外国语言与文化

The Modernity of Chinese Xiqu from the Perspective of World Theatre: Centering on Cheng Yanqiu’s Study Tour to Europe

Ning An, Tingting Zhang    3-12

Column：Documentation and Research on the History of Sino-Foreign Theatre Exchange over the Past Century (Column for Achievements of Major Projects Supported by the National Social Science Fund of China)

Abstract：From 1932 to 1933, Cheng Yanqiu traveled to Europe to study theatre, making systematic observations of European theatre institutions, stage techniques, theatre education, and modern theatrical trends. Previous discussions of this tour have largely focused on how Western theatrical experiences influenced the reform of Chinese Xiqu (traditional theatre). However, its deeper significance lies in how Cheng Yanqiu gained a renewed understanding of Chinese Xiqu through the development of world theatre. In the course of his European journey, by absorbing modern theatre mechanisms while reaffirming the ontological value of Xiqu, Cheng Yanqiu gradually developed a view of Xiqu’s development that balanced traditional resources with modern demands. His European experience thus represented the process through which Chinese Xiqu reasserted its position within the global theatre landscape. From this, one can glimpse the complex pathway of constructing the modernity of Chinese Xiqu ...

Translation and Reception: The International Dissemination of Traditional Chinese Opera during the “Seventeen Years” Period

Minna Jin    13-24

Column：Documentation and Research on the History of Sino-Foreign Theatre Exchange over the Past Century (Column for Achievements of Major Projects Supported by the National Social Science Fund of China)

Abstract：Traditional Chinese opera during the “Seventeen Years” period (1949–1966) shoulders the dual mission of international cultural exchange and dissemination of mainstream value. Focusing on the translation and international dissemination of traditional Chinese Opera during this period, this paper examines the dynamic interplay between political discourse and aesthetic expression. Political discourse is deeply embedded throughout the translation process of traditional Chinese Opera, extending from repertoire selection and institutional frameworks to translation strategies. Meanwhile, undergoes both loss and adaptation. Regarding overseas reception, differences in audiences’ ideological perspectives and cultural background lead to the emergence of two distinct reception pathways: “conceptual empathy” and “aesthetic spectacle.” The government provides institutional...

Tension and Balance between Localization and De-localization in Post-2000 Overseas Dissemination of Cheng Ying Rescues the Orphan

Lianqiao Zhang, Fengqi Wu    25-34

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Abstract：An aesthetic gap exists between traditional Chinese opera and foreign cultural contexts. The overseas dissemination of Cheng Ying Rescues the Orphan, a classic of Yu opera, displays the tension between localization and de-localization strategies. This paper analyzes these dual dissemination paths: localization through the transformation of the theme into the universal motif of good versus evil and through moderate adjustments of artistic form, and de-localization through preservation of theatrical integrity and the Chinese national spirit. Drawing upon Roland Robertson’s glocalization theory and Edward W. Said’s Orientalism, this study delineates the boundaries between these two forces and proposes a sustainable communication strategy that preserves artistic integrity while facilitating cross-cultural dialogue. The findings provide a theoretical reference and a practical model for the global promotion of traditional Chinese opera.

The Translation and Cross-Cultural Communication of Nuo Culture in Pingtan Impression

Yanxia Long    35-43

Column：Documentation and Research on the History of Sino-Foreign Theatre Exchange over the Past Century (Column for Achievements of Major Projects Supported by the National Social Science Fund of China)

Abstract：The stage play Pingtan Impression undertakes a contemporary translation of cultural symbols of Nuo culture in Fujian Province and constructs an ethical narrative system with benevolence, filial piety, righteousness and loyalty. This article, based on Confucian philosophy, divides the four relationships into a three-layer concentric circle structure according to distance and closeness. Benevolence is the emotional center, filial piety is the first circle of the family, righteousness belongs to the second circle of society, and loyalty belongs to the outer circle of politics and faith. On this basis, it analyzes the ethical positioning and translation paths of Nuo images in the play. The concentric circle, with...

A Study of the Overseas Adaptation of Yuan Zaju Rescue from the Wind and Dust

Maosheng Liu, Yongqi Li    44-53

Column：Documentation and Research on the History of Sino-Foreign Theatre Exchange over the Past Century (Column for Achievements of Major Projects Supported by the National Social Science Fund of China)

Abstract：This paper focuses on Guan Hanqing’s Yuan zaju Rescue from the Wind and Dust, examining the cross-cultural adaptation practice of its 2021 adaptation at the Almeida Theatre in London, UK. The paper outlines the journey of Rescue from the Wind and Dust from textual translation to stage adaptations both domestically and internationally, with an emphasis on the changes in stage design, performance methods, characters, and plot in the adaptation by the Almeida Theatre. By integrating the Chinese narrative into western audiences’ familiar aesthetic and cognitive framework, the adaptation lowers the barrier to reception and promotes cultural exchange. However, it also reflects the influence of box-office considerations and sociocultural factors, reducing the East to the consumable Other. Studying the British adaptation with reference to the original Chinese version help...

Antropofagia

Yuan Wang    56-66

Column：Key Concepts in Latin American Culture (Column on the Literary and Cultural Landscape of the Global South)

Abstract：Antropofagia is one of the most influential legacies of Brazilian modernism. Its genealogy can be traced to colonial discourses on cannibalism, and it gradually took shape through nineteenth-century Indianist writing and the radical revaluation undertaken by the modernists of the 1920s. Subsequently, it expanded into poetry, theater, music, film, translation, anthropology, and digital culture, constantly renewing its functions across changing contexts. The enduring vitality of antropofagia derives from an open structure that transforms external forces into resources for self-renewal. At the same time, this extensibility also faces such risks as reverse appropriation by capital and the culture industry, conceptual overextension, and the obscuring of internal asymmetries of power.

Animality

Yishuang Guo    67-76

Column：Key Concepts in Latin American Culture (Column on the Literary and Cultural Landscape of the Global South)

Abstract：Animality is a key concept for examining human–animal boundaries, colonial power, and biopolitics in Latin American literature and culture. Its intellectual origins can be traced to European philosophy’s definition of the rational subject. During the colonial process in the Americas, however, it was transformed into a mechanism of governance that distinguished civilization from barbarism. Nineteenth-century national literatures continued and reworked this logic, while from the twentieth century onward, animality has gradually become a critical resource for questioning anthropocentrism and the modern sovereign subject. The writings of Roger Bartra, Gabriel Giorgi, Mónica Cragnolini, and ...

Music, DNA, and Posthuman Community in Powers's Orfeo

Jie Yuan    77-85

Column：Literary Interdisciplinary Studies

Abstract：Orfeo is Richard Powers’s third science novel on genetic technology. It carries on with the transhumanist anxieties about technology found in his two earlier “genetic novels,” while also articulating a more affirmative vision of posthuman forms of life and relationality. Beginning with the affective function of music and art education, the novel reveals how art, like DNA, participates in encoding the life of the protagonist, Els, thereby presenting the dual and unified nature of art and technology at the level of techne. By rethinking the essence of technology, Powers proposes a relational understanding of technology that challenges the instrumental view, responding to the posthuman condition of human–nonhuman coexistence in the technological age. On this basis, the novel constructs a relational posthuman subjectivity, reconsiders the relationship between the self and the ...

Voiceless Echoes of the Empire: On Reggae Music in A Brief History of Seven Killings

Xi Xi, Yutong Zhang    86-96

Column：Literary Interdisciplinary Studies

Abstract：A Brief History of Seven Killings, written by Jamaican American novelist Marlon James, centers on the attempted assassination of reggae icon Bob Marley, tracing over three decades of political shifts in Jamaica, with reggae music functioning as a central symbolic thread throughout the novel. Through an analysis of the intricate interplay between the spectral figure Sir Jennings and reggae，this study reveals the implicit transformation of colonial power and the gradual erosion of imperial discourse. The novel’s narrative...

Negotiating Double Otherness: Representation of Elderly Women in The Adventures of Augie March

Tianyu Luan    97-105

Column：Literary Interdisciplinary Studies

Abstract：The representation of elderly female characters in Saul Bellow’s works, shaped by the intersection of sexism and ageism, constitutes a form of double otherness through which the age ideology of modern society and the predicament of female subjectivity can be critically examined. From the perspective of literary gerontology, this study investigates the shifting identities of elderly women in Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March across three dimensions: familial power structures, social age order, and self-perception. These elderly women reconstructs their subjectivity through bodily practices and emotional memories, thereby resisting and transcending the dominant decline narrative of aging. ...

Legal Cases and Paths to Justice in Faulkner’s "Snopes Trilogy"

Haiyan Cai, Minmin Luo    106-115

Column：Literary Interdisciplinary Studies

Abstract：William Faulkner’s “Snopes Trilogy” presents the dilemma of justice in the transitional period of Southern American society through a dialectical narrative of law and morality. This paper focuses on the key legal cases and the “literary trial” of Flem Snopes, the manipulator of the law in the trilogy. From the dual perspectives of Posner’s “legal pragmatism” and Nussbaum’s “poetic justice,” it reveals the trilogy’s exposure and criticism of judicial alienation and moral crisis. Faulkner deconstructs the singular standard of...

Goethe's Concept of "Privatreligion" and Redemption in the Final Scene of Faust

Zhenghua Hu    116-124

Column：Literature and Culture Studies

Abstract：With regard to redemption in the final scene of Goethe’s Faust, there are three distinct interpretative paths: the secular-humanistic striving thesis, the Protestant doctrine of grace, and the Catholic theory of intercession. Based on their respective epistemological backgrounds and confessional stances, scholars draw upon different textual evidences to substantiate their specific interpretations of redemption. However, these conclusions frequently contradict one another, precluding a coherent and unified interpretation. The present paper attempts to transcend the Protestant and Catholic theological interpretative paradigms by referencing the early pantheism and alchemical concepts that Goethe articulates in Dichtung und Wahrheit, in order to examine the notion of “Privatreligion” manifested in the final scene of Faust.

The Narrative of Time and Its Ethical Dimension in Brigitte Giraud's Live Fast

Qiaorong Fei    125-135

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Abstract：In her work Live Fast, contemporary French writer Brigitte Giraud constructs a narrative of time centered on the concept of acceleration, through the rewriting and retracing of her partner’s accidental death. Guided by an inquiry into individual fate, this narrative develops along a dual trajectory: inwardly, it examines how desire-driven acceleration within intimate relationships culminates in tragedy; outwardly, it investigates how the social acceleration characteristic of the 1990s shaped inescapable temporal rhythms for the individual. Through this two-way exploration of causality, fate is interpreted as a temporal-ethical dilemma arising from the interlocking of personal choice and the structures of the era, while the narrative act itself becomes a practice of ethical reflection. Giraud’s writing thus transcends personal mourning, offering profound literary introspection for the critique of temporality in modernity.

The Making of Modernity in Vietnam’s Literary Field since Đổi Mới: Discursive Modernity, Institutional Mediation, and Endogenous Dynamics

Viet Hoan Ngo    136-146

Column：Literature and Culture Studies

Abstract：This study examines the transformation of Vietnam’s literary field since Đổi Mới (Renovation) and develops an analytical framework of discursive modernity, institutional mediation, and endogenous dynamics. It argues that the defining shift in post-Đổi Mới literature is not simply the individual displacing the collective, but a reconfiguration of literary subjectivity: from a totalizing subject subordinated to a singular historical telos to a relational subject embedded in historical memory, familial ethics, market relations, and identity difference....

Rural Utopia and Colonial Discourse in Haggard’s Allan Quatermain

Jinxian Wu    147-156

Column：Literature and Culture Studies

Abstract：The late Victorian British writer Henry Rider Haggard is world-famous for his African adventure novels. His Allan Quatermain depicts Africa as a countryside imbued with nostalgic overtones, linking colonial adventure with British rural nostalgia. The novel portrays the adventure as an escape from England into the past. With fictionalized nature, it turns two African settlements into “enclaves” of the English countryside, creating a rural utopia free of commerce and industry. Backed by rural discourse, the novel rejects the early Victorian colonial discourse of “trade and Christianity,” thus both whitewashing colonial activity and renewing colonial discourse.

Agency of Thing and Perspective Transformation: A Study on the “Material Turn” Ecological Poetics in Flight Behavior

Weisheng Tang, Qi Ai    3-11

Column：Western Object Narrative Studies (Column for Achievements of Major Projects Supported by the National Social Science Fund of China)

Abstract：The “material turn” represented by “flat ontology” holds that the thing has its own agency and is independent of human beings, and there is no ontological difference between them, so it requires human beings to imagine the being of things correctly. In Barbara Kingsolver’s novel Flight Behavior, the author traces the protagonist Dellarobia’s evolving perception of the monarch butterflies’ extraordinary migration. From initially viewing it as “divine revelation” to gradually recognizing its intrinsic value and material agency, the narrative demonstrates her shift from anthropocentric perspective to non-anthropocentric one, ultimately forming an ecological perspective of equality with all things. This ...

Dietary Preferences and Identity Performances in Clock Without Hands

Ruoyi Huang, Mingwen Xiao    13-21

Column：Western Object Narrative Studies (Column for Achievements of Major Projects Supported by the National Social Science Fund of China)

Abstract：After the American Civil War, the South underwent profound structural transformations, which were further accelerated by the Second World War. The traditional hierarchy came into conflict with the emergent democracy in terms of race, gender, and class, leading to identity dilemmas and subjectivity crises among Southerners. In Clock Without Hands, McCullers illustrates the historical changes and people’s identity performances through food narratives: Under the shadow of “the Southern family romance,” Malone clings to the old culture through anorexia and selective eating; the old Judge seeks solace in gluttony, while his identity is shattered by the impossibility of restoring the old order ...

9/11 as a Hyperobject: A Rereading of Falling Man

Heping Qi, Zeming Hu    22-31

Column：Western Object Narrative Studies (Column for Achievements of Major Projects Supported by the National Social Science Fund of China)

Abstract：The 9/11 terrorist attack in the United States, an unexpected and urgent political event, can be taken as the hyperobject ontologically. In Don DeLillo’s Falling Man, the fractured sense of time experienced by Alzheimer’s disease patients reflects human’s failure of temporal perception, embodying the temporal undulation of the...

Rethinking Chinese Literary Critical Discourse within Object-Oriented Narratology

Xiaohong Peng, Xiang Chen    32-40

Column：Western Object Narrative Studies (Column for Achievements of Major Projects Supported by the National Social Science Fund of China)

Abstract：Tang Weisheng’s A Study on Narrative of Thingness is the first monograph that provides a theoretical framework for and concrete demonstration of the Thingness section within the Object-Oriented Narratology. It also offers new perspectives, concepts, frameworks, and methods for literary studies. It is a work that “awaits Chinese interpretation.” Its reflections possess the potential to reinterpret Chinese literary works and theory, while also presenting a Chinese approach to mutual learning among civilizations from a Narratological perspective.

The Writing of Daily Life and the Construction of the Western Community in Joseph Conrad’s Colonial Fiction

Qiuyu Li    41-51

Column：Spatial and Identity Studies in Literature

Abstract：In his colonial fiction, Conrad constructs a Western community by uniting Westerners and excluding Asians and Africans through the writing of daily life. Although such a community contains discordant elements within itself, it remains relatively idealized compared to reality, reflecting Conrad’s conservative tendency on racial issues. Conrad had personally traveled to Africa and witnessed the greed and brutality of imperial colonization, yet he still portrayed in his works a Western community characterized more by warmth than by conflict. This reveals the...