance, sufferance and controversial policies, promptly wrote down their feelings and thoughts, motivated by their wish to support their own people. What is more striking is the fact that they both are women, and that they both adopted the diary form in order to express their sometimes harshly critical views on a more personal basis. Therefore, Fang Fang and Chi Li, the two most famous novelists of Wuhan, have become two voices among the others (actually, not many), who try to restore the role of literature as a means of denunciation and of public service, but also of human testimony. In my paper, I also take into account other female voices who tackle the crisis by expressing their ideas and proposals, addressing Chinese public authorities and the Chinese community with both a disapproving and supporting attitude. The aim of this preliminary study is to analyse how a few prominent Chinese female intellectuals attempted to divert the national narration on the COVID-19 from political propaganda pushing it towards general ethical issues such as the need of more scientific and rational behaviours, the ambiguity of technology in modern societies, social fairness, environmental sustainability, human solidarity and search for truth
Retranslation and Culturemes: Searching for a “Dialogic Translation” of a Modern Chinese Classic
No full textThis chapter aims at reflecting and analysing the role of “culturemes” as both a hindrance and an asset in translating modern Chinese literature, through the case study of my recent re-translation of Lu Xun’s fiction and a brief compari- son with some previous renditions into both Italian and other European languages. Lu Xun 鲁迅 (1881-1936) is by large considered as a “modern classic” both in China and abroad. After an overview of the history, frequency and motivations of the translation of his works in Italy, I will reflect upon how the translator can ac- commodate the contradiction between meeting the readership and publisher’s ex- pectations and producing a piece of “dialogic translation”. The translated text should enhance cultural difference while respecting the linguistic norms of the re- ceiving culture and being readable for the average contemporary reader.
In order to illustrate the translation strategy adopted, I will display a range of translation issues mainly related to the so-called “culturemes” or “rich points” – in Michael Agar’s words – which pose to the translator the challenge of «making sense out of human differences in terms of human similarities», of identifying and negotiating on what provides Lu Xun’s works with their unique value and flavour
Elements of Modernism and the Grotesque in Yan Lianke's Early Fiction
No full textThis chapter aims to detect early signs of modernism and the grotesque in Yan Lianke 阎连科’s fiction from the 1990s, which is usually placed in the category of post-Maoist realism and, as a genre, is recognised as part of the xiangtu xiaoshuo 乡土小说 (fiction of the native soil). Most of the studies devoted to Yan’s works focus on his latest novels, where his theory of shenshizhuyi 神实主义 (spiritual realism or mythorealism) finds full expression. Indeed, to analyse his early works can be of great interest in order to reconstruct the genesis of his peculiar style and vision of fiction. In particular, this chapter focuses on the novella Gold Cave (Huangjin dong 黄金洞, 1995), which openly challenges the assumptions of traditional xiangtu xiaoshuo with which Yan’s early fiction has been initially identified, and presents clear hints of a new aesthetics, based on modernist techniques and strategies of bewilderment aimed at transcend reality in order to better express it
(Un)natural Landscapes and Can Xue's Reinterpretation of “Tianrenheyi”
No full textIn Can Xue’s 殘雪’s recent fiction the crucial connection between emotions (qing 情) and the natural environment (jing 境) has been reinvented. This writer, born in Changsha in 1958, has been a central figure in Chinese avant-garde literature since the 1980s. In her recent short stories and in novels like Zuihou de qingren 最後的情人 [The Last Lover, 2005] and Bianjiang 邊疆 [Frontier, 2008], she explores the entangled universe of human feelings against the background of a natural yet surreal dreamscape, where each character is mysteriously yet deeply tied to other creatures, both fantastic and natural, plunging the reader into strong sensory and emotional experiences.
Blending the two concepts of qing and jing drawn from traditional Chinese poetry, Can Xue creates a radically new way of expressing emotions through the representation of sometimes weird natural events and creatures. As she has recently stated, her fiction aspires to far more than telling a story: by transfiguring nature through peculiar sounds and images, she brings human experience into a highly spiritual yet also corporeal realm. After all, “[in] Chinese literary thought, emotion is consistently conceptualized through verbal patterning and visual manifestation” (Cai and Wu, 2019).
In Zuihou de qingren, human beings, animals and plants, continuously interact, building new relationships. In this chapter I will show how Can Xue envisages a new pattern of interplay between qing and jing, in order to develop her own peculiar reinterpretation of the Chinese traditional concept of the harmony between humankind and nature (tianrenheyi 天人合一), while at the same time drawing upon Western literature and philosophy
Ecocriticism and Chinese Literature: Imagined Landscapes and Real Lived Spaces
No full textThis book focuses on the concepts of qing (情) and jing (境) throughout Chinese literature, with a special emphasis on modern and contemporary Chinese literature, by examining the environmental and ecological dimensions of such notions. This volume sets out to explore the concepts of qing (情) and jing (境) in Chinese literature from an ecocritical perspective.
In The Ecocriticism Reader, Cheryll Glotfelty defines Ecocriticism as “the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment,” whereas Lawrence Buell defines ecocriticism as a “study of the relationship between literature and the environment conducted in a spirit of commitment to environmentalist praxis.”
The two concepts of qing and jing may be analyzed on different temporal and semantic coordinates. First, as duly pointed out by Cai and Wu (2019), qing 情 has been identified at the core of Chinese thinking about literature, such that “lyrical tradition” becomes an encompassing concept for many to distinguish Chinese literary tradition from its Western counterpart. The concepts of qing and jing may indeed be analyzed as two separate semantic identities or as part of a whole semantic unit: qingjing literature (情境文学,situated literature). Moreover, the two concepts may be analyzed in a diachronic perspective, by providing a reinterpretation of classical Chinese literary concepts, namely qing and jing, through a contemporary and ecocritical lens; they may also be analyzed in a synchronic perspective by focusing on modern and contemporary Chinese literature, in particular nature writing, ecofiction, and environmental literature
Human/Inhuman/Posthuman Female Bodies in Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature: Literary Descriptions of Psychological and Social Unease
Full text linkIf “[c]ognition and world are interdependently originated via the living body” (Varela, Thompson, Rosch, 2017, xxvi) and “our bodily experience and the way we use imaginative mechanisms are central to how we construct categories to make sense of experience” (Lakoff, 1987, xii), we can assume that the literary (mis)representation of the body can thus be a powerful conveyor of sociocultural critique as well as of psychological activity, and not only an artistic device or a symbolic construction. Certainly familiar to everybody is the fascination that the female body has exerted on writers and artists of different epochs and cultures; Chinese literature is filled with examples of depiction of female beauty and gracefulness, however, at the same time, for a variety of reasons, the literary female body has also been subjected to any kind of distortion and manipulation, being often uglified or demonised. Sick bodies, malnourished bodies, craving bodies, and monstrous bodies populate modern and contemporary Chinese fiction and poetry. Sometimes it is a deliberately odd use of the literary language or the alteration derived from the male gaze which produces such an uncanny image of women’s body. Interestingly enough, in modern Chinese literature, the female body has been a space for debating moral values and social issues and disclosing identity crisis or change: from the rural body to modern urban anxieties, images of suffering or fighting women create both an appealing and disturbing human landscape. According to some cognitive scientists “[e]ven abstract cognitive processes are grounded on the body’s sensorimotor systems” (Varela, Thompson, Rosch, 2017, xxv). The literary treatment of body – especially influenced by the traditional concept of body-mind in Chinese philosophy – seems to recognise this primary function when it presents corporeality directly, without distinctively connecting it with an “abstract” feeling or thought, but letting it reveal states of minds and moral judgments. One clear example is, for instance, Xiao Hong 萧红’s zoomorphic representation of the female body (see also Liu, 1994) or the surreal transformations of the female characters in Han Lizhu 韩丽珠 (Hon Lai-Chu)’s works. My paper aims at analyzing and comparing a range of modern and contemporary Chinese literary texts centered on the description of female bodies in different epochs, contexts, and genres, trying to connect the cognitive approach and the construction of meaning through literary discourse
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