This article serves to analyze the role and history of philology within modern Chinese humanities-based scholarship,using the work of Fu Sinian and the establishment of the Institute of History and Philology as a fram...This article serves to analyze the role and history of philology within modern Chinese humanities-based scholarship,using the work of Fu Sinian and the establishment of the Institute of History and Philology as a framework with which to observe the changing status of philology as a practice within contemporary Chinese humanities.Despite its critical function within the Western scholarship and cultural development that inspired modem Chinese scholars as well as its centrality to Fu Sinian’s groundbreaking efforts,philology has been all but ignored in recent years,and its purpose has been rendered niche and peripheral.Additionally,the ambiguity that has surrounded the term“philology”itself since its earliest days within the Chinese academic world has only intensified over time,thereby exacerbating the field's marginalized status.The author's goal is to call attention to the complexity and importance of philology that has been so critically overlooked in recent times by outlining six distinct yet interrelated categories of philology/philological study,ranging from a basic academic“love of words,text,and learning”to a broad life view.By providing a detailed,segmented glimpse into the otherwise vaguely-defined phenomenon of philology,its vital function as mankind’s sole means of comprehending the past is made clear,and a“return to philology”is advocated in order to preserve those specific academic fields that draw their origins from philology and avoid a collapse of scholarly humanities study as a whole.展开更多
This essay reflects on the reception of Lu Xun＇s short story ＂The Loner＂ （Gudu zhe, alternately translated as ＂The Lone Wolf, The Misanthrope,＂ and ＂The Isolate＂） in American classrooms, where students have s...This essay reflects on the reception of Lu Xun＇s short story ＂The Loner＂ （Gudu zhe, alternately translated as ＂The Lone Wolf, The Misanthrope,＂ and ＂The Isolate＂） in American classrooms, where students have sometimes wondered whether that character might be read as ＂queer.＂ It suggests that the title character＇s unusual and self-imposed celibacy is probably best explained by his belief, in a very general sense, in the foundational values of zoology as practiced in Japan and China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and thus that the story may be a better gateway to understanding the ways in which Lu Xun envisioned the mixed impact of new political economies on private life than a source text for queer studies. At the same time, however, this essay emphasizes that in ＂The Loner,＂ as elsewhere, accounting for the ＂heterosexual imperative＂ of early zoology （e.g., with its emphases on animal husbandry, propagation, reproduction） can have meaningful consequences for ＂queering＂ interpretations of received texts from literature, history of science, and beyond.展开更多
This article focuses on the strategies that literature and cultural criticism adopt to represent trauma in comparison to a current medical definition. The contemporary medical definition, trauma as post-traumatic stre...This article focuses on the strategies that literature and cultural criticism adopt to represent trauma in comparison to a current medical definition. The contemporary medical definition, trauma as post-traumatic stress disorder （PTSD）, is the most narrow and specific definition to discuss trauma. The discourse of medicine does not necessarily match those of literature and cultural criticism, nor need they conform to each other. PTSD includes a collection of symptoms, any one of which might not have anything to do with traumatic experience, but which together point with increasing intensity to a psychological syndrome caused by traumatic shock. Although this is historically a recently defined syndrome （1980）, its features had long before attracted attention and been recorded under other terms and diagnoses. Although Chinese literature is only occasionally given to psychological realism, we do find occasional descriptions that strongly suggest aspects of the syndrome. Also, the aims and the needs of medicine and literature or cultural criticism are not necessarily the same, but it is important to explore in greater detail the aims and the needs of literature and cultural criticism.展开更多
文摘This article serves to analyze the role and history of philology within modern Chinese humanities-based scholarship,using the work of Fu Sinian and the establishment of the Institute of History and Philology as a framework with which to observe the changing status of philology as a practice within contemporary Chinese humanities.Despite its critical function within the Western scholarship and cultural development that inspired modem Chinese scholars as well as its centrality to Fu Sinian’s groundbreaking efforts,philology has been all but ignored in recent years,and its purpose has been rendered niche and peripheral.Additionally,the ambiguity that has surrounded the term“philology”itself since its earliest days within the Chinese academic world has only intensified over time,thereby exacerbating the field's marginalized status.The author's goal is to call attention to the complexity and importance of philology that has been so critically overlooked in recent times by outlining six distinct yet interrelated categories of philology/philological study,ranging from a basic academic“love of words,text,and learning”to a broad life view.By providing a detailed,segmented glimpse into the otherwise vaguely-defined phenomenon of philology,its vital function as mankind’s sole means of comprehending the past is made clear,and a“return to philology”is advocated in order to preserve those specific academic fields that draw their origins from philology and avoid a collapse of scholarly humanities study as a whole.
文摘This essay reflects on the reception of Lu Xun＇s short story ＂The Loner＂ （Gudu zhe, alternately translated as ＂The Lone Wolf, The Misanthrope,＂ and ＂The Isolate＂） in American classrooms, where students have sometimes wondered whether that character might be read as ＂queer.＂ It suggests that the title character＇s unusual and self-imposed celibacy is probably best explained by his belief, in a very general sense, in the foundational values of zoology as practiced in Japan and China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and thus that the story may be a better gateway to understanding the ways in which Lu Xun envisioned the mixed impact of new political economies on private life than a source text for queer studies. At the same time, however, this essay emphasizes that in ＂The Loner,＂ as elsewhere, accounting for the ＂heterosexual imperative＂ of early zoology （e.g., with its emphases on animal husbandry, propagation, reproduction） can have meaningful consequences for ＂queering＂ interpretations of received texts from literature, history of science, and beyond.
文摘This article focuses on the strategies that literature and cultural criticism adopt to represent trauma in comparison to a current medical definition. The contemporary medical definition, trauma as post-traumatic stress disorder （PTSD）, is the most narrow and specific definition to discuss trauma. The discourse of medicine does not necessarily match those of literature and cultural criticism, nor need they conform to each other. PTSD includes a collection of symptoms, any one of which might not have anything to do with traumatic experience, but which together point with increasing intensity to a psychological syndrome caused by traumatic shock. Although this is historically a recently defined syndrome （1980）, its features had long before attracted attention and been recorded under other terms and diagnoses. Although Chinese literature is only occasionally given to psychological realism, we do find occasional descriptions that strongly suggest aspects of the syndrome. Also, the aims and the needs of medicine and literature or cultural criticism are not necessarily the same, but it is important to explore in greater detail the aims and the needs of literature and cultural criticism.
