scholarly journals Virtue or Vice? Trauma Reflected in Mo Yan’s Frog

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-189
Author(s):  
Jinghui Wang
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Family Policy ◽  
Population Control ◽  
Control Policy ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Mo Yan ◽  
Epistolary Novel ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Ancient Chinese

The preoccupation with human nature is deeply rooted in literature. This paper starts from the ancient Chinese rudimentary understanding of human nature, then passes through Mo Yan’s Frog, an epistolary novel which covers the 30-year history of the Chinese population control policy through the description of an obstetrician in quest of her own human nature, and ends with her mediation and effort to retrieve goodness in the face of state will. Mo Yan, as well as many other Chinese people, does not deny that the onechild family policy had been laid down with a good intention to promote the general welfare of all citizens in China. But through a detailed reading of the novel Frog, it is argued that this policy might be a legalized illegality, which results in the schizophrenia of the main character out of the dilemma of justifying her deeds as virtue or vice. It is suggested that the experience of the female character in the novel, as well as in the contemporary Chinese society, should be investigated allegorically, and it reveals a universal issue about the complexity of human nature, for in a certain sense, one may start aiming to be Mother Theresa, but end in finding himself or herself merely a devoted clownlike servant of the state will.

NEW INSPIRATION FROM CHINA'S PHILOSOPHY OF "UNITY OF MAN AND HEAVEN": CONTEMPORARY INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS UNDER THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-34
Author(s):  
PU JINGXIN
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Human Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
New Type ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
The Ancient Chinese ◽  
Self Protection ◽  
Harmonious Community

Abstract: The danger of the novel coronavirus has not yet come to an end, and new variants have begun to attack the world. What philosophy should humankind’s strategy be based on when human society as a group is fighting against Covid-19, as the pandemic ravages the world? Unfortunately, political leaders of various countries have failed to achieve the overall awareness of attacking the pandemic for a shared future for mankind so far. In the face of the pandemic, mankind as a whole urgently needs to break through the narrow nation-oriented ideology of seeking only self-protection. The International Community should establish a new type of international cooperation featuring the concept of harmony of "all things under heaven as a unity". The international relations system dominated by the power ofwestern discourse is now in a bottleneck. The main aim of this article is to study the ancient Chinese wisdom of "the Unity of Man and Heaven" philosophy and build a global harmonious community. The author argues that the “export” of the aforementioned wisdom must be a priority for Chinese scholars. Keywords: Tao; Unity of Man and Heaven; Novel Coronavirus; Anthropocentrism; Harmony.

scholarly journals The main aspects of the early «classical» stage of the formation of the Confucian doctrine of traditional China

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (20) ◽  
pp. 2
Author(s):  
V. A. Lyzohub
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Fundamental Importance ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Sun Tzu ◽  
Government Ideology ◽  
The Ancient Chinese ◽  
High Literature

The article is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of the main sources, works that developed and supplemented the main elements of Confucian doctrine that appeared during the lifetime of Confucius. The main data on the life and work of thinkers who developed and supplemented the teachings of the Great Teacher of antiquity, the main options for translating and interpreting the names of treatises and basic terminology are outlined. It outlines the main provisions and ideas of the treatise "Zhong Yun" written by Confucius 'direct students, which is of fundamental importance for the process of historical evolution of Confucian doctrine, and clarifies, details and deepens the theses of Confucius' main book "Lun Yu". Against the background of the basic traditional Chinese picture, one of the key principles of Confucianism is pointed out – the principle of the "golden mean", the critical importance of personal virtue of rulers, and the main approaches to determining the formula of human nature. It is determined that the subject of interest "Zhong Yun", broader than the basic treatise "Lun Yu" and denotes cosmogonic and moral properties of the spirit, more richly interprets the inner content of the fundamental category of humanity ("Ren") constructs an integral system of categories, the sources of which are in the depths of ancient Chinese mythology. The main concepts and meanings of the work "Da Xue" ("great teaching") are established, one of the most fundamental traditional categories of which is the concept of "where" – personal "grace", "achievement, acquisition", and the uniqueness and special place of a person in the universe is the ability to follow "due justice". The quintessence of the DA Xue worldview system is the presumption of immanent virtue of human nature, which should radiate from those in power in the form of "humanity"; the basic thesis of the treatise is the attitude according to which the ruler who "does not show" virtue is deprived of his right to rule. It is stated that the work named after the outstanding thinker of traditional China, Meng Tzu, was of fundamental importance for the long evolution of Confucianism. (Meng Ke), who not only expanded the leading principles of Confucius, but also improved the teachings of the great teacher by actualizing and considering new issues. This approach transformed the teachings of Kun Tzu into a harmonious construction of judgments, which later turned into the official government ideology and worldview system of the Great Chinese society, which has existed for thousands of years. It is to Meng Tzu that the orientation to consider human nature moral goes back, one of his most original ideas is the concept of the heart-mind, which is provided on the one hand by an innate, intuitive ability, moral instinct, and on the other by benevolence. On the contrary, the approaches of another thinker, Sun Tzu, were completely antagonistic to Meng Tzu's ideas and proved the conclusion that human nature is evil. Sun Tzu's concept is located exactly on the border between Confucianism and legalism, but the Thinker (unlike the legists) believed that it was not punishments and rewards that should curb the evil nature of a person, but moral improvement and high literature, that is, culture. Sun Tzu was the first in Confucianism and proved the concept of an enlightened monarchy based on the principle of both traditional morality and the authority and power of the law. Against the background of the study of significant monographic literature, conclusions are drawn about the almost instantaneous beginning of the complex deepening, improvement and development of teaching, already by the first students of Confucius. Confucianism was formed as a method of interpreting the ancient Chinese system of symbols and concepts, categories laid down in mythological form in an active, active spirit. The development of Confucian doctrine was due to the incorporation of elements of other teachings. Confucianism essentially developed through finding common ground with other Chinese doctrines.  The key idea that emerged in the development of Confucianism is the statement that everything in a person, including his inner world, is just a reflection of the natural world, and the restoration of perfect social institutions will not mechanically restore perfect order in the Middle Kingdom. The core of the DA Xue ideological system is the assumption of the inner virtue (de) of human nature, which must be shown by those in power. In the course of its long evolution, Confucian traditional thought put certain fundamental problems and categories on the agenda much earlier than European thinkers did, of course, at the ancient, traditional level synchronous with that distant century  

Beckett's Watt and Monastic Tradition

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-109
Author(s):  
Kristen Marangoni
Keyword(s):  
Boarding School ◽  
Illuminated Manuscripts ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Geometric Shapes ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Book Of Kells ◽  
The Face ◽  
Choral Arrangements ◽  
Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts

The enigmatic setting of Beckett's novel Watt has been compared to places as diverse as an insane asylum, a boarding school, a womb, and a concentration camp. Watt's experience at Knott's house does seem suggestive of all of these, and yet it may more readily conform to the setting of a monastery. The novel is filled with chants, meditations, choral arrangements, hierarchical classifications, and even silence, all highly evocative of a monastic lifestyle. Some of Watt's dialogue (such as his requests for forgiveness or reflections on the nature of mankind) further echoes various Catholic liturgies. Watt finds little solace in these activities, however. He feels that they are largely rote and purposeless as they are focused on Knott, a figure who in many ways defies linguistic description and physical know-ability. Watt's meditations and rituals become, then, empty catechisms without answers, something that is reflected in the extreme difficulty that Watt has communicating. In the face of linguistic and liturgical instability, the Watt notebooks present a counter reading that can be found in the thousand plus doodles that line its pages. The drawings reinforce as well as subvert their textual counterpart, and they function in many ways as the images in medieval illuminated manuscripts. The doodles in Watt often take the form of decorative letters, elaborate marginal drawings, and depictions of a variety of people and animals, and many of its doodles offer uncanny resemblances in form or theme to those in illuminated manuscripts like The Book of Kells. Doodles of saints, monks, crosses, and scribes even give an occasional pictorial nod to the monastic setting in which illuminated manuscripts were usually produced (and remind us of the monastic conditions in which Beckett found himself writing much of Watt). Beckett's doodles not only channel this medium of illuminated manuscripts, they also modernize its application. Instead of neat geometric shapes extending down the page, his geometric doodle sequences are often abstracted, fragmented, and nonlinear. Beckett also occasionally modernized the content of illuminated manuscripts: instead of the traditional sacramental communion table filled with candles, bread and wine, Beckett doodles a science lab table where Bunsen burners replaces candles and wine glasses function as beakers. It is through these modernized images that Watt attempts to draw contemporary relevance from a classic art form and to restore (at least partial) meaning to rote traditions.

Mansfield Park

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Austen ◽  
Jane Stabler
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Mansfield Park ◽  
Sexual Jealousy ◽  
The Family ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face

‘Me!’ cried Fanny … ‘Indeed you must excuse me. I could not act any thing if you were to give me the world. No, indeed, I cannot act.’ At the age of ten, Fanny Price leaves the poverty of her Portsmouth home to be brought up among the family of her wealthy uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, in the chilly grandeur of Mansfield Park. There she accepts her lowly status, and gradually falls in love with her cousin Edmund. When the dazzling and sophisticated Henry and Mary Crawford arrive, Fanny watches as her cousins become embroiled in rivalry and sexual jealousy. As the company starts to rehearse a play by way of entertainment, Fanny struggles to retain her independence in the face of the Crawfords’ dangerous attractions; and when Henry turns his attentions to her, the drama really begins… This new edition does full justice to Austen’s complex and subtle story, placing it in its Regency context and elucidating the theatrical background that pervades the novel.

La Bête humaine

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Émile Zola
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Technological Progress ◽  
Second Empire ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Context ◽  
The Future

Did possessing and killing amount to the same thing deep within the dark recesses of the human beast? La Bete humaine (1890), is one of Zola’s most violent and explicit works. On one level a tale of murder, passion and possession, it is also a compassionate study of individuals derailed by atavistic forces beyond their control. Zola considered this his ‘most finely worked’ novel, and in it he powerfully evokes life at the end of the Second Empire in France, where society seemed to be hurtling into the future like the new locomotives and railways it was building. While expressing the hope that human nature evolves through education and gradually frees itself of the burden of inherited evil, he is constantly reminding us that under the veneer of technological progress there remains, always, the beast within. This new translation captures Zola's fast-paced yet deliberately dispassionate style, while the introduction and detailed notes place the novel in its social, historical, and literary context.

scholarly journals Sex Differences in Spatial Activity and Anxiety Levels in the COVID-19 Pandemic from Evolutionary Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1110
Author(s):  
Olga Semenova ◽  
Julia Apalkova ◽  
Marina Butovskaya
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Risks ◽  
Economic Losses ◽  
General Level ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Health Attitudes ◽  
Spatial Activity ◽  
Sexual Specialization ◽  
The Face ◽  
Novel Virus ◽  
Virus Spreading

Despite the enforced lockdown regime in late March 2020 in Russia, the phenomenon of the continued virus spreading highlighted the importance of studies investigating the range of biosocial attributes and spectrum of individual motivations underlying the permanent presence of the substantial level of spatial activity. For this matter, we conducted a set of surveys between March and June 2020 (N = 492). We found that an individual’s health attitude is the most consistent factor explaining mobility differences. However, our data suggested that wariness largely determines adequate health attitudes; hence, a higher level of wariness indirectly reduced individual mobility. Comparative analysis revealed the critical biosocial differences between the two sexes, potentially rooted in the human evolutionary past. Females were predisposed to express more wariness in the face of new environmental risks; therefore, they minimize their mobility and outdoor contacts. In contrast to them, the general level of spatial activity reported by males was significantly higher. Wariness in the males’ sample was less associated with the novel virus threat, but to a great extent, it was predicted by the potential economic losses variable. These findings correspond to the evolutionary predictions of sexual specialization and the division of family roles.

scholarly journals Frog Metaphors in Mo Yan’s Novel 蛙 /UA55/ (Frog): A Cognitive Perspective

MANUSYA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 122-153
Author(s):  
Yao Siqi
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Mo Yan ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
One Child Policy ◽  
Child Policy ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
George Lakoff ◽  
Chinese Author

《蛙》/ua55/ (frog) by the Nobel Prize winning Chinese author Mo Yan describes China’s changing its highly controversial one - child policy and system of forced abortions over the past half-century. Frog metaphors are omnipresent throughout the novel. The present study aims to investigate these metaphors within the framework of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and the “GREAT CHAIN OF BEING” system of George Lakoff and Mark Turner (1989) to deepen our understanding of their nature and manifestations. Zoltán Kövecses’s (2002) “HUMAN BEINGS ARE ANIMALS” and “ANIMALS ARE HUMAN BEINGS” were also considered as cognitive metaphorical models. Moreover, the viewpoint of “phonetic metaphor” initially proposed by Ivan Fónagy (1999) was also taken into account. Results were that in Mo Yan’s work, the frog plays an essential role in the conceptualizing conventional views of certain areas in China. The analysis demonstrates how a cognitive approach offers an effective way to explore the cognitive basis of the text’s view on the complex relationship between the basic human rights and the dilemmas of living in a repressive society. This paper also hopes to make a certain contribution to comprehending frog metaphors in terms of more clearly delineated concepts and ideology reflecting China’s real society of a one-child policy and its traditional counter - policy notion.

Literary Experimentation in Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues: Transcending "Critical Attitudes" in the Face of Societal Ruination

2011 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Adrian J. Wallbank
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
British Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Concerted Effort ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
The Face ◽  
Literary Techniques

Adrian J. Wallbank, "Literary Experimentation in Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues: Transcending 'Critical Attitudes' in the Face of Societal Ruination" (pp. 1–36) In the aftermath of the French "Revolution Controversy," middle-class evangelical writers made a concerted effort to rehabilitate the moral fabric of British society. Hannah More's Cheap Repository Tracts (1795–98) are recognized as pivotal within this program, but in this essay I question whether they were really as influential as has been supposed. I argue that autobiographical evidence from the period demonstrates an increasing skepticism toward overt didacticism, and that despite their significant and undeniable penetration within working-class culture, the Cheap Repository Tracts, if not all "received ideologies," were increasingly being rejected by their readers. This essay examines the important contribution that Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues (1801) made to this arena. Hill, like many of his contemporaries, felt that British society was facing ruination, but he also recognized that overt moralizing and didacticism was no longer palatable or effective. I argue that Hill thus experimented with an array of literary techniques—many of which closely intersect with developments occurring within the novel and sometimes appear to contradict or undermine the avowed seriousness of evangelicalism—that not only attempt to circumvent what Jonathan Rose has described as the "critical attitudes" of early-nineteenth-century readers, but also effectively map the "transitional" nature of the shifting literary and social terrains of the period. In so doing, Hill contributed signally to the evolution of the dialogue form (which is often synonymous with mentoring and didacticism), since his use of conversational mimesis and satire predated the colloquialism of John Wilson's Noctes Ambrosianae (1822–35) and Walter Savage Landor's Imaginary Conversations (1824–29).

The Politics of Living Death in Nuruddin Farah's Sweet and Sour Milk

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-103
Author(s):  
Peter Leman
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Common Fate ◽  
Sour Milk ◽  
Living Dead ◽  
The Face

Abstract This article examines Nuruddin Farah's 1979 novel Sweet and Sour Milk, asking how we read representations of postcolonial mourning and living death in the context of global authoritarianism. The first novel in Farah's influential dictatorship trilogy, Sweet and Sour Milk introduces us to “the General,” a fictionalized version of Siyad Barre, who ruled Somalia from 1969 to 1991. Like Barre's, the General's power exemplifies what Achille Mbembe calls “necropolitics,” or “the contemporary subjugation of life to the power of death.” The General's necropower manifests, peculiarly, as a politics of substitution—that is, when he takes a life, he leaves something in its place. Rebels do not simply disappear; they are killed and then given sycophantic zombie afterlives in the General's propaganda. In response to this politics of substitution, Farah explores a politics of mourning, which insists upon the irreplaceability of lost love objects and thereby broadly reveals what truly can and cannot be substituted. The General insists on the uniqueness of his power, for example, but Farah reveals it to be a cliché, easily substituted by that of other dictators throughout history. Cliché becomes revolutionary in this way, suggesting that dictators share a common fate: they will be deposed or, eventually, die of old age. However, like a horde of the living dead, others like them will return. The article concludes with analysis of the apparent pessimism of this point and the global implications of Farah's ideas about both necropolitics and the limits of the novel form in the face of authoritarian power.

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