This essay reviews Zhang Longxi's A History of Chinese Literature.The book covers Chinese literature from its very beginning to modern times.It emphasizes texts'literary and aesthetic qualities when evaluating...This essay reviews Zhang Longxi's A History of Chinese Literature.The book covers Chinese literature from its very beginning to modern times.It emphasizes texts'literary and aesthetic qualities when evaluating and historicizing literature.The book demonstrates the importance of canons in literary history,using Chinese tradition as an example.Therefore,it also brings the Chinese tradition into the broader framework of world literature.Reading Zhang's concise historical overview of Chinese literature,we can better understand the interplay between literary tradition and the individual talent.Zhang Longxi has skillfully combined the writing of a history of literature with literary criticism in this book.Zhang's successful attempt informs literary scholars of possible paradigms of compiling literary history in a post-cultural-studies theoretical context.展开更多
The writing of history has encountered many challenges in twenty-century theoretical discussions,and postmodernism and deconstruction in particular have made literary history all but impossible in the West.Because wor...The writing of history has encountered many challenges in twenty-century theoretical discussions,and postmodernism and deconstruction in particular have made literary history all but impossible in the West.Because world literature today remains the canonical works of Western literature,while much of the non-Western literatures and even“minor”"European literatures remain unknown and untranslated,a world history of literature is absolutely necessary to introduce the yet-unknown world literature to a global readership beyond the original linguistic and cultural milieux of those unknown literary works.Translating those yet-unknown works into English for a wider circulation is the first step to make world literature go beyond Eurocentrism,and writing a world history of literature will help us know the basic situation of the world's literary traditions from a truly global perspective.展开更多
文摘This essay reviews Zhang Longxi's A History of Chinese Literature.The book covers Chinese literature from its very beginning to modern times.It emphasizes texts'literary and aesthetic qualities when evaluating and historicizing literature.The book demonstrates the importance of canons in literary history,using Chinese tradition as an example.Therefore,it also brings the Chinese tradition into the broader framework of world literature.Reading Zhang's concise historical overview of Chinese literature,we can better understand the interplay between literary tradition and the individual talent.Zhang Longxi has skillfully combined the writing of a history of literature with literary criticism in this book.Zhang's successful attempt informs literary scholars of possible paradigms of compiling literary history in a post-cultural-studies theoretical context.
文摘The writing of history has encountered many challenges in twenty-century theoretical discussions,and postmodernism and deconstruction in particular have made literary history all but impossible in the West.Because world literature today remains the canonical works of Western literature,while much of the non-Western literatures and even“minor”"European literatures remain unknown and untranslated,a world history of literature is absolutely necessary to introduce the yet-unknown world literature to a global readership beyond the original linguistic and cultural milieux of those unknown literary works.Translating those yet-unknown works into English for a wider circulation is the first step to make world literature go beyond Eurocentrism,and writing a world history of literature will help us know the basic situation of the world's literary traditions from a truly global perspective.
