Author：Lingli HUANG, Qiang HU

Abstract: Airplanes serve as a unique thread to understand Auden’s writings about the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression. During the First World War, the strategic significance demonstrated by airplanes led the British government to resolve to build a “new world order.” The “air-mindedness” vigorously promoted by the government coincided with Auden’s passion for airplanes. The bird’s-eye view from flying not only directly inspired Auden’s poetic imagination but also gave rise to his poetic idea of “maintaining a distance from the times and society.” Together, these two aspects shaped the unique perspective from which...

Column：Literature and Art of the Global Anti-Fascist War   3-14   Details

Author：Jinmiao GUO, Yuquan WU

Abstract: The novel Mother-Earth by the famous Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov takes the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union as the background. Through the female perspective of first-person narrator, it takes the female groups engaged in productive labor behind the war as main images, showing the tough, hard-working and heroic aspects of women and the earth in light of eco-feminism. They endure hardship and rise up together, and finally achieve harmonious coexistence. Aitmatov’s female writing is a rebellion against traditional war literature. He pays attention to the real plight of women under war, ...

Column：Literature and Art of the Global Anti-Fascist War   15-24   Details

Author：Qi ZHANG

Abstract: This paper takes Christopher Nolan’s war-themed films Dunkirk and Oppenheimer as its subjects of study, deconstructing their visual strategies that subvert traditional representations of warfare. By creatively adopting a “non-battlefield” approach, the films deliberately avoid the graphic combat scenes typical of war cinema. Instead, they anchor their depiction in highly aestheticized, indirect elements—such as sonic symbols, confined spaces, and individual micro-experiences—to construct a universal psychological landscape of war and nuclear threat. Viewed through the lens of postmodern theories, ...

Column：Literature and Art of the Global Anti-Fascist War   25-35   Details

Author：Guangzhao LYU

Abstract: In Permutation City, Greg Egan’s “Dust Theory” presents a process where matter and information interweave and continually emerge. N. Katherine Hayles takes this into serious consideration, critiquing Hans Moravec’s “teleology of disembodiment” in his vision of digital resurrection. She argues that Moravec simplifies digital resurrection to a mere physical reproduction by transferring consciousness to a digital medium, neglecting the more complex mechanisms of information flow and generation behind it. Through concepts like “pattern/randomness” and the “computational universe,” Hayles emphasizes that ...

Column：Digital Reincarnation, Immortality, and Resurrection   38-51   Details

Author：Yinghe NIU

Abstract: With the advent of the data age, mind uploading has become a prominent theme in science fiction narratives. While offering the tantalizing prospect of digital immortality, it also raises a host of thorny ethical issues. Australian science fiction writer Greg Egan explores the ethical dilemmas brought about by mind uploading in many of his works. In Egan’s literary imagination, this technology disrupts the personal identity by challenging the continuity and identity of the self, and undermines traditional intersubjective relationships. Moreover, mind uploading may give rise to new forms of inequality and social stratification,...

Column：Digital Reincarnation, Immortality, and Resurrection   52-61   Details

Author：Yan YU

Abstract: Videogame literature inherits the tradition of defining life through narratives of mourning in print literature. While classic literary works advocate for natural humanity, creators and readers (i.e. gamers) of videogames tend to embrace life-forms of unnatural birth. This gives rise to a new concept of life which features voluntary heterization and mechanical rebirth. Metroidvania and Soulsborne/Souls-like games treat virtual life respectively as digital projection of real life and as teaching aids for spiritual growth. Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight combines both genres on the imagistic and narrative basis of T. S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men.” ...

Column：Digital Reincarnation, Immortality, and Resurrection   62-71   Details

Author：Jiajun TAO

Abstract: In the perspective of global history Chinoiserie in England experienced a turn from the vogue of Chinese cultural material consumption to the thriving of the discourse of Chinese antique connoisseurship and collection from the second half of the 19th century to the early 20th century. In the global network of Chinese antique sales, connoisseurship and collection polarized between China and England, the discourse of Chinese antique connoisseurship and collection involves three major sections such as the migration of antiques and knowledge, the museumification of antiques and the reconstruction of knowledge in site,...

Column：Literature and Culture Studies   72-87   Details

Author：Yudi LI

Abstract: The novel John Henry Days, written by the African American writer Colson Whitehead, revolves around the celebration of the stamp issuance of the legendary African American figure John Henry. Through multi-dimensional narratives spanning oral history interviews, ceremony proceedings, and railroad tunnel construction across different temporal and spatial contexts, the novel presents John Henry’s ambiguous, multifaceted, and even self-contradictory image. This legendary black figure, reduced to simplistic stereotypes and commercialized commodities within mainstream white narratives, is, in contrast, imbued with ...

Column：Literature and Culture Studies   88-97   Details

Author：Wang ZHANG

Abstract: As one of the greatest works in the history of opera, Tristan und Isolde is an obscure philosophical drama. Wagner fused Schopenhauer’s philosophy, Buddhist thought, Feuerbach’s ideas, and the Young Germany’s view on love into his own unique philosophy of love, and then expressed it in a dramatic poem through a series of recurring symbols. This paper categorizes the central symbols in the work into three thematic groups and interprets the meaning of these groups to explore the central philosophical themes of Tristan und Isolde. The three symbolic groups are: (1) the love potion; (2) night,...

Column：Literature and Culture Studies   98-111   Details

Author：Ni HU, Sufen WU

Abstract: In his novel Lady Anna, Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope deconstructs traditional class notions through a love triangle among Anna (earl’s daughter), Daniel (a tailor), and Frederic (earl’s heir). An analysis of the novel from both the story and discourse levels reveals that the novelist complicates romantic choices through intricate issues of property inheritance, thereby exposing the evolving notions of marriage: “marriage for affect” triumphs over “marriage for interest.” In addition, the novelist dexterously chooses dual voices and utilizes an authorial narrator to invite readers to encode and decode the novel....

Column：Literature and Culture Studies   112-122   Details