Description
Book SynopsisDuring much of China’s tumultuous 20th century, May 4th and Maoist iconoclasts regarded their classical literary heritage as a burden to be dislodged in the quest for modernization. This volume demonstrates how the traditions that had deeply impressed earlier generations of Western writers like Goethe and Voltaire did not lose their lustre; to the contrary, a fascination with these past riches sprouted with renewed vigour among Euro-American poets, novelists, and other cultural figures after the fall of imperial China in 1911. From Petrograd to Paris, and from São Paolo to San Francisco, China’s premodern poetry, theatre, essays, and fiction inspired numerous prominent writers and intellectuals. The contributors survey the fruits of this engagement in multiple Western languages and nations.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction Stephen Roddy and Zong-qi Cai 1 Walter Benjamin’s China William Cheung 2 The Chinese Written Character and the Reinvention of Western and Chinese Poetry: Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound Xiaohui Zhang and Zong-qi Cai 3 A Semiopoetic Reimagination of Concreteness: Chinese Ideograms in Haroldo de Campos Inez Zhou 4 A Poet-Knight-Errant Traveling North: Three Russian Poets’ Translations of Li Bai Xiaolu Ma 5 Robert Hans van Gulik and the Reinvention of Chinese Detective Fiction Yunte Huang 6 Rethinking Pearl S. Buck and Tanci Fiction Yu Zhang 7 Transcultural, Transmedial Reinvention: Shuihu zhuan 水滸傳 (Water Margin) from Chinese Classic to Italian Comic Art Martina Caschera 8 A Post-Orientalist Turn: Pascal Quignard, Michèle Métail, and China Xiaofan Amy Li 9 Global South Feminisms in Maxine Hong Kingston’s Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts and Patricia Galvão’s Industrial Park Ana Paulina Lee 10 Sino-Pacifism: China in the Peace Work(s) of Maxine Hong Kingston, Kenneth Rexroth, & Lou Harrison Stephen Roddy Index
