Madeleine Thien's Chinese Encyclopedia: Facts, Musics, Sympathies

Genre ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-244
Author(s):  
Ivan Delazari
Keyword(s):  
Chinese History ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Music And Literature ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Goldberg Variations ◽  
Archaeology Of Knowledge ◽  
Sensitive Issues ◽  
Experiential Backgrounds

This article explores the “encyclopedic” properties of Madeleine Thien's Do Not Say We Have Nothing (2016), seeking to define the novel as inherently comparative—that is, providing, in Edward Said's words, “a comparative or, better, a contrapuntal perspective” on the world with no need for a second counterpart text to draw cross-literary parallels. Written from a transpacific narratorial stance of a millennial Vancouver-based daughter of Chinese immigrants, the narrative communicates her secondhand knowledge about the traumatic twentieth-century history of the People's Republic of China, accumulated in multiple alternating substories of ordinary individuals’ “practical past” as opposed to official historiography. The article likens Thien's patchwork storytelling to Jorge Luis Borges's apocryphal “Chinese” encyclopedia and novel, to the premodern equation between language and reality discussed in Michel Foucault's “archaeology of knowledge,” to classical Chinese novels as described by Goethe and Franco Moretti, and to J. S. Bach's polyphonic layout of the Goldberg Variations. Constructing sympathetic networks of music and literature, Do Not Say We Have Nothing facilitates readerly immersion, yet its fictional storyworld may not feel universally plausible. Sharing its writer's experience of teaching Thien in Hong Kong, the article suggests that a critique of the novel's Western, nearly Orientalist standpoint with respect to sensitive issues of recent Chinese history does not dismiss the contrapuntal outlook Thien's readers are invited to adopt beyond their experiential backgrounds. Reading Thien, one learns to hear the world's polyphony. That, and not a comprehensive multitude of facts summarizing a national mentality and coherent knowledge about the world, makes Do Not Say We Have Nothing encyclopedic.

scholarly journals Main Lines of Chinese Foreign Policy from the Opening to the Present

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 151
Author(s):  
Rafael Martín
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Chinese Foreign Policy ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Global World ◽  
Chinese Diplomacy

The history of the international relations of the People’s Republic of China contains lines of action that should not go unnoticed. These lines are the consequence of the extraordinary circumstances that have surrounded the country since its proclamation in 1949, then within the framework of the Cold War, but with a huge burden of personality and ideology. Chinese history and culture, thus, have shaped their own context from which the events that took place around them were understood. The energetic personality of Mao and his ideology, the pragmatism of Deng Xiaoping, and the vicissitudes experienced by the world from the Cold War to the present, have created a cosmos of diverse circumstances that nevertheless do not detract from the fact that Chinese diplomacy has wellmarked lines of action, flexible, but immutable in time, and which are typical of their personality and idiosyncrasy. To understand the international relations of a country is to understand the soul of its citizens, because this is often reflected in the others. China has lived these years its inclusion in the new global world without forgetting the<br />patterns that were already recognizable in distant times.

The Oxford History of the Novel in English

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
English Language ◽  
Book History ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Novel ◽  
History Of The Novel ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Volume Nine of this series traces the development of the ‘world novel’, that is, English-language novels written throughout the world, beyond Britain, Ireland, and the United States. Focusing on the period up to 1950, the volume contains survey chapters and chapters on major writers, as well as chapters on book history, publishing, and the critical contexts of the work discussed. The text covers periods from renaissance literary imaginings of exotic parts of the world like Oceania, through fiction embodying the ideology and conventions of empire, to the emergence of settler nationalist and Indigenous movements and, finally, the assimilations of modernism at the beginnings of the post-imperial world order. The book, then, contains chapters on the development of the non-metropolitan novel throughout the British world from the eighteenth to the mid twentieth centuries. This is the period of empire and resistance to empire, of settler confidence giving way to doubt, and of the rise of indigenous and post-colonial nationalisms that would shape the world after World War II.

Camus's Absurd and the World of Melville's Confidence-Man

PMLA ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-27
Author(s):  
Leon F. Seltzer
Keyword(s):  
Careful Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Confidence Man ◽  
Ugly Duckling ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

In recent years, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, a difficult work and for long an unjustly neglected one, has begun to command increasingly greater critical attention and esteem. As more than one contemporary writer has noted, the verdict of the late Richard Chase in 1949, that the novel represents Melville's “second best achievement,” has served to prompt many to undertake a second reading (or at least a first) of the book. Before this time, the novel had traditionally been the one Melville readers have shied away from—as overly discursive, too rambling altogether, on the one hand, or as an unfortunate outgrowth of the author's morbidity on the other. Elizabeth Foster, in the admirably comprehensive introduction to her valuable edition of The Confidence-Man (1954), systematically traces the history of the book's reputation and observes that even with the Melville renaissance of the twenties, the work stands as the last piece of the author's fiction to be redeemed. Only lately, she comments, has it ceased to be regarded as “the ugly duckling” of Melville's creations. But recognition does not imply agreement, and it should not be thought that in the past fifteen years critics have reached any sort of unanimity on the novel's content. Since Mr. Chase's study, which approached the puzzling work as a satire on the American spirit—or, more specifically, as an attack on the liberalism of the day—and which speculated upon the novel's controlling folk and mythic figures, other critics, by now ready to assume that the book repaid careful analysis, have read the work in a variety of ways. It has been treated, among other things, as a religious allegory, as a philosophic satire on optimism, and as a Shandian comedy. One critic has conveniently summarized the prevailing situation by remarking that “the literary, philosophical, and cultural materials in this book are fused in so enigmatic a fashion that its interpreters have differed as to what the book is really about.”

scholarly journals Intermingling of History and Politics in The God of Small Things

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 138
Author(s):  
Md. Abdul Momen Sarker ◽  
Md. Mominur Rahman
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Indian Culture ◽  
Arundhati Roy ◽  
Political Condition ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Democratic Election ◽  
Small Things ◽  
First Time

Suzanna Arundhati Roy is a post-modern sub-continental writer famous for her first novel The God of Small Things. This novel tells us the story of Ammu who is the mother of Rahel and Estha. Through the story of Ammu, the novel depicts the socio-political condition of Kerala from the late 1960s and early 1990s. The novel is about Indian culture and Hinduism is the main religion of India. One of the protagonists of this novel, Velutha, is from a low-caste community representing the dalit caste. Apart from those, between the late 1960s and early 1990s, a lot of movements took place in the history of Kerala. The Naxalites Movement is imperative amid them. Kerala is the place where communism was established for the first time in the history of the world through democratic election. Some vital issues of feminism have been brought into focus through the portrayal of the character, Ammu. In a word, this paper tends to show how Arundhati Roy has successfully manifested the multifarious as well as simultaneous influences of politics in the context of history and how those affected the lives of the marginalized. Overall, it would minutely show how historical incidents and political ups and downs go hand in hand during the political upheavals of a state.

On Fat Clothes: Unraveling Plus-Size Design Discourse

Design Issues ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-28
Author(s):  
Lauren Downing Peters
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Disability Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
Fashion Theory ◽  
History Of

Abstract This article considers the possibilities and limitations of plus-size clothing— a subcategory of ready-to-wear that is deeply embedded in the history of dieting, exercise, standardized sizing, and the industrialization of clothing manufacturing in the United States. In doing so, it draws on fashion theory and disability theory in exposing how plus-size clothing functions as a normalizing mechanism, thereby inhibiting innovation in this sector. The article concludes with a counterexploration of the possibilities of “fat clothes” and the novel w ays of seeing and existing in the world that they might enable.

“Circles and Circles of Sorrow”: In the Wake of Morrison's Sula

PMLA ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 114 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip Novak
Keyword(s):  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Recursive Structure ◽  
Bearing Witness ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Toni Morrison's Sula develops out of and centers on images of violence and violation, proffering itself as a catalog of traumatic experiences, of literal and figurative deaths. Such traumas almost invariably register as watched, the novel thus functioning, by means of its characters, as an act of bearing witness. Inasmuch as the story Sula tells is framed by passages mourning the loss of the world the novel imagines, the narrative structurally articulates an absence. Together these elements—Sula's thematic preoccupation with witnessed dying and its insistence that the narrative mark loss—locate the novel's center of interest in grieving. Folding the history of loss it narrates within a recursive structure, Sula pitches itself against the conventional notion that mourning must be worked through: indeed, the novel implicitly argues for—and persistently works to effect—a sustaining of grief. To move beyond mourning in the context of continuing cultural fragility, the novel suggests, may well constitute a surrender to the processes of cultural absorption and dispersal Sula describes toward its conclusion.

History as Destiny: Gobineau, H. S. Chamberlain and Spengler

1997 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 73-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Biddiss
Keyword(s):  
Central Character ◽  
New Work ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

THE novel which won the 1987 Booker Prize was Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger. Its central character is an historian whom, on the opening page, we find already near to death. Even so, she is meditating about the completion of a new work: ‘A history of the world. To round things off. I may as well—no more nit-picking stuff about Napoleon, Tito, the battle of Edgehill, Hernando Cortez … The works, this time. The whole triumphant murderous unstoppable chute—from the mud to the stars, universal and particular, your story and mine.’ And she adds: ‘I'm equipped, I consider; eclecticism has always been my hallmark.’

scholarly journals The metaphor of stopped time in the novel “The Tin Drum” by Günter Grass

2020 ◽  
pp. 34-40
Author(s):  
Kseniya Sergeevna Oparina
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Development ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Special Contribution ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Ethical Norms ◽  
Günter Grass

The goal of this article consist in interpretation of the major metaphor in G&uuml;nter Grass&rsquo; novel &ldquo;The Tin Drum&rdquo;, &nbsp;and coverage of its interrelation with symbolism of the image of the protagonist Oskar Matzerath. The subject of this research is the metaphor of stopped time. The time stops for Oscar with regards to physical and emotional development. Special attention is given to the fact that the protagonist of the novel, who comes into the world with adult intelligence, deliberately stops his development at the age of three. Using the indicated metaphor, the author of the novel forms the key traits of the image of the protagonists: perpetual child, demiurge, trickster. The novelty of this research and special contribution of the author consists in revelation of direct correlations between the aforementioned traits of the main character of the fundamental problems of human existence. A child who refuses to grow up, symbolizes infantilism and denial of the generally accepted socio-ethical norms. At the same time, G. Grass describes dissolution of the surrounding world and blames specific nation in the crimes against humanity, endowing Oskar Matzerath with the traits of trickster and demiurge. The acquired results can be used in textbooks on the history of foreign literature and culturology; as well as in writing term and graduation theses by students majoring in the humanities.

scholarly journals Did COVID-19 Lockdown Brew “Amphan” into a Super Cyclone?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Velu Vinoj ◽  
Debadatta Swain
Keyword(s):  
West Bengal ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Wind Speeds ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Super Cyclone ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Joint Typhoon Warning Center

The world witnessed one of the largest lockdowns in the history of mankind ever, spread over months in an attempt to contain the contact spreading of the novel coronavirus induced COVID-19. As billions around the world stood witness to the staggered lockdown measures, a storm brewed up in the urns of the rather hot Bay of Bengal (BoB) in the Indian Ocean realm. When Thailand proposed the name &ldquo;Amphan&rdquo; (pronounced as &ldquo;Um-pun&rdquo; meaning &lsquo;the sky&rsquo;), way back in 2004, little did they realize that it was the christening of the 1st super cyclone (Category-5 hurricane) of the century in this region and the strongest on the globe this year. At the peak, Amphan clocked wind speeds of 168 mph (Joint Typhoon Warning Center) with the pressure drop to 925 h.Pa. What started as a depression in the southeast BoB at 00 UTC on 16th May 2020 developed into a Super Cyclone in less than 48 hours and finally made landfall in the evening hours of 20th May 2020 through the Sundarbans between West Bengal and Bangladesh. Did the impact of the COVID-19 induced lockdown drive an otherwise typical pre-monsoon tropical depression into a super cyclone?

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document