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

Author：Lu LI

Abstract: Don DeLillo’s White Noise is on the surface a representation of the everyday life of an ordinary American family in the 1980s, yet it actually refers to the death culture and symbolic politics of television. The novel not only examines how television intrudes on the everyday life of the Gladneys by shaping and intensifying children and adults’s consciousness of death, but also shows how the narrator Jack utilizes televised narratives to resist the fear of death and to retell the everyday life. However, this resistance does not restrain the televisual transfiguration of domesticity through virtualization, aestheticization and commercialization. ...

Column：Literature and Media   132-144   Details

Author：Jiayi KANG, Zhongming BAO

Abstract: The Sympathizer written by the Vietnamese-American writer Viet Thanh Nguyen breaks away from the singular perspective of the American narrative of the Vietnam War, deconstructing the memory of the war as scripted by American ideology with a focus on Vietnam. The references to various media within the novel reveal how the United States employs mimetic strategies of media discourse to manipulate reality. This paper conducts an in-depth analysis of the novel’s emotional sequences in musical discourse, the narrative structure and visual representation in filmic discourse, and irony that serves as an underlying narrative in journalistic discourse. Through these analyses, this paper seeks to explore how Viet Thanh Nguyen resists and subverts the mimetic nature of American media discourse. This is not only a call for readers ...

Column：Literature and Media   145-156   Details

Author：Qihe LIN

Abstract: Frank Churchill in Jane Austen’s Emma is a complex and contradictory character. He remains loyal to a secret engagement, yet he also enjoys amusement and devious schemes, which reflects the novel’s ethical struggle: it seeks to accommodate cross-class marriages based on affection while upholding the 18th-century practice of intra-class unions and the moral philosophy that advocates honesty. To achieve this balance, the novel portrays Frank as one who unreasonably conceals his secret and even resorts to deliberate deception, ...

Column：Literature and Culture Studies   123-131   Details

Author：Xuefei Min

Abstract: Clarice Lispector has long been regarded as a writer preoccupied with introspective themes, yet her final work, A Hora da Estrela, marks a notable shift in her writing, emerging as her sole text which engages directly with social critique. This paper argues that such a literary turn does not merely stem from a late-life inclination toward memoir writing, nor does it represent an abrupt transformation. Rather, it synthesizes her lifelong conviction—rooted in her youth—of using literature to pursue justice with the thematic representation of “hunger” as both contemporary anxiety and national issue. In truth, the social critique in A Hora da Estrela does not dissolve the existentialist philosophical core that permeates Clarice’s oeuvre. Instead, it elevates a societal problem into a profound philosophical inquiry into the essence of human existence.

Column：Brazilian Literature Studies   3-13   Details

Author：Xiaorui Chu

Abstract: As a central figure in 20th-century Brazilian modernism, Mário de Andrade uses his literary works to explore the cultural tensions inherent in Brazil’s modernization. In Macunaíma, he draws on foreign mythological figures recorded by German anthropologist Theodor Koch-Grünberg to create an unconventional national hero marked by contradictions. By giving the hero a “non-national” character, Mário challenges the romanticization and symbolic appropriation of indigenous culture found in traditional nationalist allegories. At the same time, he subverts the dominant narrative frameworks through Macunaíma’s magical journey. ...

Column：Brazilian Literature Studies   14-27   Details

Author：Lin Ma

Abstract: In 1908, the first group of Japanese immigrants arrived in Brazil. Over the following decades, they were accepted by Brazilian society due to their outstanding achievements in agriculture and were hailed as a model of immigrant integration. Japanese culture also permeated Brazilian daily life to some extent. On the surface, Japanese descendants in Brazil enjoy a high degree of social acceptance and recognition. However, this appearance conceals identity struggles faced by Japanese immigrants and their descendants. The novel Nihonjin by the Japanese-Brazilian writer Oscar Nakasato tells the story of a Japanese family’s journey in Brazil from the perspective of a third-generation immigrant....

Column：Brazilian Literature Studies   28-37   Details