Cross-culturalStudieswithanIntellectualAgenda:AnInterviewwithProfessorErsuDing/YUHongbingDINGErsu

Abstract： This interview with Professor Ding Ersu comprises six main aspects, ranging from theory of tragedy through semiotics to cross-cultural studies of literature. Professor Ding began by providing a unique trajectory of his own interdisciplinary academic development followed by a succession of enlightening comments on classic and modern Western tragedy as well as tragic theory in general. From there Professor Ding went on to discuss two monumental figures in Chinese studies of tragedy in relation to their counterparts in the Western tradition. His next topic was on the enormous potential and great significance of semiotics as an “interdisciplinary enterprise” and backed up his stance with a detailed account of relevant scholarly works and anecdotes. He then segued into an insightful observation on what he calls “cross-cultural studies with an intellectual agenda” where scholarly interactions are carried out for the purpose of intellectual illuminations. Last but not least, Professor Ding stressed the importance of mastering one or two foreign languages so that our perspective on things becomes more global. He also hoped to see more logical reasoning than empty pronouncements in our scholarly publications.

Keywords： traditions of tragic drama; theory of tragedy; comparative literature; semiotics; intellectual illumination

ExploringChineseCultureandWesternCulture:OverseasSinologyStudiesbyProfessorZhangXiping/YAOJunlingZHANGXiping

Abstract： Professor Zhang Xiping, the founder and leading scholar of overseas sinology in the new era, focused on such issues as “definition and academic discipline setting of overseas sinology”, “how do young scholars start to study the discipline?” and “how do middle-aged scholars break through the bottleneck of thinking and vision”. The teachers and students who are studying foreign languages and literature explore the questions about “translation of classics”, which guides young scholars to have a better understanding of their own jobs and positions that is to combine personal career development with the mission of “telling Chinese stories well and introducing China to the world”, so as to devote themselves to the specific work of inheriting the Chinese culture.

Keywords: Chinese and western culture; overseas sinology; Zhang Xiping

“SpaceandPlace”intheModernWar:TheConstructionofNationalIdentityinE.L.Doctorow’sTheMarch/HUYamin

Abstract： The Civil War is an important turning point in the process of American modernization.TheMarch, E. L. Doctorow’s novel about the Civil War, vividly reflects American people’s exploration of new life and identity in this modern war, after they are uprooted from the familiar place and thrown into an unknown space. In the new space created by the modern war, people enter a society of strangers, both enjoying the appeal and freedom from the future space and feeling more uncertainties. The process of constructing a new national identity between space and place in the modern war identifies with the process of American modernization.TheMarchexplores some important factors that influence American national identity.

Keywords: E. L. Doctorow;TheMarch; Space and Place; modern war; national identity

RelationalSpaceandClimateChangeFiction/LIUYing

Abstract： Climate change is a deterritorialized environmental crisis and also one of the causes of the emergence of the “relational space” theory that collapses the anthropocentrism and eco-regionalism. As a subgenre of science fiction, climate change fiction explores the cross-scaled relational spaces and plays an active role in tackling climate crisis. Barbara Kingsolver’sFlightBehaviorand other climate change fictions have provided new perspectives to think about the global climate change and its effect on place. By taking “relational space” as its conceptual framework, this paper discusses how mobilities of people, animals, information and capital are linked with global climate change, and how climate change deconstructs and reconstructs the locality of a place. The global climate challenges transcend regional and national borders. Although climate change fiction has yet to produce more substantial impact, it has already found its place in the cognitive mapping of the global climate change.

Keywords: climate change fiction; spatial criticism; spatial literary studies; relational space; mobility

“ArchipelagicThought”and“PoeticsofRelation”:édouardGlissant’sVisionof“Tout-Monde”andLiteratureSpace/GAOFangHUANGKeyi

Abstract： With specific references to Martinique and its unique geographical features, the French contemporary scholar édouard Glissant has presented an original and unique way of approaching the global cultural patterns. With his theoretical explanations of “Archipelagic thought” and “Poetics of Relation”, the world literature space has been furthur discussed and analyzed, and a new mode of viewing the overall literature driven by the notion of “Tout-Monde” is proposed, which brings inspiration to the thinking of world literature.

Keywords: Edouard Glissant; Archipelagic Thought; Poetics of Relation; Tout-Monde; world literature

RewritingofTextsandReconstructionofSubjects:OntheCreationofDottiebyNobelPrizeWinnerGurnah/ZHUZhenwuSUWenya

Abstract：Dottie, the third novel by Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, 2021 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, tells a story that a black girl Dottie who was born in England struggled to make a living and empower herself in London. It presents deep concerns about colonial issues and their consequences. An important reason for the novel’s success is that Gurnah inherited and rewrote the classic British Bildungsroman tradition represented by Dickens, and at the same time reconstructed African-based Bildungsroman, thus completing a postcolonial “writing back” of imperial narrative.

Keywords: Abdulrazak Gurnah;Dottie; Bildungsroman; rewriting and reconstruction

WhereIstheHome：MemoryWritingandIdentityConstructioninGurnah’sBytheSea/HUANGXiaHUANGHui

Abstract： Abdulrazak Gurnah, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021, is deeply concerned about the fate of Zanzibar and the predicament of African refugees. With the dual narrative perspective of Saleh Omar and Latif Mahmud, the novelBytheSeareveals the social change in the process of individual memory and explores the destiny of African refugee from the cultural perspectives. Back to the specific historical and cultural coordinates, Saleh’s identity transformation from Arab businessmen to political criminals and then to African refugees reproduces the historical memory and traumatic memory of Zanzibar and African which suffered from the colonial politics, ethnic violence and social reform among others. The memory writing inBytheSeaembodies Gurnah’s expectation for a better homeland to seek the reconciliation of suffering history and healing of traumatic memories, thus gradually achieving cultural integration and community building in a multicultural context.

Keywords:BytheSea； Abdulrazak Gurnah； African refugee； memory； identity

NatureWritingbyContemporaryAmericanIndianWomenPoets/DINGWenli

Abstract： Native American poetry has become an important part of American literature since Native American Renaissance in the late 1960s. Contemporary American Indian women poets, such as Wendy Rose and Linda Hogan, celebrate harmonious nature and traditional Indian cosmology in their works. This paper examines how they evaluate and restore the relations between nature and human beings, men and women facing white encroachment with its effects on Indian culture and values. By analyzing the strong ecological and female awareness expressed in their poetic works, this paper points out American Indian women poets’s discourse strategy of regaining their voices and constructing a complete and independent identity through literary expression.

Keywords: American Indian women poets; nature; ecological awareness; female awareness

Cooper’sSubversiveNarrativeAgainst“theSavages”andHisRacialCriticism/MAYueling

Abstract： Cooper’s portrayal of the native Americans is penetrating and profound, which has a foundational significance in the literary history. Traditionally, the native Americans that he portrays were distinguished as “good” and “bad”. This binary method weakens the complexity behind the creation of the characters. In fact, the “bad” Indians tend to maintain a more primitive “Indianness” than the “noble savages” do and they dare to resist the whites. Their attack on the whites reflects Cooper’s reflection on white civilization. This article explores Cooper’s American Indian writings from three aspects: the “firewater myth”, the “revenge” culture, and the image of Magua as a “villain-hero”, and suggests that Cooper’s writing subverts the stereotyped narrative of the Native Americans as “barbarians”, with a criticism on the racial discrimination in American society.

Keywords: James Fenimore Cooper; Indianness; firewater myth; revenge; criticism on racism

UnravelingtheDoubleBindofMindandBody:AStudyoftheEpochalVariationsontheFemaleIntellectualMotifinA.S.Byatt’sFiction/XULei

Abstract： Contemporary British writer A. S. Byatt has endowed the Mind-Body problem, a classic western philosophical proposition, with a feminist twist in her literary works over the last five decades. Through recontextualizing the philosophical tension between mind and body in the lingering dilemma that British female intellectuals have been faced with, Byatt’s novels, spanning from her debutTheShadowoftheSuntoAWhistlingWoman, reveal a series of variations on the motif of female intellectual from the 1950s to the early 21stcentury. Caught between the pursuits of the mind and the demands of the body, female intellectuals from different epochs, backgrounds and with different personality traits have demonstrated a shift from making an exclusive choice towards striking a dynamic balance.

Keywords: A. S. Byatt; Mind and Body; female intellectual; feminism

Re-examiningtheNewWomen’sWritinginAmericanLiterature/CHENGXin

Abstract： The rise of cultural studies and the emergence of pluralistic values in the 21stcentury have given rise to a rethinking of the New Women’s Writing. Compared with the New Woman in Britain during the same period, the American New Woman social ideal tends to be more dynamic, its pluralistic image breaks through the traditional concept of the New Woman, and American writers were more critical of the New Woman. Because of its reliance on popular culture and explicit political aspirations, New Women’s writing had been neglected by modernist literature. However, its reconstruction of gender and sexual relations expands the boundaries of traditional modernist literature and can be regarded as a critical text of high modernist art. At the same time, the New Woman in American literature is distinctly heterogeneous and multicultural, refreshing our understanding of the first generation of feminists and influencing contemporary feminists’ reconceptualization of mainstream ideology.

Keywords: the New Woman; American literature; modernism; postmodern

Melanctha’sWanderingandItsModernity/YUYing

Abstract：Melancthais a representative work of American modernist female writer Gertrude Stein. Impelled by uncertain racial identity and desire of exploring love and sex, the heroine Melanctha wanders often in different public spaces. This image of modernist female flneur reflects female’s seeking identity and freedom with the aim of fighting against traditional heterosexuality-based marriage and patriarchy. It further reveals the complex connection between female and modernity and thus offers female perspective and experience in modernity studies.

Keywords: Gertrude Stein; Melanctha; wander; Flneur; modernity

OntheAnthropologicalThoughtsofHerder’sFolkSongs/PANGWenwei

Abstract： The 18thcentury German thinker Johann Gottfried Herder was an important figure in the period of German Enlightenment, and a pioneer of modern anthropology and the father of modern folk literature and folklore. Anthropology is the foundation of Herder’s philosophical thoughts, while the collection of folk songs was his greatest contribution in the field of folk literature. Based on the interpretation of Herder’s anthropological foundation, the anthropological thoughts in Herder’s Folk Songs are analyzed from three aspects around folk songs and humans. Herder collected folk songs from various countries, sought the origin of humans in folk songs, and tried to create complete humans with folk songs and make people move towards humanity.

Keywords: Johann Gottfried Herder; Folk Songs; anthropology; humanity

OntheAcceptanceofTagorebyChineseModernPoetrySchool/QINPengju

Abstract： Tagore, as an Indian poet and writer with profound influence on China, has a profound relationship with Crescent School, Symbolism School and Aestheticism School in China. Based on typical cases, this paper analyzes the acceptance of Tagore by Chinese modernist writers from the perspective of influence relationship and parallel interpretation, and analyzes the coincidence of influence and the way of deep deviation. Starting from the school of modern Chinese poetry, Tagore’s poetry influenced the Chinese literary world in the 20thcentury in different historical stages, and varied with time and culture. Tagore promoted the modern transformation of Chinese poetry, and left a strong mark in the history of world literature.

Keywords: Tagore; Crescent School; Symbolism School; Aestheticism School

RevisitingBishop’sPoeticWorld:APostmodernSpatialInterpretation/HUANGXiaoping

Abstract： Elizabeth Bishop focuses on geological spaces and object positions in most of her poems. By employing juxtaposition, inversion and displacement and adopting a camera-like perspective in her habitual “useless concentration” on human spaces, she presents the modern people’s dilemma of ontological uncertainty, identity dislocation and spiritual exile and rootlessness, which are the direct result of their marginalized, fragmented and depth-less spatial experiences. The images of architectural and natural spaces manifest the poetess’ prophetic anticipation of the spatial turn in the postmodern era and her concern for human’s struggle for survival.

Keywords: Bishop; space; postmodern; ontological uncertainty; identity