Showing papers in "Journal of Literature and Art Studies in 2017"

Principles of “Constructivism” in Foreign Language Teaching

Abstract: The core ideas of Constructivism were mentioned by John Dewey, so it is not a new idea. Constructivism claims that each learner constructs knowledge individually and socially. The “glue” that holds the constructs together is meaning. Knowledge is not “out there”, as the realist philosophers such as Plato claimed. Knowledge is always an interpretation of reality, not a “true” representation of it. Thus, the aims of this study are: (1) to shed the light on the schools of constructivism, and (2) to clarify the principles of the constructivist learning in general and in language teaching in particular.

Giorgio Vasari’s Fine Arts From the Vite of 1550: The Splendor of Creativity and Design

Abstract: Giorgio Vasari’s conception of artistic creativity is related to his theory of painting. He proposes two alternatives in a painter’s development or achievement of artistic creativity: imitation (imitazione) and invention (invenzione). Imitation is the copying of art as a method of learning, whereas invention is independent of imitation and constitutes the means for conceiving artistic ideas. Imitation serves to guide and teach the artist in composing and creating perfection. Vasari maintains that artists must study antiquity and the masters, so that they may learn how others acquired the experience of imitating nature. For Vasari, imitation draws upon three different sources: the first two are copying from nature (copia dal vero) and the third one is selecting from one’s work (imitare se stessi). He emphasizes that copying from nature is important for the artist so that he may learn to create forms that are alive as visualized in the Fine Arts.

Is Seeing Believing? A Critical Analysis of Japanese Colonial Photographs of Korea

Abstract: In order to assess Roland Barthes’ argument that interpretation of photography depends on cultural codes embedded therein, a collection of photos from the Japanese Government-General of Chōsen (GGC), which controlled Korea 1910-1945, were examined. These colonial images and associated text, commonly in English, were aimed primarily at the West, with which the Japanese sought alignment. Of the three common categories of GGC photos, “scientific” or “anthropological” images corresponded with portrayals by Western colonial powers of the supposed inferior nature of subjugated peoples and cultures. Individuals in such pictures tend to lose their identities and are reduced to a stereotype, less human than the observer. “Before and after” photos depicted alleged GGC progress in such areas as education and infrastructure. Pictures of “happy colonial subjects” conveyed an impression of Koreans enjoying the benevolence of the new administration. While this photojournalism favorably impressed some Westerners, others employed images of the 1919 Korean uprising, and its suppression, to discredit the Japanese. The overall assessment demonstrates the polemical manipulation of photography.

Relationships Between Achievement Emotions, Motivation and Language Learning Strategies of High, Mid and Low English Language Achievers

Abstract: Overseas research has shown that achievement emotions have direct relationships with “achievement outcome” and “achievement activities”. The purpose of the present study aimed to compare the relationships between achievement emotions, motivation, and language learning strategies of high, mid and low achievers in English language learning at an international university in a southern province in China. Quantitative data were collected through a questionnaire survey of 74 (16 males, 58 females) TESL major students. Results indicated that students in general experienced more positive than negative achievement emotions; more intrinsically rather than extrinsically motivated to learn English; and quite frequently used a variety of learning strategies to overcome their learning difficulties. However, Year Four low-achievers experienced more negative achievement emotions. They seldom used metacognitive, affective and social learning strategies, and they had lower degrees of intrinsic motivation. Implications for institutional support for at risk students are discussed.

Conducting the Task-based Approach With Context Aware Mobile Situated Learning on Learning English for College Students’ Learning Performance

Abstract: Learning English with specific purpose (ESP) initiatives domain knowledge and language ability with English learning to meet future job demands (Leroux & Lafleur, 1995; Khan & Khan, 2015). In the information age, the innovative technologies of mobile devices make the dramatical changes in ways of teaching and learning (Atkinson, 2011; Bierstaker, Janvrin & Lowe, 2014, Pittaway, 2012; Yang & Che, 2015). The focus of this study aims to examine ESP college students’ English learning performance by using Context Aware Mobile Situated Learning (CAMSL) in Tourism and Hospitality Management field and other majors. The mixed research method is conducted for data collection and analysis. The quantitative data are collected by examining students’ learning performance; the qualitative data are allowed to understand the students’ perspective toward their role in using the CAMSL with Tourism related content. Eight-three students are randomly selected and divided into two groups: 42 students are assigned in the experimental group A (CAMSL), and 41 students are assigned in control group. Two groups of students receive pretest and posttest to examine their English performance. Besides, twenty students from group A and B are selected for online survey. The survey is mailed directly to students’ email account. Results represented by using CAMSL show the significant improvement on students’ learning performance. In addition, the survey data indicate the benefits of using the CAMSL help students enhance their academic discourse, develop their learned knowledge to represent their profession, use English properly to speak themselves up, and provide the effectiveness of obtain domain knowledge in future workplace.

Edward Burne-Jones’s The Planets: Musical Spheres and Visions of a Benevolent Cosmos

Abstract: Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898), a pre-Raphaelite painter, was fascinated with astronomy, as noted in his memorials and accounts. In 1879, he executed cartoon drawings for a cycle on nine planets for the artisans of the William Morris Firm, who would transform them into stained-glass panels. The commission was for the decoration of Woodlands, the Victorian mansion of Baron Angus Holden (1833-1912), a major of Bradford. Presently, seven of the cartoons—The Moon (Luna), Earth (Terra), Sol (Apollo), Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and Evening Star—are in the Torre Abbey Museum in Torquay, UK, while the cartoon for Mars is part of the collection of drawings at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, UK, and the cartoon for Morning Star is located at Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford, UK. In the creation of the Planets cycle, Burne-Jones was inspired by cultural events of the time such as British scientific astronomical discoveries and British and Italian humanistic sources in literature and visual arts portraying astronomy. This essay art historically and iconographically examines the nine planets as celestial and terrestrial formations and astral spheres of good omen. It is composed of three sections. The first section discusses the history of the artistic commission; the second analyzes the stylistic and iconographical aspects of the Planets cycle; and the third section explains some of Burne-Jones’s cultural sources for the Planets cycle as manifestations of seasonal transformations, heavenly and terrestrial realms, musical spheres, and visions of a benevolent cosmos.

A Corpus-based Contrastive Study on the Acquisition of Synonyms of Chinese EFL Learners

Abstract: This paper investigates Chinese EFL learners’ acquisition of completely, totally and absolutely through a contrastive analysis of their collocation, colligation, semantic preference and semantic prosody based on the Ten-thousand English Compositions of Chinese Learners (TECCL Corpus) and Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The results show that adjective and verb are two major words frequently co-occurring with the group of synonyms, but only a few of them meet the default collocation criterion (frequency≥3, MI≥3), and many co-occurring words used by Chinese learners don’t appear in COCA. Besides, the co-occurring adjectives and verbs in TECCL are so diverse that they don’t establish fixed semantic relations as in COCA; therefore, there is a big difference in semantic preference and semantic prosody between Chinese learners and native speakers. With the advance of English proficiency, more collocates are used by college learners than middle school learners, but there is no clear and significant improvement in semantic preference and semantic prosody.

Changing Practices on Fatherhood in Postmodern Sweden

Abstract: TAN Ting-ting Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan  Sweden has transformed into a considerable gender equality and family-friendly society over the past half-century. Meanwhile, Swedish involved fathers have been not only regarded as the role model in many countries, but also been the focus of extensive research. However, the trajectory trends of shifting practices on fatherhood in postmodern Sweden and the reasons underlying the whole gender equality reforms are still not clearly illustrated and explored. Therefore, this paper tries to answer these questions by reviewing related literature from 1960 to 2017. It is found that although dual-earner and dual-carer models were proposed together as early as the mid-1960s, it was the former that proved easier to achieve. Since 1990s substantial shifts in the practices on fatherhood have occurred in Sweden. Nowadays, it becomes quite nature and common for Swedish fathers to take parental leave and share housework and childcare with their partners. The findings also highlight that in the transition towards a father-friendly state, the following causes and factors have interplayed with each other in Sweden: (a) Comprehensive and thorough grassroots feminist cultures and strategists have laid the foundations of gender equality in education, politics, economics and religion; (b) New images of fatherhood in the literature and medium programs have further shaped the values of respecting nurturing and soft fathers; (c) Father-friendly social policies have significantly constructed the dual-earner and dual-carer models; and (d) Organizational culture on balancing work and life has strongly supported the practices on involved and active fathering. Last, this paper concludes with a discussion on the importance of oral history and comparative studies on shifting fatherhood.

The Representation(s) of “The Other” in Passage to India by David Lean

Abstract: This work presents a critical approach to Passage to India, a film directed by David Lean (1984), based on the novel written by Edward Morgan Foster in 1924, focusing attention on micro representations of Indian society under British imperial power. To structure the work, the ideas of two prominent thinkers whose critical approaches are grounded on the concept of Representation and its implication in relation to perceptions of the “Other” were we selected as theoretical framework, namely Herrieta Lidchi and Stuart Hall. In this way, the work aims at highlighting the power of visual images, represented by the film, in the construction of ethnocentric images created by Imperial power(s) and their importance for the development of critical thinking in relation to residual marks of such representations in post-colonial era.

Chinese-to-English Translation of Publicity on Chinese Minority Culture: Discourse Ideology and Translation Strategies

Abstract: Discourse ideology refers to the position, attitude and guideline employed by a writer or speaker constructing a discourse in relation to the readers/hearers. This paper defines the notion of discourse ideology in the practice of translation, highlights the relationship between discourse ideology and the translator’s subjectivity, and illustrates the translation strategies appropriate to the context of publicity of Chinese minority culture to the readers outside China. A tentative conclusion is drawn that the top-down approach from discourse ideology to translation strategies and the bottom-up approach from translation strategies to discourse ideology complement with each other in the Chinese-to-English translation of publicity on Chinese minority culture.

Demythologizing the South: Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree in an Intertextual Perspective

Abstract: The article is structured around a premise of intertextuality, which is suggested not only by McCarthy’s own more or less overt allusions to Faulkner’s writing but also by the very name of his protagonist Suttree, which is evocative of the name of perhaps the best known Faulkner villain Thomas Sutpen. This supposition in turn leads to an argument that in his 1979 novel McCarthy does indeed reverse the life story of Thomas Sutpen by making Suttree descend down the very path that Sutpen ascended a century and a half before him, i.e., from the ranks of Southern aristocracy to the scum of the earth, and in defiance of the same ideology that Sutpen went to great lengths to embrace. Thus, an intertextual and comparative approach to McCarthy’s novel not only in the context of Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! but also his Light in August (cf. Joe Christmas) and The Sound and the Fury (cf. Quentin) as well as Ellen Glasgow’s short story “Jordan’s End” demonstrates that what Cormac McCarthy actually does in Suttree is to demythologize the South, complete with its aristocratic pretensions (“doing pretty”), dubious morality (incest) and fear of miscegenation (obsession with time and the double). Moreover, in doing so, he defamiliarizes it by reducing it to its Other (poor whites and African Americans), whose authenticity, liveliness and charitability defy the affectation, lifelessness and decadence of the aristocratic South.

The Formative Role of Art: John Dewey’s Art as Quotidian Experience

Abstract: The present manuscript aims to examine the impact of art on the cultivation of personality and sensitivity. The author suggests that education in art contributes to evolving sensibility towards the surrounding world. The artistic knowledge or attitude helps us perceive and feel the quotidian with affection, imagination, and creativity. It functions as a complement to a rational understanding of reality. This paper retakes Aristotelian category of poiesis, considering it a creative act and delves into John Dewey’s view of relations between education and art. Dewey finds in the aesthetic-artistic experience of the quotidian a way to engage with the other and to treat life as something with deep aesthetic sense. The discussion shown in this article follows four main threads under the scope of the Deweynian notion of art as experience. They are the education for art, education by art, education in art, and the creative act of the quotidian.

The Journey of the Magi: A Lyric Monologue for First and Second Voices and Three-in-One Character(s)

Abstract: Although T. S. Eliot’s “The Journey of the Magi” is a religious poem in the profoundest sense, the title of my paper is intended to give only a sly wink at Trinitarianism. My real object is to explain how Eliot contrived to manufacture a poem which, at first glance, resembles a dramatic monologue (generally understood as a poem for one voice—that of a historical/fictional/ mythological character addressing a silent listener, group of listeners or reader), yet which is slowly revealed as a lyrical monologue (for the poet’s own voice) which yet—and this quite intentionally—contains considerably more than mere echoes of another two speakers: namely a Magus and the biblical translator and, most famously, sermon writer Archbishop Launcelot Andrewes (1555-1626) court preacher to James 1 and Charles 1 of England. I wish to show how Eliot, in writing what is ultimately confessional verse, goes out of his way to hoodwink the reader by allowing the first two of his “{The} Three Voices of Poetry” (1957) to overlap with and then incorporate the third. His own descriptions of these voices are (i) lyric, defined as “the poet talking to himself”, (ii) that of the single speakerwho gives a (dramatic) monologue “addressing an {imaginary} audience in an assumed voice” and (iii) that of the verse dramatist “who attempts to create a dramatic character speaking in verse when he {i.e. the author} is saying... only what he can say within the limits of one imaginary character addressing another imaginary character” yet adding “some bit of himself that the author gives to a character may be the germ from which that character starts” (Eliot, 1957, pp. 38, 40). The basis of my argument is that such an act of “giving of the self” as the raw material for the creation of a dramatic monologue persona as well as a character designed for the stage had been part and parcel of Eliot’s modus operandi up to and including “Prufrock” and The Waste Land; further, that in “The Journey of the Magi” and his later commentary upon it he finally comes out and admits the fact, and in far clearer a manner than he does when defining the Objective Correlative in his essays on Hamlet. Far from attempting to erase the sense of selfhood from his poetry, I believe that Eliot, consciously or not, ended up by demonstrating to those who worshipped the Romantics and their cult of personality just how difficult it was to express the purely subjective self in poetry.

Motifs of Revulsion in George Eliot’s Middlemarch and Induction of Moral Conflicts

Abstract: This paper selects revulsion and its networking emotion: resentment and disgust as a generic form of novel studies and the subject of moral investigation. Motifs of revulsion create complex bedding texture of the plot, which introduces personality and inner visions of characters in the novel. It unifies the binding power of narrative history and informs readers various aspects of morality in the Victorian era, in addition, to present a lyrical tone of social ethics. The following analysis takes Eliot’s Middlemarch as the base text. I shall explain the lexical meaning and textual discussion of revulsion, resentment and disgust spirally within its context, then illustrate with paranthetical examples and different idioms. Later arguments turn to what Eliot defines as faction of human duty in life, which is the nuanced requirement of a subject stands against himself or herself through the disposition of conscience as verdict. This disposition provides unlimited parallels for instinctive presence of internal feelings and thresholds that are constantly affecting moral understandings.

On Foreign Language Creation and Rootless Back Translation—A Case Study of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Abstract: With Adaptation Theory as its theoretical basis, this research makes comparison between Lisa See’s original version of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Xin Yuanjie’s Chinese translation based on a self-compiled manual annotation English-Chinese bilingual corpus. It aims at exploring the choice of language and the choice of translation method in the foreign language creation and rootless back-translation of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, discussing whether these choices adapt to the source language or the target language, and finding out the communicative effects they have achieved. The preliminary results show that: the choice of language and the choice of translation method in Foreign Language Creation mainly adapt to the target language to make easier for the target English readers to understand and partly adapt to the source language to keep local flavor; the choice of language and the choice of translation method in rootless back translation mainly adapt to the target language to make the translation authentic, accurate and smooth, and adaption to source language will lead to translationese. This research sheds new light on this special kind of writing and translation.

One-Dimensionality and the Possibility of Utopia. The Contribution of Herbert Marcuse to a Transformation of the Present

Abstract: Taking the One-Dimensional Man as a starting point, I would like to show in the following what an important contribution the work of Herbert Marcuse can make to a critical theory of the present. More than 50 years after its first publication, this book seems more relevant than ever. It allows us to understand how domination is exerted and maintained in late capitalism that is today organized according to neoliberal principals. It also allows us to ask if there can be alternatives to this society. To date, one-dimensionality has proven itself to be a relevant basic concept of critical theory that first of all analyses society critically as it is by revealing the forces that sustain, legitimize and stabilize the existing structures. However, critical theory is primarily interested in those forces that can negate and subversively circumvent the system and can contribute to emancipation. Therefore, Marcuse thought dialectically, criticizing late capitalistic society from the background of unrealized utopian possibilities and seeking escape routes. His central theme from the thirties to the end of his life was the question of how liberation can be made possible and a utopian condition can be realized that stands beyond the oppression of the given order. This questioning is, however, no longer central in more recent critical theory. For example, Jürgen Habermas scarcely mentioned Marcuse and his utopian vision in Theory of Communicative Action, which was published two years after Marcuse’s death, although he knew his work well (cp. Habermas et al.). Instead, he develops a model of communicative understanding as a new basis of critical theory. Communicative rationality is formally defined. It follows procedures. However, there is no more space in his approach for the power of negativity, which Marcuse and also Adorno felt committed to. Saying this, however, in Habermas a decisive dimension of critical theory is lost which still has a place in social reality today. For example, transnational social movements, that link the use of digital technologies with street protests, challenge corporate capitalism and call for a utopian alternative (Juris, Winter, Widerstand). Besides, a form of politics is further developed in the field of aesthetics that transcends the one-dimensionality of everyday life as well by highlighting the utopian promise of the aesthetic form (Rancière, Politics).

Korean Picture Brides in Hawaii: Historical and Literary Narratives

Abstract: Korean “picture brides” who migrated to Hawaii a century ago are reborn in stories through literary works produced in 21st-century Korea and the USA. The literary value of picture bride stories is an important starting point for raising awareness of the reality of Korean migration to the US a century ago and for understanding the status of the 20th-century Korean diaspora beyond national borders and cultural boundaries. This study aimed to investigate the historical background of picture brides in Hawaii in the early 20th century so as to research that the life of Korean picture brides was much harder than those of other Asian picture brides. The stories of picture brides, gleaned from various oral narratives, news articles, poems, plays, and novels, not only represent in great detail the patriarchal and nationalistic discourse prevalent in the period in the US on Korean and Asian picture brides, but also provide important details on these women’s daily living, independent efforts to make new lives in Hawaii, and the transboundary hybrid culture that emerged as a result. The comparative-literary approach of the study also captures the value of the transnationalist thread in the literary works under study.

A Discursive Approach to Aporia in The Turn of the Screw

Abstract: Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898) is a fascinating thriller that bewilders readers and critics alike for more than 100 years since its publication. Based upon the analytic frame of Bakhtin’s critical vision on conceptual horizons, and the double-voiced active discourse, this paper seeks to locate the recurrence of aporia through a tracing of the varied speakers and listeners in the text, and the varied discourses viewed from the stance of an implied author, for which all contribute to the cloudy effect of the novel. The author argues that conceptual horizons and double-voiced active discourse both possess the power of bringing about ambiguity in textual understanding. This study intends to broaden critics’ horizon and diversify the appreciation of this work.

Teaching the Non-Chinese Speaking Students Origami to Improve Their Interest and Concentration in Learning Chinese Language

Abstract: The difficulties in learning Chinese faced by non-Chinese students are the subjects of concern in the education sector, especially in writing Chinese characters. We write the characters with strokes and dots, more or less strokes or dots will represent different words and different meanings. Students found these very complicated and confused, thus it leads them to lose their motivation and interest in learning Chinese language. From the beginning of the 1990s, I began using origami as one of the activities to promote the teaching of Chinese in the state school in Melbourne Australia with remarkable results. Program got widely reported by Medias. In 1995, I got the “National Excellence in Teaching Awards”. After I took up the position as the curriculum development officer in University of Hong Kong in 2007, I worked closely with the teachers and students using origami as the theme base learning in Chinese. It helps to increase their understanding of the radicals and parts, so as to improve their confidence in writing Chinese characters.

Notes on the Semantic Clash Caused by Individual Background, a Survey on Translation Materials in Qing Dynasty

Abstract: Influenced by translator’s individual background, semantic clash is inevitable during the process of code-switching from source language to target language. This re-correspondence in semantic level has been well-shown not only in the translation of literature works, but in those of dictionary and glossary translations as well. Semantic clash, generally, is based on two main factors, one is the inherent difference between languages lying in typology features, the other is the social and culture diversity factors lying in the translator’s personal background. According to actual translation works, social and culture factors of individual background take the dominant position unconsciously over other features in the process of code-switching. The present paper, branches the latter factor into certain categories, by analyzing bilingual dictionaries and glossaries cases in the 18 century, Qing Dynasty, and indicates that the conceptual lagging, religion beliefs, living environment and political stand embedded in individual background will somehow result in semantic clash, which will lead the relevant research to pay more attention on cross-cultural literature translation.

An Analysis on Proxemics Phenomenon Between China and America

Abstract: KE Zhuo-ying, LIAN Yu Xi’an Shiyou University, Xian, Shaanxi, China  International culture communication is a new discipline which arouses people’s attention and becomes more and more popular among the researchers from different countries. A comparative study of proxemics phenomenon between China and America finds that those two countries have a great differences. American seems especially sensitive to their body spaces, and Chinese don’t care much about it. In the book The Silence Language, Edward hall first uses the term proxemics, and he has given a detailed analysis of proxemics. Proxemics is the study of spatial distances between individuals in different cultures and situations. Cultural factors for proxemics has a great influence, and the factors such as gender and religion also has a profound significance on proximics. This thesis will mainly analyze this phenomenon in the way of the definition and theory of proximics, especially, the ways how people deal with the international culture situation. In order to improve the readers cultural accomplishment and ability to communicate, prevent the errors in the protocol, this paper will further explain how to solve these cross-cultural problems in cross-cultural context, especially for Chinese learners. With some fresh insights into international culture communication research, hopefully the readers may benefit from this paper and communicate with foreign people in a better way.

Visual Literacy From the Perspective of the VTS Method

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to investigate visual literacy from the perspective of the VTS (Visual Thinking Strategies) method. The authors examine the viewpoints of seven American elementary school teachers on visual literacy and its meanings in the context of the VTS method. Data collection was done using a semi-structured questionnaire, which was followed by theory-driven content analysis. The authors emphasize that when supporting holistic development in a teaching context, it is the interconnected nature of aesthetics, growth and the learner’s learning which is more important than developing special skills, like visual literacy. In the teaching context visual literacy and language development should be acknowledged in pedagogy and research.

The Importance of Parent’s Intervention in Early Years

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to highlight the importance of parent involvement and intervention in early childhood education. What formulates the lock and key theory in early childhood programs is parental participation versus educational achievement. Upon the parents’ vital involvement, it is perceived that social and cognitive development, aided by educators, will be significantly achieved. Furthermore, parent’s early intervention is an added value to classrooms and schools, for it creates a dimension of involvement in the decisions which shape the children’s education as a whole. Moreover, and due to parent/teacher cooperation in the classroom and at home, the child’s interest in learning will be triggered, yielding other positive outcomes. Therefore, people must emphasize the parent’s role in order to aid children’s complex and evolving multi-cultural and global nature.

Re-examining the Past: Elements of Postmodern Memory in Toni Morrison’s Love

Abstract: Toni Morrison’s fiction may arguably be characterized as postmodern discourse on memory, history and culture. In her novels, the Nobel laureate frequently returns to the past to search for answers to the questions she poses about African American realities in the contemporary United States. In doing so, Morrison often creates alternative histories or, more specifically, a usable past—one that allows her to engage in a literary (re-)construction of the Black historical and cultural material which traditional histories have chosen to ignore or disremember. Therefore, as a present-day writer of African American descent, Morrison attempts to reassemble all the fragmentary historical and cultural accounts available to her as a novelist and narrate them in the form of a convincing story. With regard to the above considerations, this article seeks to discuss some of the mechanisms employed by Morrison for weaving her postmodern, memory-filled narrative on the example of her eighth novel, Love (2003). In particular, the analysis focuses on the book’s central figure, Bill Cosey, and his Southern ocean-side resort—both seen against the backdrop of the preand post-World War II racist America, followed by the 1960s decade of the Civil Rights Movement. Finally, it is also demonstrated how the author’s use of split narrative as well as the “I” narrator-cum-character technique contribute to recounting in retrospect Love’s main, historicized story—one viewed and judged from a present-time perspective.

When History Becomes A Standing Joke: Mo Yan’s Reflection on China’s Historical Changes Throughout the 20th Century

Abstract: Since the end of the 20th century, Mo Yan has made an attempt to reflect on China’s historical changes throughout the 20th century as a whole. Centered on such several novels as Big Breasts and Wide Hips, Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out and Frog, this paper explores the author’s thinking of the interruption and repetition phenomena in China’s 20th century history. Differing from viewing the history in a modern linear progressive perspective, Mo Yan regards the interruption of history as a sign of human degradation, which derives from the loss of folk history subjectivity. When history is treated rudely, its repetition will occur, and the one who treats history as laughingstocks will be written into history as part of a “farce”.

Kantian Cosmopolitan Ideal in Disciplining the World Literature: Cosmopolitanism in Hong Kong Poetry in the Early 1990s

Abstract: James AU Kin-pong University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan  This article looks at how cosmopolitanismthe notion of universality within a diversity of multi-cultureshas been shaping the discipline of world literature. The article encompasses chiefly three parts. The first part offers an overview of the debates on the discipline widely discussed by literary scholars such as Franco Moretti, David Damrosch and Emily Apter. I take issue with the harmonic co-existence of both local and global elementsand what I define as “glocality”in literatures to exhibit the inevitable trend of the trans-cultural, supranational and cross-historical interactions among multiple centres and/or various cities especially in the twenty-first century. I thereby argue in the second part using Leung Ping Kwan (1949-2013)’s “Images of Hong Kong” (1992) and Louise Ho’s two poetry pieces written in 1994 to prove how Kantian Cosmopolitan elements have deeply embedded in the poem written in a city where the West frequently interacts with the East. I conclude by stepping in further to argue that only through tolerating and mediating between the region and the globe can world literature as a discipline find its way out without fear for marginalising any of the literary pieces.

In Search of Identity in Language and Irish Geography: On Seamus Heaney’s Wintering Out

Abstract: Seamus Heaney in his lifespan of 74 years is lauded not only for his great accomplishment in the field of poetry, but also for his translation, editing and literary criticism. Yet, when it comes to socio-political affairs, the poet is not a unanimous favorite. Far from being an influential political activist sometimes anticipated by his friends and countrymen in Ireland, Heaney resorted to his search for identities and for answers to his nation’s predicament in the world of words. As a poetic collection published during the political unrest in the seventies, Wintering Out discloses Heaney’s composition of the dialectic between the aesthetic and the historical. In this essay, the author will look into Heaney’s four poems in the collection, in which the poet’s linguistic as well as geographical survey of his hometown is indispensible for readers who intend to discern his attitude in the critical period of his artistic formation.