THE IMAGOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE OVERSEAS CHINESE LITERATURE

T. Vechorynska; O. Vorobei

doi:10.15407/orientw2021.01.093

THE IMAGOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE OVERSEAS CHINESE LITERATURE

PDF

https://doi.org/10.15407/orientw2021.01.093

T. Vechorynska

Institute of Philology, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6942-4237

O. Vorobei

Institute of Philology, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4956-8943

Abstract

Overseas Chinese literature refers to literary works written in Chinese by the Chinese living outside of China. Rooted in the soil of Chinese culture, Overseas Chinese literature appears as a unique literary phenomenon widespread throughout the world and created amidst foreign cultures. Overseas Chinese writers find themselves under a double cultural background. In their writings, there are many literary representations of different cultures’ meeting, collision, and merging. The paper suggests that the imagology method may answer the question of how Chinese diaspora members define themselves as Chinese to construct their own identities as opposed to everything else, they regard as non-Chinese. With the application of the methods of Western and Chinese Schools of Comparative Literature and their respective interpretations of global li-terary processes, comparative literary imagology is discussed against its theoretical and historical background and questions such highly disputable categories as ‘Chineseness’ and ‘Chinese consciousness’. The article provides an imagological interpretation of the Self and the Other distinction in Oiled Paper Umbrella by Chinese-Filipino writer Pei Qiong. It is proposed to consider the intertext of a given national representation as a trope, and thus to study semantics and poetics of a transnational individual representation. The analysis of modern critical approaches to the Overseas Chinese literature shows that the vector of critical comprehension of this literary phenomenon is gradually shifting from the ethnic paradigm to the transnational, transcultural interpretation of a person’s connection with the mother culture. The article investigates how the transcultural images are constructed in the literary imagination space and how they are represen-ted in a literary text. The special emphasis is placed on the methods of comparative literary imagology that considers the intrinsic textual peculiarities beyond the extrinsic ethnocentric concepts. It is shown that transcultural images employed in the Chinese-Swedish writer Wan Zhi’s The Woman in a Trench Coat cannot be narrowed down to mere contextualization of the Self-the Other dyad, which is considered as a point of profound cultural significance in the field of Overseas Chinese literature research.

How to Cite

Vechorynska, T., & Vorobei, O. (2021). THE IMAGOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE OVERSEAS CHINESE LITERATURE. The World of the Orient, (1 (110), 93-101. https://doi.org/10.15407/orientw2021.01.093

Article views: 151 | PDF Downloads: 111

Keywords

comparative literary imagology, other, Overseas Chinese Literature, Self, transcultural identity

References

Ang I. (2001), On not speaking Chinese: living between Asia and West, Psychology Press, Hove.

Beller M. and Leerssen J. T. (2007), The cultural construction and literary representation of national characters: a critical survey, Rodopi, Amsterdam.

Bernheimer C. (1995), “Introduction: The anxieties of comparison”, in Bernheimer C. (ed.), Comparative literature in the age of multiculturalism, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, pp. 1–20.

Cao S. (2000), “Chinese school of comparative literature: the theoretical fundamentals and its system of methodology”, Comparative Literature: East & West, Vol. 1, pp. 44–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/25723618.2000.12015251

Chen X. (2002), Occidentalism: a theory of counter-discourse in post-Mao China, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD.

Chow R. (2000), “Introduction: on Chineseness as a theoretical problem”, in Chow R. (ed.), Modern Chinese literary and cultural studies in the age of theory, Duke UP, Durham, NC, pp. 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822380160-001

Damrosch D. (2014), World literature in theory, Wiley-Blackwell, New York, NY.

Dyserinck H. (2003), “Imagology and the problem of ethnic identity”, Intercultural Studies, Vol. 1, pp. 285–294.

Fusco S. (2006), “The ironies of comparison: comparative literature and the re-production of cultural difference between East and West”, TRANS- [En ligne], No. 2, available at: https://journals.openedition.org/trans/167 (accessed January 2, 2021). https://doi.org/10.4000/trans.167

Hutcheon L. (1996), “Comparative literature’s anxiogenic state”, Canadian review of comparative literature, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 35–41.

Leung L. (2006), “Overseas Chinese literature: A proposal for clarification”, in Ng M. N. and Holden P. (eds), Reading Chinese transnationalisms: society, literature, film, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, pp. 117–128.

Ning W. (2004), “Comparative literature and globalism: a Chinese cultural and literary strategy”, Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 41, No. 4, pp. 584–602. https://doi.org/10.1353/cls.2005.0012

Ong A. and Nonini D. (1997), Ungrounded empires: the cultural politics of modern Chinese transnationalism, Routledge, New York, NY.

Palumbo-Liu D. (1992), “The utopias of discourse: on the impossibility of Chinese comparative literature”, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR), Vol. 14, pp. 165–176. https://doi.org/10.2307/495417

Rao P. (2011), “The overseas Chinese language literature in a global context”, Revue de littérature comparée, Vol. 1, No. 337, pp. 106–112. https://doi.org/10.3917/rlc.337.0106

Said E. W. (2003), Orientalism: Western conceptions of the orient, Penguin Classics, London.

Shih S.-m. (2010), “Against diaspora: The Sinophone as places of cultural production”, in Tsu J. and Wang D. (eds), Global Chinese literature: critical essays, Brill Press, Leiden, pp. 29–48. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004186910_004

Shu Y. (2005), “Globalization and ‘Asian values’: teaching and theorizing Asian American literature”, College Literature, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 86–102. https://doi.org/10.1353/lit.2005.0014

Świderska M. (2013), “Comparativist imagology and the phenomenon of strangeness”, CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, Vol. 15, Issue 7, available at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol15/iss7/13/ (accessed January 2, 2021). https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2387

Tötösy de Zepetnek S. (1998), Comparative Literature: theory, method, application, Rodopi, Amsterdam.

Tsu J. and Wang D. (2010), “Introduction: global Chinese literature”, in Tsu J. and Wang D. (eds), Global Chinese literature: critical essays, Brill Press, Leiden, pp. 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004186910_002

Wellek R. (1963), Concepts of Criticism, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.

Wu D. Y.-h. (1991), “The construction of Chinese and non-Chinese identities”, The living tree: the changing meaning of being Chinese today, Vol. 120, No. 2, pp. 159–179.

Zhang L. (1994), “Out of the cultural ghetto: Theory, politics, and the study of Chinese literature”, Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science, Vol. 22, pp. 21–41. https://doi.org/10.1163/030382494X00052

Zhang Y. (1998), “Introduction: engaging Chinese comparative literature and cultural studies”, in Zhang Y. (ed.), China in a polycentric world: essays in Chinese comparative literature, Stanford University Press, Redwood, CA, pp. 1–18.

Cheung K. et al. (2018), “Xin shiji de meiguo ji haiwai huayi wenxue”, Jiangnan Magazine, No. 2, pp. 146–159. (In Chinese).

Gong Zhong (2000), Shijiehuawen wenxue gailun, Renmin wenxue chubanshe, Beijing. (In Chinese).

Haiwai huawen wenxue duben. Duan pian xiaoshuo juan (2009), Wu Y. (ed), Jinan daxue chubanshe, Guangzhou. (In Chinese).

Haiwai huawen wenxue jiaocheng (2009), Rao P. and Yang K. (eds), Jinan University Press, Guangzhou. (In Chinese).

Lai Bojiang (1993), Haiwan huawenwenxue gaiguan, Haixia wenyi chubanshe, Fuzhou. (In Chinese).

Pan Yadun (1996), Haiwanhuawen wenxue xianzhuang, Renmin wenxue chubanshe, Beijing. (In Chinese).

Rao Bozi (2004), Shijiehuawen wenxue de xin shiye, Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, Beijing. (In Chinese).

Yang L. and You Y. (1994), Renjing Guihua, Zhongyang bianyì chuban she, Beijing. (In Chinese).

Yue Daiyun (2004), Yue Daiyun jiaoshou haiwai jiangyan lu, Beijing daxue chubanshe, Beijing. (In Chinese).

REFERENCES