Concentric: Studies in English Literature and Linguistics
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://rportal.lib.ntnu.edu.tw/handle/20.500.12235/219
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Item Jane Austen and the Gothic Novels: The Reception of Northanger Abbey in China(英語學系, 2021-03-??) Shuo SunJane Austen's Gothic parody Northanger Abbey was first published in 1818 and translated into Chinese in 1958 under the title Nuosangjue Si (諾桑覺寺). However, the novel has remained unpopular in China to this day and has received considerably less critical attention than Austen's other works, especially Pride and Prejudice (1813). This article examines the reception of Northanger Abbey in China since the early twentieth century, considering in particular the reasons for contemporary readers' lukewarm response to the novel. It argues that a knowledge of Gothic conventions and elements is crucial to an understanding of the literary satire in Northanger Abbey—and yet Ann Radcliffe's Gothic novels were not available to Chinese readers in translation until very recent decades. It also addresses the difficulties that arose when translating the Gothic-sounding title of Northanger Abbey from English into Chinese and explores the influence of Marxist literary criticism on the first translation of the novel.Item Untitled(英語學系, 2017-03-??) Alvin K. WongThis paper argues for the centrality of gender, sexuality, and geopolitics to ecocritical studies of the Anthropocene. In particular, the genre of documentary filmmaking provides one crucial site for exploring how cultural representations of the city of Beijing and environmental pollutions often recenter human-centric narratives of planetary rescue through what I term “Anthropocentric futurism.” Anthropocentric futurism as a critical terminology names a double bind—while increasing numbers of cultural productions like literature, cinema, and the popular media explore human subjects as both the agents and passive “victims” under the Anthropocene, often such an ecological awareness automatically gives rise to a passionate human-centric discourse of planetary rescue. Specifically, I examine the widely popular 2015 documentary about air pollution, Under the Dome, directed by Chai Jing, as one that reproduces Anthropocentric futurism through the logic of maternal rescue, whereas Jiuliang Wang’s Beijing Besieged by Waste (2011) radically departs from such reproductive futurism by visualizing the violent coevalness between the human subjects, non-human animals, inanimate objects, and the environment as such. Thinking beyond Anthropocentric futurism suggests new possibilities for theorizing the relationship between China and the Anthropocene through the lens of affect theory, animal studies, and posthumanism.Item ＂An Archivist's Fantasy Gone Mad＂: The Age of Exhibition in Cao Fei's Posthuman Trilogy(英語學系, 2017-09-??) Angie ChauThis paper argues that in her recent films, the Chinese artist-filmmaker Cao Fei (曹斐, b. 1978) shows how the futility of art and technologies of exhibition is linked to the danger of overexposure to images without context, and the numbing of public consciousness. In the twenty-first century, the fear of forgetting seems increasingly obsolete in the face of social media tools like Facebook's ＂See Your Memories: Never Miss a Memory＂ feature, which excavates photos uploaded, shared, or tagged on the site years ago, reminding users to ＂look back＂ on otherwise lost memories. However, in recent Chinese fiction (Ma Jian's Beijing Coma; Chan Koonchung's The Fat Years; Liu Cixin's ＂The Weight of Memories＂), the trope of dormant memories remains noticeably prevalent, reflecting an urgent cultural concern about the conscious ＂act of deleting memories＂ (Yan Lianke) in the process of recording modern Chinese history. Whether in the form of documentary-style animation (i.Mirror, 2007), zombie-horror film (Haze and Fog, 2013), or stop-motion train-replica dioramas (La Town, 2014), Cao Fei fantasizes about a new posthuman consciousness, whose most serious trespass against humanity is not forgetting, but rather not feeling. Presenting disjointed scenes that call upon instances of trauma and surveillance, Cao's ＂posthuman trilogy＂ films suggest that when cosmopolitan memories become decontextualized, mere images no longer possess any meaningful symbolic power. Further, Cao's films demonstrate that voyeurism becomes an unavoidable yet inconsequential daily practice in the digital age of exhibition.Item A Tale of Two Diaries: Robert Hart’s Encounter with “Mont Blanc Albert” in Canton, Sept. 1858(英語學系, 2015-03-??) Henk VynckierWhen still a junior official in the British Consular Service in Canton, Robert Hart (1835-1911), who would later achieve fame as the Inspector General of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, met Albert Richard Smith (1816-60), the mid-Victorian comic writer and diorama presenter, who was traveling in China to collect material for a stage show. Though both reported on Smith’s visit to Canton in their respective diaries, Hart’s brief interlude with Smith has never been discussed and the relevant passages in their diaries have not been cross-examined. Yet, close reading the respective diary entries next to one another for the first time some one hundred and fifty years after they were composed can achieve several objectives. First, the diaries provide some raw material for the biographical understanding of the young Robert Hart, which is important considering that more than a hundred years following his death there is as of yet no complete biography of “the most powerful Westerner in China” (Jonathan Spence). Second, they illustrate the generic and stylistic differences between a diary which is meant to be published and one which is conceived as a purely private “closed book” diary. Third, they shed light on two different modes of seeing/narrating China—the sightseeing tourist Smith and the long-term expatriate resident Hart—and, thus, contribute to our understanding of the British imaginary of China during the heyday of empire.Item Accepting/Rejecting: China’s Discursive Reconfiguration of Zoe for a New Era in Organ Donation(英語學系, 2014-09-??) Melissa LefkowitzIn the Chinese state’s attempt to rectify its organ shortage, an openly acknowledged problem nationwide, it must harness the body as a source of life. Whose bodies, exactly, form the crux of this paper, and it is here that Giorgio Agamben’s work is useful for a discussion that expands beyond a biopolitics centered on disciplines and technologies of power. Drawing upon articles in the U.S. and Chinese media, this paper analyzes the disparate logics inherent in media coverage following the establishment of China’s voluntary organ donation system in 2010. Though conceived at a great distance, Agamben’s bios/zoe dialectic operates as a fitting tool in the examination of an emergent discourse that is evolving in China, one that harnesses a rhetoric centered on value(s), scientific rationalism and charity in order to re‐define zoe(s) and reinforce the legitimacy of the state.Item Orwell and Kipling: Global Visions(英語學系, 2014-05-??) Douglas KerrThis essay argues for a close relationship and intriguing similarities between George Orwell and Rudyard Kipling, writers a generation apart, who are usually thought of as occupying opposite ends of the political spectrum, with Kipling’s wholehearted conservative belief in the British Empire standing in contrast to Orwell’s socialist hatred of the same institution. Yet these two great writers of fiction and journalism have much in common: born in India into what Orwell called “the ‘service’ middle class,” both had their political and intellectual formation in the East. Empire made Kipling proud and it made Orwell ashamed, but their imperial experience overseas gave both of them a global vision, which each in turn tried to share with their readers at home who understood too little, they felt, of Britain’s global responsibilities (Kipling) or her reliance on a “coolie empire” (Orwell). This essay examines the global vision of both writers, and the highly partial perspective conferred on it by the optic of empire. It does so by looking at two journalistic or “travel writing” texts about other people’s empires: Kipling’s account in From Sea to Sea of a visit to China in 1889, and Orwell’s essay “Marrakech,” written during his stay in French Morocco in 1938-39.