scholarly journals Books without Borders: Phạm Thận Duật (1825–1885) and the Culture of Knowledge in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Vietnam

2018 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
pp. 713-740
Author(s):  
Kathlene Baldanza
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Community Of Inquiry ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Classical Chinese ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
Chinese Texts

It is well-known that the educated elite of China, Vietnam, and other neighboring polities participated in a shared community of inquiry, but how did it work in practice? This article examines Phạm Thận Duật's 1856Hưng Hóa Gazetteerin order to discover the process by which knowledge was contested and produced within this broader culture of knowledge. Writing within the gazetteer genre, Phạm Thận Duật engaged with foundational classical Chinese texts, recent Vietnamese works, and the Qing-erakaozhengmovement of evidentiary scholarship. That he took himself to be participating in a literary culture that transcended Vietnam is clear from an analysis of his textual citations, as is his confidence in rejecting, reconfiguring, or adding to a transregional culture of knowledge. Phạm Thận Duật and others like him were autonomous contributors to a community of inquiry that transgressed political boundaries. For Vietnamese scholars, this community was rooted in classical texts but centered in Vietnam.

scholarly journals Rethinking nineteenth-century literary culture: British worlds, southern latitudes and hemispheric methods

2021 ◽  
pp. 002198942098201
Author(s):  
Sarah Comyn ◽  
Porscha Fermanis
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Indigenous Studies ◽  
Literary Cultures ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literary Canons ◽  
Methodological Position

Drawing on hemispheric, oceanic, and southern theory approaches, this article argues for the value of considering the nineteenth-century literary cultures of the southern settler colonies of Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa from within an interconnected frame of analysis. First, because of their distinctive historical and structural conditions; second, because of the density of their interregional networks and relations across intersecting oceanic spaces; and third, because of the long history of racialized imperialist imaginaries of the south. This methodological position rethinks current approaches to “British world” studies in two important ways: first, by decoupling the southern settler colonies from studies of settler colonialism in North America; and second, by rebalancing its metropolitan and northern locus by considering south-south networks and relations across a complex of southern islands, oceans, and continents. Without suggesting either that imperial intercultural exchanges with Britain are unimportant or that there is a culturally homogenous body of pan-southern writing, we argue that nineteenth-century literary culture from colonial Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa — what we call a “southern archive” — can provide a counterbalance to northern biases and provide new purchase on nation-centred literary paradigms — one that reveals not just south-south transnational exchanges and structural homologies between southern genres, themes, and forms, but also allows us to acknowledge the important challenges to foundational accounts of national literary canons initiated by southern theory and Indigenous studies scholars.

scholarly journals Challenges in Translating Chinese Classics into English: Example of Biography of Huan Tan and Feng Yan from Book of the Later Han

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 115
Author(s):  
Qu Jingyi
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Literary Value ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Classical Chinese ◽  
Interdisciplinary Knowledge ◽  
Dynamic Growth ◽  
Chinese Texts

As one of the Early Four Historiographies, Fan Ye’s Book of the Later Han preserves significant works of both historical and literary value. This is something increasingly significant in response to the dynamic growth in popularity of classical Chinese texts among Western sinologists. Through reading the English translation of the “Biography of Huan Tan and Feng Yan” from the Book of the Later Han, the following<br />three issues are arguably noteworthy for the translator’s consideration. Firstly, the English translation may involve an<br />interim step of intralingual translation from classical Chinese to modern Chinese, before a subsequent interlingual translation from modern Chinese to English. While this facilitates the process of translation,<br />the vernacular translation also involves further risks in misinterpretation. Secondly, translation of such historiographical work which consists of literary works by various writers with numerous historical references,<br />not only requires the translator to conduct additional analysis and write explanatory notes, it also makes the English output inaccessible to most readers. Thirdly,<br />the highly interdisciplinary knowledge in relevant historiography not only demands a high quality of competency in translators, but also arguably acts as a catalyst for further academic research in the process of close reading and research. This paper intends to analyse the above three issues through a case study on the “Biography of Huan Tan and Feng Yan”, thereby demonstrating how the translation of Chinese classics is an<br />arduous yet meaningful challenge.

The lyric oeuvre of Afanasy Fet and Chinese idyllic poems

2021 ◽  
pp. 222-232
Author(s):  
Zh. Lu
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Lyric Poetry ◽  
Chinese Poetry ◽  
Classical Chinese ◽  
Classical Chinese Poetry ◽  
Man And Nature ◽  
Chinese Texts ◽  
The Ancient Chinese ◽  
Light And Shadow

There are compelling similarities between Afanasy Fet’s lyric poetry and classical Chinese lyric poetry. This connection is traced in the article with specific examples. Fet, carried away by the ideas of Schopenhauer, argued that thepoetic feeling lives in every person and can be called the sixth and highest feeling. In classical Chinese poetry, the Confucian concept of ‘the sense of things,’ the Taoist formula ‘words and forms’ and the idea of the unity of man and nature played an important role. With characteristic fixation of subtle changes of light and shadow, with the transmission of flushed feelings, Fet’s oeuvre reminds the readers of the ancient Chinese lyric poetry. Like classic Chinese texts, Fet’s poems are textbooks where the idea of the unity of man and nature is developed. In both Chinese poetry and Fet’s works, human life goes into natural life, gaining eternity in the nature. As a result, although Fet was not familiar with Chinese culture, the intuitions that fed his work surprisingly coincided with pictorial techniques as a way of conveying emotion in classical Chinese poetry, separated from him by many centuries.

The locomotive and the tree: industrial Pittsburgh's late nineteenth-century literary culture

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Brianne Jaquette
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Carnegie Museum ◽  
Regional Literature ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Nineteenth Century American Literature ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
To Come

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] In The Locomotive and the Tree, I challenge the popular myth that the city of Pittsburgh was devoid of literary culture prior to the construction of the Carnegie museum, library, and concert hall in 1895. Pittsburgh, in fact, had a robust and thriving culture in general and specifically a literary scene that was rooted in newspaper production and was invested in the industrial aspects of the city�s growth. Much of the literary material coming from Pittsburgh was nonfiction or poetry, and it was in these forms that writers in Pittsburgh were able to come to terms with the changes taking place in a rapidly industrializing city. In contrast to scholarship that has emphasized the role of regional literature in this time period, my project uses periodical and print culture studies to analyze the localized literary culture of Pittsburgh. Instead of looking broadly at national literary culture that was disseminated from the East Coast outward, I argue for the need for research that broadens the scope of late-nineteenth century American literature by examining smaller networks of print.

Transatlantic Transformations of Romanticism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Sandy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
William Faulkner ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Henry David Thoreau ◽  
Emily Dickinson ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Wallace Stevens ◽  
First Century ◽  
British Romanticism

This book presents innovative readings of literary works of British Romanticism and its influence on twentieth- and twenty-first-century American literary culture and thought. It traverses the traditional critical boundaries of prose and poetry in American and Romantic and post-Romantic writing. Analysing significant works by nineteenth-century writers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Emily Dickinson, as well as the later writings of William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Saul Bellow, Toni Morrison and Wallace Stevens, the book reasserts the significance of second-generation Romantic writers for American literary culture. Sandy reassesses our understanding of Romantic inheritance and influence on post-Romantic aesthetics, subjectivity and the natural world in the American imagination.

Early Sino-Japanese Literature

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wiebke Denecke
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Japanese Literature ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
Chinese Texts ◽  
Textual Culture

Sino-Japanese literature stands out among the Chinese-style literatures of East Asia for the wealth of texts preserved from the early period, its complex symbiosis with a flourishing vernacular tradition, and its pervasive reliance on gloss-reading techniques of Chinese texts (kundoku). These techniques allowed the transformation of Chinese texts into Japanese sound, syntax, and morphology and enabled a distinctive linguistic and creative distance from continental literary production. This chapter surveys the literary culture and production of Early Japan (Asuka, Nara and Heian Periods, seventh through twelfth centuries). After introducing the debates about the varied nomenclature of the corpus of “Sino-Japanese Literature” (kanbun; also called Japanese Literature in Chinese), it sketches the contexts of the emergence of Sino-Japanese textual culture and literature in Japan and gives an overview of major texts in their cultural context. It concludes with reflections on what students of China can learn from Sino-Japanese Literature.

Towards Canons of Philological Method for Analyzing Classical Chinese Texts

Early China ◽  
1977 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 18-30
Author(s):  
John S. Cikoski
Keyword(s):  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Progressive Increase ◽  
Central China ◽  
Methods Of Analysis ◽  
Classical Chinese ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Scientific Statement ◽  
Chinese Texts ◽  
Constant Improvement

By Classical Chinese (CC) I mean the language of the texts such as the Tzuoo Juann, the Mencius, the Shyuntzyy and others that we believe to have been written in Northern and Central China during the period 500 - 200 B.C.In this article I am going to take up the banner of the late George Kennedy and, at the risk of appearing somewhat peevish, try to make the case that CC textual analysis needs to be done with much greater rigor than it generally is. Kennedy said in 1953,“Sinologists need to recognize that languages are not private cathedrals of mystery adapted for special revelations and pontifical decrees. The materials of language are as wide open as the rocks and the trees, and people have been looking at them for a long time with varying reactions. From the animistic recognition of each tree or rock as the special abode of a particular spirit we have moved to a classification of the features common to all trees, and to a scientific statement of the features that make a tree different from a rock. There has been a progressive increase in our perceptiveness towards these things, and constant improvement in our methods of analysis and description.” (George A. Kennedy, “Another note on yen,” HJAS 16, 1-2[1953], p. 236)

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