In response to increasing scholarly interest in the transnational dimensions of the Harlem Renaissance, this paper examines Nella Larsen’s Quicksand (1928) as a probing critique of the limitations embedded within the pursuit of a transnational identity. By focusing on the protagonist Helga Crane’s experiences navigating both American and European spaces, I argue that Larsen interrogates the seductive yet ultimately unfulfilling ideal of fluid identity across borders. Helga’s journey, culminating in her return to the American South as the wife of a rural minister and mother of multiple children, poignantly encapsulates the restrictions of transnationalism, challenging the notion that racial and cultural hybridity can seamlessly transcend national boundaries.

Through Helga’s attempts to reconcile her African and Danish heritage, Larsen exposes the barriers to true belonging in both black and white communities, questioning the prevailing transnational aspirations of her time. The narrative reveals that racial and cultural affiliation often overrides any possibility of achieving an integrated transnational identity. Moreover, Quicksand subtly critiques the Harlem Renaissance’s optimistic embrace of transnational exchange, suggesting instead that such ideals may obscure the material and social realities that inhibit individuals from inhabiting multiple cultural spaces without compromise or conflict. Ultimately, this paper contends that Quicksand offers a prescient commentary on the promises and challenges of identity formation through transnationalism, underscoring how the pursuit of self-determination is constrained by racial, social, and geographic forces that fragment rather than integrate identity.

This paper examines the function of Oriental objects in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand as instruments of identity negotiation within a racially stratified world. Through the lens of Robin Kelley’s polyculturalism, it argues that Helga Crane’s aesthetic embrace of Chinese and other Asian artifacts constitutes a futile attempt to transcend the essentialized racial binaries that confine her. By curating an environment of exotic elegance, she seeks to refashion herself beyond the restrictive tropes of Black womanhood—desiring instead an identity imbued with the refinement, mystique, and historical depth often ascribed to the Orient in Western imagination. Yet, this aesthetic strategy, rather than liberating her, merely reinforces her status as an object of othering, exposing the limits of cultural appropriation as a means of self-definition.

Larsen’s novel simultaneously critiques the paradox of Western engagements with the Orient: while white characters collect and display Asian objects as markers of erudition and cosmopolitan taste, their underlying racial prejudices remain unshaken. Helga, too, unwittingly participates in this dynamic, instrumentalizing Oriental objects in her search for an alternative self, only to find that the structures of racial exclusion remain impermeable. Her tragedy thus reveals the hollowness of aesthetic hybridity within a system that fetishizes the exotic yet refuses to dismantle racial hierarchies. By interrogating Quicksand through a polycultural framework, this study underscores the novel’s prescient critique of ornamental diversity and its insistence on a more profound reckoning with cultural hybridity, racial identity, and the inescapable weight of historical legacies.

Dubbed the “Black Venus” of the “Roaring Twenties” and the Jazz Age, American-born black female performer Josephine Baker made her fame as an icon of black cultural production in Paris via the bold presentation of her racialized and sexualized bodily performances such as the banana dance. Although she never gained the equivalent reputation in the United States, Baker’s Parisian career allowed her to subvert Western ideals and stereotypes of Black womanhood by simultaneously embracing, exaggerating, and satirizing the exoticized tropes projected onto her as a Black woman performer. Her self-styled “raced femininity” utilized body, movement, and theatricality to challenge exoticizing narratives, performing the desired “exotic” and “erotic” on the variety stage under the colonial “othering” gaze while showcasing Black female creative autonomy and ingenuity in the context of black transnationalism. Through an analysis of her sensational performances in 1920s and 1930s Paris, this paper explores how Baker deployed her body and stagecraft to challenge racial and gender norms, using her transatlantic celebrity as a platform to critique and redefine conceptions of Black femininity. Positioning Baker’s transnational performances parallel to her peers, vaudeville blueswomen active in 1920s America, where she was denied, this paper contends that Baker’s embodied performance of race and gender in a European setting exemplifies how Black women in the early 20th century used transnational stages to carve out new spaces for agency and self-expression that transcended geographic and social boundaries. Through the strategical use of performance as a means to craft self-determined narratives, Josephine Baker’s transnational performances resonate as dynamic expressions of Black artistic agency, racial identity, and gendered self-fashioning.

The White-Snake Lady and Lamia are two highly responsive mythical and legendary images of metamorphosis and romantic love, but they display signifi- cant differences in their physical transformation and subjectivity construction. Both serpent bodies suffer the same physical and metaphorical dilemma of being de- famed as seductive and obscene. However, due to the White-Snake Lady’s physical transformation, she has achieved not only a human body, but also a human ethical consciousness and female subjectivity. By contrast, Lamia, with similar storylines and dramatic conflicts, fails in the pursuit of human identity with her never-sub- siding serpent obscenity. While the White-Snake Lady remains the protagonist of her legend, Lamia in her myth is at most a foil for the male figures representing rational power and temperance. The two legends of love, with highly similar plots, represent a fundamental difference in Eastern and Western perspectives toward love themes, with the Eastern myth focusing on doomed marriage and feudal ethical codes, and the Western version centering on such dualities as sensibility and ratio- nality, desire and restraint.

The presentation explores the complexities of identity formation for Black women in the diaspora, using Jamaica Kincaid's fiction as its central focus, especially the short novel "Lucy." In it, the protagonist's migration from Antigua to North America serves as a powerful lens through which to examine the challenges of navigating a new cultural landscape while simultaneously grappling with the legacies of colonialism and its impact on self-perception. The paper argues that Lucy's journey is not simply a geographical one, but a profound exploration of the performance of identity.

Kincaid's female characters, both within and beyond the familiar confines of their Antiguan upbringing, are confronted with societal expectations and racial dynamics. I will analyze how Kincaid's protagonists strategically perform different versions of themselves as a means of survival and self-discovery. Each performance is not merely a mask, but a complex negotiation of their evolving sense of self.

However, the performative aspect of identity also presents significant challenges. The presentation will delve into the inherent tensions between authentic self-expression and the pressures of assimilation. Kincaid's narratives often represent the tension between the search for a sense of belonging inextricably linked to the need to reconcile Caribbean (Antiguan) heritage and American environment. Ultimately, this presentation argues that Kincaid's representations of female characters are a powerful testament to the resilience and agency of Black women in the diaspora as they navigate the complexities of identity and belonging in a postcolonial environment.

In "The Suicide of an American Girl" , Alice Walker portrays the transnational experiences of protagonist Anna Harriman, who traverses between the United States and Africa, revealing the challenges of identity and cultural belonging faced by Black women in a globalized world. Anna’s attempt to find solace in Africa, which she perceives as her "cultural motherland," results in disillusionment as the gap between expectation and reality deepens her identity crisis. Africa, instead of offering a sense of belonging, exacerbates Anna’s anguish over racial and cultural estrangement. Through Anna’s personal tragedy, Walker reflects on the intricate intersections of self and other, as well as the profound contradictions faced by Black women in transnational spaces.

Walker’s personal experiences significantly inform this narrative. Her travels to Africa, her return to Mississippi, and her eventual departure from her hometown shaped her nuanced understanding of transnational identity negotiation and cultural conflict. By drawing on these experiences, Walker questions the costs and possibilities of identity mobility in the age of globalization, highlighting the ways Black women navigate and reconstruct their identities within the multiple borders of race, culture, and space.

This paper employs the theoretical framework of transnational identity negotiation to analyze the themes of cultural estrangement and racial conflict depicted in "Suicide of an American Girl." It explores how Walker’s literary work examines the processes of identity reconstruction and cultural resistance among Black women in diverse cultural contexts. Ultimately, this study demonstrates how Walker’s works transcend geographical and historical boundaries, addressing contemporary issues of globalization and Black women’s cultural identity while offering new theoretical insights into the politics of identity in transnational movement.

This paper explores Gayl Jones’ novel Mosquito as a vivid depiction of the complex intersections of African American, Mexican immigrant, and other marginalized identities along the U.S.-Mexico border. Through the lens of everyday life politics, this study examines how Mosquito reflects the fluid, transnational dynamics that shape identity and community beyond rigid national and cultural boundaries. By focusing on the permeability of these boundaries and the active resistance of imposed norms, this paper analyzes how Jones portrays the border region as a space where identities, allegiances, and belonging are continuously renegotiated. It argues that Mosquito highlights the powerful role of mobility and movement in fostering a transnational sense of community and solidarity among diverse, often marginalized groups. In Jones’ narrative, everyday practices—such as storytelling, cultural exchanges, and acts of solidarity—redefine the boundaries of community, presenting the border not as a dividing line but as a transformative zone of interaction and agency. This paper contributes to scholarship on Black transnationalism by positioning Mosquito as a key literary work that challenges conventional understandings of identity, belonging, and resistance in transnational spaces.

Rooted in nationally defined conditions and primarily addressing its immediate audience of Indigenous and white Australians, Australian Indigenous literature performs an important role in the articulation of Indigenous peoples’ protest, constituting an indictment of white Australian colonial ideology, recuperation of neglected Aboriginal history, and a call for redefining blackness. However, despite its preoccupation with the local and the national, this literature is also a component of world literature in the sense that it raises ethical questions about societal, political and cultural violence and abuse that continue to haunt all societies in the 21st century. Focused on the poetry collection of Wiradjuri poet Jeanine Leane Dark Secrets: After Dreaming A.D. 1987–1961 (2010), this article demonstrates how Leane confronts assumptions about the irreducible division between empowered and disempowered cultures. It argues that, despite the plurality of cultural responses to colonial pressure, Leane’s verse deals with wider themes and provides spaces for cross-cultural relationality.

It is not by chance that the literary studies curriculum was one of the most visible trenches of decolonial activism in the UK, especially in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. Student-led demand for change has not gone unheard and, in the name of inclusion, changes were made without the adequate level of reflection that the degree of transformation required demanded. Is the diversification of ethnic background and nationality of authors in a syllabus the kind of change to be brought by an approach that calls itself decolonial?

Departing from the pitfalls of curricular inclusion as a decolonial gesture in literary studies curricula, and building on the lessons on epistemic diversification learnt through the success of postcolonial studies, this paper explores the potential of a decolonial praxis as a way forward to deliver the kind of transformation that the approach has the capacity to inspire and deliver. Building on the definition of praxis by the Brazilian scholar Paulo Freire (1985), this paper will argue that to live up to the liberating promise of the decolonial approach, literary studies must develop a conscious approach to process – which I conceive as the field’s structure and method – as a basis for action that is transformative and capable of unlocking more of literary studies’ untapped potential as worldly episteme.

Through an analysis of the rise of vernacular literary studies in the back of the institutionalisation of the discipline of English in the UK and the development of the literary research method in this context, I argue that the regard for a decolonial praxis is the most fruitful and least co-optable way forward to deliver some of the decolonial promises in a discipline embedded in a history of privilege and exclusion.

The importance artificial intelligence has gained today inevitably leads to the question of whether it can be useful in poetry. There are poets who refuse to use the PC or even the typewriter. Others welcome technological help. They benefit from artificial intelligence not to write but to experiment with language and forms in new ways.

Experimenting with language, not writing – what is the difference? The persons who experiment use language, the person who writes, especially the poet, is searching for language. He does not possess it, he has to find it, including things. Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, the Spanish post-romantic poet aptly describes this kind of poetry as a natural poetry that comes from the imagination itself like an electric spark, following its own rules in a free form and using simple words. It is creative by nature. “It may be called the poetry of the poets.”

The question is whether this creative poetry is in any way compatible with the aid of artificial intelligence. In order to answer this question, it is the intention of the paper at hand to examine the two distinguishable subjects of poetry, i.e. the poet, and the addressee of the poem, the reader. Can they be artificially promoted?

Rimbaud’s famous statement points to what happens to the poet in creative poetry: “I is another”. A verse by Paul Celan echoes this with the important difference however that this event implies the connotation of a personal dialogue: “I am you when I am I”. The unity of the poetic subject is dissolved. By comparing the poetics and poetry of Jacques Dupin, Paul Celan, and André du Bouchet, the paper at hand will attempt to show that the text draws the reader into a vertiginous maelstrom of meanings and differences of the I and the others. It is a texture that Derrida calls by the neologism “différance” (differance”). Once one is immersed in the movement of the text and its radiation in all directions, meanings emerge, words and Others and things appear and enter into dialogue. The poem turns out to be a network that produces a coherent meaning beyond the uncertainty of any I and Others and things in transformation, giving evidence of the body, the mind, the language, and poetry. The reader as an implicit addressee is obviously a part of this movement of shifts and dissolutions. The question of the possible place of artificial intelligence in the poetic act of creation will be answered against the background of this poetic event. The paper concludes with the question of the possible role of artificial intelligence in relation to the explicit reader.

Choice of references:

Blanchot, Maurice : L’Entretien infini. Paris, Gallimard, 1969

Derrida, Jacques : La Dissémination. Paris, Seuil, 1972

Heidegger, Martin : Sein und Zeit. Tübingen, Max Niemeyer, 1984

This JCLA-KCLA Joint Session Roundtable will bring together members from the Korean Comparative Literature Association (KCLA) and the Japanese Comparative Literature Association (JCLA). The session aims to compare current trends in the field of comparative literature, discuss academic concerns, and share survival tactics for scholarly work, focusing on the following four topics:

First, "Recent Activities" will involve sharing key activities and research achievements of each association, while also exploring future directions for comparative literature research in the current academic environment. Second, "Education and Social Impact" will examine changes in comparative literature education and its influence on society, discussing ways the discipline can contribute to the community. Third, "Academic Publication" will analyze trends in scholarly publishing within comparative literature and exchange practical information on strategies for publishing in domestic and international journals and monographs. Finally, "Internationalization and the Global Anglophone" will delve into methods for expanding comparative literature research globally, including strategies for promoting exchanges with the Anglophone academic world and building international scholarly networks. This will also involve an extended discussion on comparative literary discourse possible between Anglophone comparative literature and East Asia.

This roundtable is expected to be a meaningful opportunity to vitalize academic exchange between the two associations and collectively seek solutions to the pressing challenges facing the field of comparative literature.

This JCLA-KCLA Joint Session Roundtable will bring together members from the Korean Comparative Literature Association (KCLA) and the Japanese Comparative Literature Association (JCLA). The session aims to compare current trends in the field of comparative literature, discuss academic concerns, and share survival tactics for scholarly work, focusing on the following four topics:

First, "Recent Activities" will involve sharing key activities and research achievements of each association, while also exploring future directions for comparative literature research in the current academic environment. Second, "Education and Social Impact" will examine changes in comparative literature education and its influence on society, discussing ways the discipline can contribute to the community. Third, "Academic Publication" will analyze trends in scholarly publishing within comparative literature and exchange practical information on strategies for publishing in domestic and international journals and monographs. Finally, "Internationalization and the Global Anglophone" will delve into methods for expanding comparative literature research globally, including strategies for promoting exchanges with the Anglophone academic world and building international scholarly networks. This will also involve an extended discussion on comparative literary discourse possible between Anglophone comparative literature and East Asia.

This roundtable is expected to be a meaningful opportunity to vitalize academic exchange between the two associations and collectively seek solutions to the pressing challenges facing the field of comparative literature.

Members from KCLA and JCLA will compare trends in the field, discuss academic concerns, and share survival tactics around the 4 topics below.

1) Recent Activities

2) Education and Social Impact

3) Academic Publication

4) Internationalization and the Global Anglophone

This JCLA-KCLA Joint Session Roundtable will bring together members from the Korean Comparative Literature Association (KCLA) and the Japanese Comparative Literature Association (JCLA). The session aims to compare current trends in the field of comparative literature, discuss academic concerns, and share survival tactics for scholarly work, focusing on the following four topics:

First, "Recent Activities" will involve sharing key activities and research achievements of each association, while also exploring future directions for comparative literature research in the current academic environment. Second, "Education and Social Impact" will examine changes in comparative literature education and its influence on society, discussing ways the discipline can contribute to the community. Third, "Academic Publication" will analyze trends in scholarly publishing within comparative literature and exchange practical information on strategies for publishing in domestic and international journals and monographs. Finally, "Internationalization and the Global Anglophone" will delve into methods for expanding comparative literature research globally, including strategies for promoting exchanges with the Anglophone academic world and building international scholarly networks. This will also involve an extended discussion on comparative literary discourse possible between Anglophone comparative literature and East Asia.

This roundtable is expected to be a meaningful opportunity to vitalize academic exchange between the two associations and collectively seek solutions to the pressing challenges facing the field of comparative literature.

Members from KCLA and JCLA will compare trends in the field, discuss academic concerns, and share survival tactics around the 4 topics below.

1) Recent Activities

2) Education and Social Impact

3) Academic Publication

4) Internationalization and the Global Anglophone

University of Toyama’s Library houses almost all of Hearn's collection. Among them are books that Hearn purchased after coming to Japan in 1890, which he used for writing his works and preparing for lectures at the Imperial University. In addition, this includes more than 500 books that Hearn purchased during his time in the United States and left behind when he came to Japan. These books were returned to the family after Hearn's death, and Hearn himself was never able to touch them again after coming to Japan. Hearn is believed to have used these books for translation and as references for writing newspaper columns.

These books sometimes contain writings by Hearn. This time, I would like to attempt to consider how Hearn utilized his collection, particularly how he understood Romanticism, by referring to some examples of his writings. Regarding Hearn's understanding of Romanticism, it will also refer to the lectures at the Imperial University, which is also considered to have significant meaning as one of the earliest receptions of Romanticism in Japan. This is because many of the students who attended Hearn's lectures at the Imperial University later became literary figures and researchers who played a major role in the acceptance of Western literature in Japan.

In Japan, the name Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904), or Koizumi Yakumo—his adopted name after joining his Japanese wife's family register—is often associated with ghost stories and nostalgic, exotic depictions of Japanese cultural heritage. He remains widely recognized by the Japanese public for his admiration, respect, and advocacy of what he considered refined and even superior aspects of Japanese culture and society, many of which faded with the rapid modernization of the Meiji Era (1868–1912). One of the most significant archives of Hearn’s private notebooks, letters, and manuscripts is housed in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia, within the Clifton Waller Barrett Collection. However, more than two-thirds of his personal notes and manuscripts were lost during the Second World War, leaving behind a collection that still contains materials difficult to classify or fully contextualize. This paper provides an overview of some of the materials from this archive that have been examined and published during my overseas sabbatical at UVA. Furthermore, it is hoped that more scholars will explore this archive and establish connections with other collections, such as those at Toyama University, to deepen our understanding of Hearn’s legacy.

Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) and Yanagi Muneyoshi (1889–1961) observed and described the cultures and spiritualities of Japan and Korea from differing historical contexts and perspectives. This presentation analyzes the multilayered structures of "otherness" in their cultural representations, examining how historical contexts such as colonial rule and modernization shaped their viewpoints.

Hearn, during the Meiji era in Japan, praised the "beauty" and "spirituality" of Japanese culture from the perspective of a Western observer. His works often framed Japan as a "distinct culture capable of countering the West," employing a lens that was sometimes rooted in exoticism. In contrast, Yanagi Muneyoshi visited Korea under Japanese rule during the Taisho and Showa periods and was deeply inspired by the craft culture created by nameless artisans. Yanagi valued Korean ceramics and crafts as manifestations of "pure beauty created by anonymous craftsmen," though his perspective was not entirely free from the asymmetrical power dynamics between Japan and Korea.

This presentation focuses on the following two points: First, it compares the characteristics of "otherness" and the representational methods employed by Hearn and Yanagi. While Hearn depicted Japan as an "external observer," incorporating Western values and religious perspectives, Yanagi approached Korea as an "internal observer," seeing it as a symbol of "lost beauty." Through this comparison, I will highlight how their respective positions and historical contexts influenced their representations of "the other."

Second, it examines the colonial implications embedded in their cultural perspectives. Hearn’s admiration for Japanese culture often idealized it as an "Eastern virtue" that countered Western modernity, while Yanagi’s appreciation of Korean culture positioned Korea as a "simple and pure other" within the context of colonial rule. This presentation critically considers the roles such constructions of otherness played within the dynamics of dominance and subordination.

By analyzing the commonalities and differences in Hearn and Yanagi's views on otherness, this presentation aims to reevaluate the cultural and historical significance of their perspectives.

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) was highly praised as an interpreter of Japan by European readers and intellectuals from the 1880s to the 1890s. On the other hand, the international poet, Yone Noguchi (1875-1947), published many books about Japanese culture, especially from the 1900s onwards, and was also recognized as another interpreter of Japanese culture to Western societies. Although Noguchi appreciated Hearn’s works and respected his literary talent and keen insights on Japanese literature and culture, he could not meet Hearn directly while Hearn was alive in Tokyo. After Hearn’s death, Noguchi wrote a biography of Hearn and continued to publish various reviews on Hearn’s works actively until the mid-1920s. One of the main reasons why Noguchi highly evaluated Hearn was because both of them discovered the uniqueness and beauty of Japanese culture different from so-called Western culture. In this presentation, I will clarify how Hearn and Noguchi appreciated Japanese culture in comparison to Western culture, considering their differences in literary ideas, identities, and social backgrounds. They had common ideas on the beauty of Japanese literature such as Hokku, because they were writers who crossed borders between countries and had broader views on cultural diversity. However, they must have shown different appreciation for Japanese culture because their identities varied: the former was a foreigner who became a Japanese citizen, and the latter was a Japanese who experienced dual cultural identities.

Lafcadio Hearn (Koizumi Yakumo, 1850–1904) played a pivotal role in introducing French literature to Japanese writers, serving as a writer, translator, and educator. His literary production, English translations of French literature, and teaching activities were deeply interconnected, each informing and shaping the others. In particular, his translations provided both a foundation and a source of inspiration for his creative writing. Furthermore, Hearn’s English translations served as a crucial medium through which modern Japanese writers, including Natsume Sōseki (1867-1916) and Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (1892-1927), engaged with French literature. Akutagawa, in particular, translated Hearn’s English renderings of French texts into Japanese, illustrating his sustained interest in Hearn’s translations and their impact on the reception of French literature in Japan.

This presentation examines the dynamic interplay between translation and creative writing in the works of Hearn and Akutagawa through an analysis of texts and translations by Théophile Gautier (1811-1872), Hearn, and Akutagawa. It also considers their shared engagement with the visual arts as a critical lens for understanding their literary approaches. By situating their works within the broader transnational circulation of literature, this study seeks to illuminate the intricate processes of literary adaptation and transformation that shaped modern Japanese literature’s reception of French literary traditions.

Lafcadio Hearn (Koizumi Yakumo, 1850–1904) played a pivotal role in introducing French literature to Japanese writers, serving as a writer, translator, and educator. His literary production, English translations of French literature, and teaching activities were deeply interconnected, each informing and shaping the others. In particular, his translations provided both a foundation and a source of inspiration for his creative writing. Furthermore, Hearn’s English translations served as a crucial medium through which modern Japanese writers, including Natsume Sōseki (1867-1916) and Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (1892-1927), engaged with French literature. Akutagawa, in particular, translated Hearn’s English renderings of French texts into Japanese, illustrating his sustained interest in Hearn’s translations and their impact on the reception of French literature in Japan.

This presentation examines the dynamic interplay between translation and creative writing in the works of Hearn and Akutagawa through an analysis of texts and translations by Théophile Gautier (1811-1872), Hearn, and Akutagawa. It also considers their shared engagement with the visual arts as a critical lens for understanding their literary approaches. By situating their works within the broader transnational circulation of literature, this study seeks to illuminate the intricate processes of literary adaptation and transformation that shaped modern Japanese literature’s reception of French literary traditions.

Comparative literature is innately cross-cultural and globally inclusive. With the advent of a new vision of international comparative literature, comparative literature in East Asia “connects the East and the West” by foregrounding communications between the Eastern and Western worlds that turn away from unilateralism and narrow-mindedness and actively advocating “cross-cultural scholarly practices and endeavors.” In this light, the emergence and evaluation of myriad canonical texts in the East Asian cultural circle, traditional East Asian culture, and modern and contemporary literature are no longer stagnantly defined, but instead dynamically generated. “Cross-cultural practice that bridges the East and the West” provides sound conditions for these texts to respond to issues in literature and culture, and even the clash of civilizations in the current world.

This panel seeks to address the following topics:

Theories and methods of international comparative literature and comparative literature in East Asia

Comparative literature studies and cross-cultural practice in East Asian countries, including China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Mongolia, among others

The dynamic generation of traditional East Asian literature, modern and contemporary literature, and cross-cultural practice that connects the East and the West

Comparative literature in East Asia, issues in literature and culture, and the clash of civilizations in the current world

Interrelations between East Asian cultural circle, Chinese culture and the development of 20th-century European thought

Proverbs, as universal linguistic symbols, not only encapsulate rich folk traditions but also serve as concentrated expressions of national identity, playing a crucial role in fostering cultural commonality across different societies. During the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, Westerners came to China, and their engagement with Chinese culture extended beyond mere observation. The translation of Chinese proverbs into Western languages became a significant conduit for introducing Chinese thought to Europe. At the same time, these Westerners actively studied, interpreted, and applied Chinese proverbs in their own intellectual practices. This paper examines Chinese books on Western knowledge from that period, particularly those related to proverbs, conducting an in-depth analysis of their distinctive features. From the perspective of linguistic practice, it reassesses the role of proverbs in facilitating dialogue and cultural adaptation between disparate civilizations. Ultimately, this study offers fresh insights into the pathways and depth of Sino-Western cultural exchanges during the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

The expansion of railways in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries captivated public imagination and inspired a variety of playthings across the globe. Realistic train models and advanced science toys produced by manufacturers from Germany and the United States constituted a expansion of the railway modernity in imagination of childhood. However, contrary to the notion of a sweeping replacement of local traditional toys by industrial, Westernized playthings, East Asian toys underwent a complex process of transnational cultural exchange within and beyond the region.

This study examines the intellectual discourse and cultural practices surrounding train-themed games in early twentieth-century China. Through a detailed analysis of train-themed Sugoroku—a Japanese board game with Chinese origins—and various Chinese train-themed games that didn’t incorporate physical train models, this research investigates the complex process of toy modernization. The study demonstrates the crucial role of traditional and local forms in mediating the popularization of modern technology. This research not only sheds light on the relationship between modern technology and the concept of childhood in East Asia, but also offers a transnational perspective on the region's modernization process.

Lu Xun was very fond of Fabre's Souvenirs Entomologiques. According to Lu Xun's diary, from November 1924 to November 1931, Lu Xun spent seven years collecting Fabre's whole set of works and various translations one after another, and this interest continued until Lu Xun's death. In Lu Xun's brother Zhou Jianren's recollection, “In the last few years of his life, when the fighting was so tense and his health was not good, he still couldn't forget that he wanted to work with me on translating French scientist Fabre's Souvenirs Entomologiques.

In “Late Spring Ramblings” published in 1925, Lu Xun introduced Fabre's Souvenirs Entomologiques , which opens with the spectacle of a fine-waisted bee catching a lacewing to be its stepchild, and uses this material to criticize the Chinese national character: content with the joy of rural life and the traditional view of nature, stubborn, and alienated from science.

What is more interesting is that, just like many works at that time, Lu Xun read Souvenirs Entomologiques not in the original French, but mainly in the Japanese version, and the complete translation in Lu Xun's collection was also the Sobunkaku（叢文閣）edition, the translations of 大杉榮and 椎名其二, which were purchased from Uchiyama Bookstore, a bridge of communication between Chinese and Japanese intellectuals at that time.

Thus, taking Fabre's Souvenirs Entomologiques as a slice, we observe an interesting phenomenon: how Fabre's Souvenirs Entomologiques was translated by the anarchists Ei Osugi and Kijiji Shiina, conveying a call for the promotion of science education, and how it arrived at Lu Xun, becoming the discursive material of his nationalism, which “profoundly altered the sensibilities of several generations of Chinese in the 20th century! ” (Liu He, “Interlingual Practice: Literature, National Culture and Translated Modernity”). What exactly happened in the process of translating and reading Faber? How do the historical conditions of translation contribute to the production of new meanings of the text in question? And how do we construct a modern Chinese scientific culture through cross-cultural knowledge and assimilation? Beyond this, how did Japan, as the medium through which Western thought entered China at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, play an important role in the intellectual activity of Chinese intellectuals? Through the textual travel of Fabre's Souvenirs Entomologiques, we will have a concrete and practical discussion on the above questions.

As exemplary texts of modernity writing in 20th-century Chinese and Western literature, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Qian Zhongshu's Fortress Besieged employ divergent yet convergent narrative strategies to reveal the structural crisis of the human spiritual ecosystem during modernity's progression. This study, grounded in comparative literature perspectives, examines both works' metaphorical critique of modernity paradoxes through dimensions including temporal dilemmas, alienation of marital ethics, war trauma memory, and intellectual symptom clusters, while elucidating the latent nature-civilization dialectical tension through eco-critical theory.

Firstly, the colonization of organic life-time by mechanical temporality constitutes the origin of spiritual alienation. Mrs. Dalloway dissects Clarissa's stream of consciousness through Big Ben's mechanical rhythm, exposing linear temporality's violent discipline over natural life rhythms. Meanwhile, Fortress Besieged employs Fang Hongjian's temporal nihilism during displacement to metaphorize the disintegration of traditional agrarian cyclical temporality in war contexts. Both works jointly critique modernity's transgression against organic temporal order, engendering rootlessness anxiety.

Secondly, marital power structures reflect pathological interpersonal ecology. The Dalloways' marriage degenerates into symbolic performance sustaining social capital, its emotional void exposing bourgeois existential alienation, whereas Fang's marital entrapment manifests semi-colonial intellectuals' fragmentation between traditional patriarchal ethics and modern individual desires, with the besieged effect mirroring materialized society.

Thirdly, war violence as modernity's ultimate manifestation breeds spiritual trauma in civilizational wilderness. Septimus' post-war PTSD deconstructs Enlightenment rationality's repression of human nature, while the collective collapse of San Lü University intellectuals reveals cultural ecosystem disorder under war's shadow.

Finally, intellectuals' pathological subjectivity unveils modernity crisis's deep logic. Clarissa's self-fragmentation and Fang's existential ennui jointly constitute post-disenchanted subjectivity ruins, their spiritual symptoms indicating modernity's dual destruction of natural humanity and cultural ecology.

This study argues that Mrs. Dalloway and Fortress Besieged reveal modernity's fundamental dilemma as instrumental rationality's systematic stripping of life's natural attributes through cross-cultural dialogue. Both works construct spiritual ecopathology specimens through literary imagination, providing critical perspectives for reflecting on technological hegemony and ecological ethics reconstruction in modern civilization.

Scientific inquiry seeks not only to understand what is meant by a particular genre (definition) but also to explain its emergence (causes). Genre definitions are problematic, because they suggest literary genres are timeless or essential forms, but, in fact, they are constructed, maintained or abandoned by acting agents within the literary field and arise from specific social, cultural, and historical conditions. These conditions can be compared across contexts to deepen our understanding of the interaction between cultural production and its surrounding environments. The goal of such analysis is not merely to describe when and where a genre appears but to explain why it emerges under particular circumstances.

A systematic comparative approach enables the identification of patterns that recur across different cultural and historical contexts. To achieve this, J.S. Mill’s “Method of Agreement” offers an analytical framework. This presentation examines both the potential and the challenges of this method through a comparative causal analysis of the Bildungsroman in Germany and Japan, combining theory with practical applications to highlight the dynamics of genre formation.

In the late 1980s, the acceleration of globalization brought profound societal transformations to East Asia, catalyzing the emergence of Chinese and Korean New Wave cinema as distinctive responses to these changes. These films offered unique perspectives on national identity in a globalized context by employing "seeing" as a narrative strategy to inscribe historical consciousness and reimagine the agency of the people and Min-jung. Unlike the traditional narrative mode of "speaking," which aligns with Deleuze's concept of movement-image—where intellectuals articulate history and reality on behalf of the people—"seeing" subverts linear logic and records existence in its pure state as a "time-image."

Through a comparative analysis of Chen Kaige’s King of the Children (1987) and Park Kwang-su’s Black Repulic (1990), this study reveals how both films use "seeing" to foreground observation over narration. The cinematic "mechanical eye" captures the act of seeing, transforming the image of the people into a projection of the observer’s psychological landscape. This representation reflects the historical consciousness shaped by the generational experiences of China's "educated youth" and South Korea's democratization movement.

Both films articulate a "hysterical" narrative tied to the failed promises of Western modernization, reflecting shared uncertainties about globalization's trajectory. As China and South Korea entered transitional phases during this period, their envisioned modernities diverged from Eurocentric models, adopting hybrid forms informed by postcolonial and postmodern perspectives. Consequently, their historical narratives bear the marks of disenchantment, characterized by reflexivity and desanctification in their portrayal of national history.

The translation and literary endeavors by missionaries constitute a significant domain in East-West cross-cultural practice from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Joseph de Prémare (1666-1736), a French Jesuit who came to China during the early Qing dynasty, has already become an important subject in comparative literature studies through his seminal translation of The Orphan of Zhao. Beyond translation, Prémare—a specialist in “la poésie chinoise et les caractères”—pioneered original literary creations in both classical and vernacular Chinese. His Dream of a Pilgrim (Mengmeituji, 1709), now recognized as one of the origins of “missionary novels” in China, exemplifies an unparalleled Sino-Western integration style. However, much like the distortion and rejection Prémare endured during his lifetime, this unpublished manuscript has long been overlooked, with its value in bridging Chinese and Western literary traditions scarcely acknowledged. Building upon existing annotations and commentaries, this study adopts a new cultural hybridization perspective to reinterpret Prémare’s work within a cross-cultural context. Inspired by Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis and grounded in Jesuit Figurism, this “classical Chinese tale” (chuanqi) intricately weaves together biblical cosmology and medieval dream vision, with abundant motifs and figures drawn from Confucian classics and classical Chinese literature, embodying the typical cultural hybridity of missionary novels. Through intertextual analyses encompassing “pagan” classics, Christian literature, Ming-Qing tales, and other missionary novels, its multiple hybridities in theme, genre, and language can be crystallized into two core dimensions: “allegorism” and “archaism.” This approach reveals its profound yet syncretic literary imagination while reassessing its position in traditional and modern Chinese literature. As a Jesuit Figurist while a proto-Sinologist, Prémare’s “self-conscious hybridization” reveals an important facet of the Jesuit accommodation strategies, underscoring missionaries’ crucial role as cross-cultural mediators.

China and South Korea are two neighboring Asian countries that share many similarities in their modern development. In the 1930s, both China and colonial Korea experienced left-wing literary movements in the arts influenced by socialist ideas, resulting in the formation of the Left Wing Organizations and the Korean Proletarian Artists' Federation (KAPF). During this period, cinema became an art form that combined with new modern technologies, movie theaters were built in large cities and the first audiences appeared. Among them, intellectuals were not only the main audience for movies, but also the ones who introduced and criticized them. With the moving from silent movies to talkies, With the moving from silent movies to talkies, the intellectuals paid attention to the social function of cinema, and the Left League and Kafka sought the path of cinema with ideological tendencies.

This paper aims to compare the development of cinema in the Left Wing Organizations and the KAPF. In terms of previous studies, there are currently no studies that compare the two. In Korea, there is only a comparative study of KAPF and Pro-Kino organizations in Japan (Hyo In Yi, 2012), but there is no comparative study of the Chinese Leftist cinema.

This paper will examine the establishment process, organizational form and ideological orientation, activity development, and film works of the two groups. In the case of KAPF, the organization that can be officially considered to be under the KAPF umbrella was completed after the reorganization in 1930, with the KAPF Film Department and its direct film studio, Cheongbok-kino, and the film <Underground Village> (Kangho Gamjok, 1931). KAPF's five films did not achieve popular success due to Japanese censorship and lack of capacity Nevertheless, KAPF filmmakers continued to try to revive the organization by establishing the Sino-Korean Film Company, Seoul Kino, Dongbang Kino, and the Joseon Film Production Institute, but they were disbanded due to Japanese repression and the dissolution of the KAPF.

Both the Lift-wing and KAPF films led the trend of socialist film criticism around the 1930s and 'Soft and Hard Struggle' in China. In this context, we can also be seen alongside the first film debates in Korea, which began by criticizing the non-plutocratic, petty-bourgeois, and conservative nature of existing bourgeois cinema. The similarities between the Left-wing and KAPF films are that they were both cultural movements aimed at socialist revolution. While both sought to create left-wing popular films, KAPF films emphasized practicality by directing and starring in their own films, while leftist filmmakers chose a collaborative approach by providing scenarios and partnering with talented film companies. These differences stemmed from the differences in their specific environments and the differences in the objective conditions of the film industry, and provide a reference point for the later development of national cinema.

Since the 18th century, the criteria of truth have been dominated by the paradigm of modern science, by the ideal of universality, standardization, and objectivity. Kant as the prominent figure of this movement established that the foundation of truth depends upon the premise of universal human reason, which guarantees our rational judgment to be identical. This concept of truth however renders it difficult for contemporary readers to appreciate classic Chinese epistemology tradition that begins with the Yi易, which values rather the individual’s hermeneutic intuition to deduce human meanings from material things. This article therefore elucidates Zhu Xi’s conception of gewu格物 (investigation of things) as the apex of the Yi tradition, and in what ways it helps us to reflect upon the ideology of modern science. For Zhu Xi, one’s intuition is nor born universal, but should be consciously cultivated in order to understand the workings of thing. True knowledge is not any metaphysical law, but is the capacity to interpret the meaning of things in any concrete situation, and how it is related to a cosmological vision at large.

Vietnam is one of the countries in the East Asia cultural circle that is most deeply influenced by Chinese Confucian culture. There are many folk tales in China and Vietnam, which contain rich Confucianism. Taking the "fish-dragon" story complexes of the two countries as examples, they both emphasize the Confucianism of collectivism, striving for progress, unity, individual social responsibility and sense of mission, fairness and justice, integrity, etc., reflecting the strong cultural influence of Confucianism and the high acceptance of Chinese Confucian culture by Vietnamese traditional culture. The influence of Chinese Confucianism on Chinese and Vietnamese "fish-dragon" story complexes is mainly reflected in the specific plots and the symbolic meaning of the stories such as the Chinese "Carps Leaping through the Dragon Gate" allusion and the legend of the "Fish Leaping Through the Wu Gate" in Vietnam. Due to the fact that the social circumstances of China and Vietnam are not exactly same, these valuable Confucian thoughts were integrated into the local society of Vietnam, and the process of "localization" occurred, which was expressed in folk stories and other art forms, thus playing a pivotal role in promoting the evolution of Chinese and Vietnamese culture and civilization, and profoundly affecting the social development of the two countries, especially the Civil Service Examination System of China and Vietnam.

As hybrids combined with Western Christian culture and Oriental traditional culture, Akutagawa Ryunosuke’s Kirishitanmono are good objects for comparative literature studies. Death of a Christian is a representative work of Kirishitanmono written by Akutagawa, with comparing with Saint Marina, the Virgin from European hagiography longitudinally and comparing with Kwan-yin Thi Kinh a Vietnamese folktale horizontally, we can find the sense of Akutagawa as a comparative literature practitioner.

The generation, flow and development of the "Third World Literature" theory in East Asia is a multidimensional, multi-layered, and dynamically changing academic topic.Before Fredric Jameson's 1986 publication, East Asian literary circles, notably in Taiwan and South Korea, had already explored and discussed "Third World Literature." South Korea saw a peak in this discourse in the 1970s, viewing Korean literature as part of Third World literature, reflecting deep cultural identity understanding and a regional awakening. Taiwan followed a similar path, influenced by modernist literature and social movements, with pioneers like Chen Yingzhen exploring East Asian "Third World Literature." The interconnection of "national literature" and "Third World" became a key foundation, but Cold War ideologies hindered exchanges, fragmenting the discourse until the 1980s, despite support in South Korea and Taiwan.

The easing of the Cold War and historical events spurred new literary trends in East Asia. The 1987 "Kawamitsu Shinichi-Huang Chunming Dialogue" marked a breakthrough, fostering emotional and theoretical connections between Taiwan and Okinawa. Kawamitsu emphasized historical similarities and the importance of interconnectedness in Third World literature, providing new directions for East Asian literary exchanges.With Taiwan's martial law lifting, the Soviet Union's dissolution, and the Cold War's end, literary interactions accelerated. The 1992 "Occupation and Literature" symposium ended East Asian Third World literature's isolation, bringing together researchers who proposed new perspectives on "occupation" literature, broadening research horizons and highlighting cultural and political connections.

Intellectuals like Huang Chunming and Kawamitsu played a pivotal role in disseminating and innovating the "Third World Literature" discourse, grounded in East Asian realities. They emphasized its anti-theoretical, dynamic, and generative nature. The discourse's evolution is intertwined with global changes, national growth, and academic exploration. A central theme is the concern for the "people," especially marginalized groups' devastation under neocolonialism. This people-centric approach gives East Asian "Third World Literature" unique significance in globalization. East Asian intellectuals have reflected and transcended Jameson's theory, enriching its connotation and providing insights for other regions.

The generation, flow and development of "Third World Literature" theory in East Asia profoundly reveals the cultural consciousness and theoretical exploration of the East Asian region during specific historical periods and also showcases the localization practice and innovation of global literary theory in the East Asian region.

The significance and value of a writer in the literary world are beyond dispute, yet discussions about the role and meaning of writers within “world literature” currently seem insufficient. Professor David Damrosch, when discussing “what is world literature”, explores aspects such as “circulation”, “translation” and “production”, which clearly present an economic research model of “world literature”. As “producers”, what capabilities and skills should writers possess to enter the “economic field” of world literature and reap the “benefits” of global fame? On the other hand, how can writers who have successfully entered this field construct the “republic” of world literature through their personal names and the circulation and translation of their works, thereby contributing to the human civilization? Regarding the first question, Damrosch illustrates through the story of P. G. Wodehouse that a writer who can successfully enter the economic field of world literature must first exhibit “a polyglot exuberance o

This paper examines the cultural origins of the Korean people from a mythological perspective, systematically analyzing the narratives of Korean ethnic origins and their historical construction logic through textual comparison. Myths form a "primordial attachment," a cultural bond that connects a group to its history and culture, helping to establish collective memory. Korean origin myths reflect the essence of Korean culture, carrying the origins and identity of the Korean people.In ancient East Asia, the world was united by Classical Chinese, forming a "Sinic cultural sphere," while the Korean Peninsula belonged to the "Dongyi cultural sphere." The "Twenty-Four Histories" of China contain the "Dongyi Biographies," which document the tribes and states of the Korean Peninsula, serving as key sources for understanding Korean origin myths within the Chinese historical context.Theories on Korean origins include Siberian, Dongyi, Baiyue, and indigenous theories. The author argues that the Korean people originated from the "Dongyi" of Chinese history, with shared cultural roots evident in both Korean and Dongyi myths. These myths reflect cultural traits such as cohesion, bravery, passion, and filial piety.The "Yi" (barbarians) and "Xia" (the Chinese) distinction is a matter of perception, shaped by identity and belief. In the Western Zhou period, "China" referred to the people of the realm, without distinguishing between "civilized" and "barbaric." Korean origin myths not only preserve ethnic memory but also provide historical evidence of the Korean people’s participation in the construction of East Asian civilization as part of the Dongyi cultural legacy.

Chinese characters and Chinese books were transported to Japan through Korean peninsula. Korean reprinted Dongpo’s poems and essays according to Chinese edition, and these Korean printed books were transported to Japan through commercial trade and war plunder etc. from 16th century, which were very helpful for Japan to learn from Chinese traditional culture, and these Korean books also influenced Japanese books’ printing. We can see there’re mainly two tyles of Korean books of Dongpo’s poems and essays, by the writer’s book survey in Iwase Bunko Library, University of Tokyo Library System and National Diet Library,Japan: the first style is Dongpo’s personal book of poems and essays, and the second style is anthology of famous literati’s anthology in Tang and Song Dynasty, which include some of Dongpo’s poems and essays. In addition, the main part of these books are official block-printing one， which tells us that Korean were valued and accepted Dongpo’s poems and essays from government to ordinary people. Dongpo’s lifetime, including where he stayed, such as Hangzhou, Huangzhou, Huizhou and Danzhou’s customs were knew by overseas’ people through these books. The Korean books have high material value, and the headnotes, interlinear notes, review, preface and postscript are all very valuable for bibliographic study, literature study, and history study.

In the oldest historical book of Japan, Kojiki, we can see some records about Japanese acceptance of Chinese books from Korean Peninsula, such as The Analects of Confucius etc. During this cultural interaction history, Dongpo’s poems and essays printed in China were transported to Korean Peninsula firstly, then to Japan. Dongpo’s books of poems and essays had become popular, that’s why we can see lots of Dongpo’s books reprinted by Korean Peninsula, which were transported to Japan by commercial trade or war plunder later, sometimes by giving as gifts and so on, just as mentioned above. On the other hand, We can see some records about Korean printed ancient Chinese books in Shulin Qinghua wrote by Ye Dehui in Qing Dynasty. Ye honored these ancient Chinese books printed in Korean and took it as good edition.

We can find many cases about ancient Chinese books printed in Korean transported to Japan in historical books, and can find many such books exist until today in Japan, but how they are transported to Japan exactly? This paper tries to answer this problem according to the book survey in many libraries in Japan, and takes Kim Sekyun김세균(金世鈞,1465-1539)’s collections in Iwase Bunko Library as example to analyst the historical records in China, Korean and Japan. In addition, this paper records edition information about Dongpo’s books of poems and essays printed in Korean Peninsula, but now collected in Japan, and these books were all read by writer during her book survey.

As a distinguished philosopher and anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss's structuralism and its derivative theories have had a significant impact on human society in the 20th century and beyond, bridging the theoretical domains of the natural sciences and the humanities. This paper focuses on Lévi-Strauss's analysis of Japanese culture, employing his structuralist methodology and anthropological perspectives. It investigates two key dimensions: the convergence of signs and the divisionnisme. Through these perspectives, the paper reconstructs the cultural motifs and structural characteristics of Japan as outlined by Lévi-Strauss, revealing his dynamic and multifaceted framework for comparing Eastern and Western cultures and the approach to synchronic understanding. Furthermore, the paper explores the methodological insights and modern implications that Strauss's research on Japan offers for contemporary scholarship.

The discussion will be organized around four principal themes. First, the interplay between tradition and modernity, as framed by art history. Second, the relationship between nodes and frameworks in the study of mythology. Third, the centripetal forces arising from the interaction between East and West, each resisting yet generating mutual attraction. Fourth, the presentation modes of structuralism and the novel understanding of synchronisme. Lévi-Strauss characterizes Japanese culture as "the hidden other side of the moon," reflecting his expectation of symmetry, resonance, and mutual understanding amid the cultural divergences between East and West, with the aim of transcending cultural dualism and seeking greater integration across spatial and historical dimensions.

However, it is evident that some of Strauss’s discussions on the characteristics of Japanese culture still bear traces of exotic cultural imagination, and his treatment of the holistic connections within Asian cultural history is somewhat insufficient. Nevertheless, Lévi-Strauss’s work continues to represent a seminal Western interpretation of Eastern culture, providing valuable insights into cross-cultural dialogue within the context of the Anthropocene and offering profound reflections on the relationship between humanity and nature.

The “transcendence of modernity” is a highly controversial but tense proposition in Japan's reflection on modernity. Japanese intellectuals have adopted the perspective of the opposition between the “East” and the “West” in an attempt to transcend the “modern” imposed on Japan (East Asia) by Europe and the United States in the modern era. This “East-West dichotomy” focuses on the specificity of Japan and attempts to produce localized knowledge. However, the theory of the “modern supra-grammatism” ignores the idea that “modernity is ourselves”, that is, in the reality of global capitalism, “local knowledge” is always a product of globalization. The Modernization of East Asian Countries The course of modernization in East Asian countries was accompanied by wars and colonization, which made the East Asian countries have complicated emotions towards “modernity”. On the one hand, achieving “modernity” is an inevitable requirement for “preserving the nation and the race”; on the other hand, achieving “modernity” is at the expense of “local specificity”. This paper argues that the dichotomy between “local” and “world” and the attempt to return to “nationalism” is inevitably unattainable; it is necessary to go beyond such a perspective and deal with “local” and “world” in a communitarian way. The relationship between “place” and “world” must be addressed in a communitarian manner, beyond such a perspective.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

During the more than six hundred years from the Goryeo Dynasty to the end of the Joseon Dynasty, many Korean literati in the envoys to China and Japan wrote an abundant of travel records. These materials are increasingly valued by scholars in South Korea, Japan, and China. Among them, the parting poems and essays written by Korean literati for their envoy relatives and friends on their travel to China or to Japan have received less attention. These literati wrote either based on their own East Asia travel experiences or based on their own imagination. Their creative motives, creative mentalities, and the features of the overseas countries they described presented the constructed images of China and Japan in three dimensions, and also reflected the complex political, economic, and cultural relationships among the three countries. Compared with the one-dimensional study of the East Asian travel poems and essays by Korean literati, the parting poems and essays on East Asian travels contain the dialogues and exchanges between the see-off literati and the literati being seen -off, presenting the similarities and differences in the images of China and Japan constructed by Korean literati more diversely. In addition, the parting poems and essays on East Asian travels also have certain reference values for the authenticity and textual research of the historical materials in“Chaotian Lu”and "Yanxing Lu" (Records of Travels to Beijing written by Korean Literati), and are also very helpful for deeply understanding the social conditions, ideological cultures of China, Japan, and the Korean Peninsula, and for the mutual learning of East Asian civilizations.

This article takes D.T.Suzuki’s elaboration on the "emptiness" of Zen Buddhism at the Eranos conference as an example to explore the ideological phenomenon of the westward dissemination of Zen Buddhism in the 20th century. The Eranos conference has been held annually in Ascona, Switzerland since 1933 and has played a crucial role in the cultural exchange between the East and the West. Currently, this aspect has received scant attention in the Chinese academic community. Suzuki delivered consecutive speeches at the conference in 1953 and 1954, presenting people with an inner path to extricate themselves from the spiritual predicament of modernity. In Suzuki's elaboration, the awakening of the spiritual world implies having no discriminatory mind towards all things. People can unveil the veil that dichotomous thinking casts over the real world by independence from language and non-objectification enabling the mind to directly apprehend "emptiness". At this juncture, people no longer draw a boundary between the self and nature, thereby dissolving the anxiety of constantly being threatened by the external world. He employed the "The Ten Oxherding Pictures" to suggest that the "emptiness" of Zen Buddhism unifies "non-being" and "non-nothingness", possessing the "possibility" of continuous renewal. The connotation of "emptiness" has been enriched in the ideological confrontation between the East and the West, inspiring European thinkers and artists to re-understand the world in their perplexity and also being beneficial for people nowadays to practice a positive meaning of life in their daily routines.

In the history of literary and cultural exchange and mutual learning between China and foreign countries since modern China, if we choose one of the most representative western dramatists who can make continuous comparative study with Chinese classical drama, the first choice is undoubtedly Shakespeare. For more than 100 years, Shakespeare's plays have been frequently compared not only with the works of individual Chinese classical drama writers, but also with the Chinese classical drama as a whole. This century-old unconventional comparison is quite rare. Paying attention to this comparative phenomenon has very important theoretical value for us to further promote the exchange and mutual learning of Chinese and foreign literature and culture under the guidance of correct comparative concepts. A century of comparison between classical Chinese drama and Shakespeare's plays objectively and truly presents the inner journey of Chinese scholars from the perspective of Western literature, from the level of literature and culture to constantly understand themselves deeply, rationally correct themselves, and from respecting the West to pursuing equal dialogue and demonstrating cultural self-consciousness and self-confidence.

William Faulkner, as the peak of modern American literature and southern literature in the 20th century, has had an impact on literature all over the world. As a representative of Taiwan's modern literature, Pai Hsien-yung's own creations also show Faulkner's fingerprints in many ways. Pai Hsien-yung transformed Faulkner's modernist techniques of flashbacks, time philosophy and multi-angle narratives, southern gothic colors and mythological patterns into his own literary creations, and coalesced them with his personal life experiences and traditional Chinese cultural resources to form a literary world with Pai Hsien-yung‘s characteristics.Pai Hsien-yung learns and transforms Faulkner's various modernist novel techniques in his novels, especially Crystal Boys, and displays Faulknerian Southern Gothic colors in his homosexual writing, and uses Faulkner's usual mythological patterns, moving from “Faulkner's Myth” to Bai Xianyong's “New Park Myth”.

威廉·福克纳（William Faulkner）作为20世纪美国现代文学及南方文学的高峰，其文学影响遍及世界。白先勇作为台湾现代文学的代表，也在其自身创作中浮现出深深浅浅的“福克纳的指纹”。白先勇将福克纳的闪回、时间哲学与多角度叙事的现代主义创作技巧、南方哥特色彩与神话模式转化至自身的文学创作中，与个人生命体验与中国传统文化资源共同凝聚成具有白先勇特色的文学世界。白先勇在小说创作特别是《孽子》中对福克纳多种现代主义小说技巧的学习与转化，又在同性恋书写中展现福克纳式的美国南方哥特色彩，并使用福克纳惯用的神话模式，从“福克纳的神话”走向白先勇的“新公园神话”。

Han Kang’s The Vegetarian has been criticized for its "Western narrative traditions," reflecting the identity anxiety of East Asian literary scholars. This mirrors Tokiko Kitagawa’s question about why East Asian feminism must be conceived within the context of “East Asia.” The Vegetarian offers an answer by both echoing Western ecofeminism and being rooted in Korea’s historical trauma.

The motif of "flowers" runs throughout novel. While it superficially echoes the Western ecofeminist tradition that associates flowers with female fertility, Han Kang, as discussed in The Boy Is Coming, draws on the Buddhist perspective shared by her father, rooted in the Avatamsaka Sutra’s concept of "three thousand worlds of flowers." She transforms this symbol into a vessel connecting personal and national memories, pointing directly to trauma of war and politics. When the flower changes from a patriotic symbol to a relic of the Jeju Massacre, Han Kang critiques state violence and national trauma, moving beyond Western ecofeminism’s “nature-harmony” ideal.

The “tree-fire” motif merges Western eco-criticism’s nature-as-victim metaphor with Korean shamanic practices, where burning trees witness violence and release collective grief. As in The Boy Is Coming, Han Kang links the Gwangju Uprising with “blood and fire rebirth” imagery. Han Kang shows how suppressed ecological and gender violence transforms into resistance through local religious practices.

Han Kang（한강）, along with her surname "Han(한)" , has inherited the core concept of "Han(한)" , a concept deeply embedded in Korean literature, from her father Han Seungwon (한승원). Yeong-hye refuses to eat meat due to recurring dreams of violent bloodshed. Her action is not only a direct rebellion against her Vietnam War veteran father's patriarchal control but also a metaphor for military dictatorship under Park Chung-hee, which disciplined women's bodies during Korea's modernization, coinciding with the Vietnam War period. However, she adds an ecological dimension, expanding "Han(한)" beyond national humiliation. Novel critiques cultural anxiety of “eating dog meat” during Korea’s engagement with the West, rejecting both Western salvation narratives and nostalgic cultural essentialism. Han Kang uses the individual body’s awakening to expose power structures imposed by both indigenous traditions and foreign hegemony.

The Vegetarian anchors ecofeminism in specific Korean historical traumas. Han Kang suggests solutions must arise from “relational politics.” The Nobel Prize highlighted the novel’s confrontation with historical trauma, showing that East Asian modernity is a dynamic network of translation, naming, and narrative. Yeong-hye’s body becomes a battleground, rejecting ideological submission. Her resistance deconstructs cultural identity myths and transforms literature into a space for political resistance. Like I Do Not Bid Farewell, Han Kang uses embodied writing to critique collision of Eastern and Western power.

Wangdao, ou la voie royale: recherches sur l'esprit des institutions de la Chine archaïque written by Léon Vandermeersch is a monumental work that studied the transitions of the social institutions and the spirit of ritualism during the Yin and Zhou dynasties through comparison of the classics of Confucianism with oracle bone and bronze inscriptions. This book, originally completed in 1975 by Léon Vandermeersch as his doctoral thesis in France after twenty-year in-depth research, was a crystallization of sinology fused by resources from China, Japan, and France. Compared to Western sinologists who remained silent on the research and interpretations of Chinese and Japanese paleographers due to doubts about the authenticity of the oracle bone and bronze inscriptions or their inability to deal with these relevant materials, Léon Vandermeersch had already consciously absorbed these studies for his ancient history research in the 1970s. He attempted to shift the focus of the study of ancient Chinese social institutions from Marcel Granet's anthropologically flavored "Marriage Relations" to "Ancestor Worship" from the perspective of the sociology of religion. However, in contrast to the detailed classification and dating research on oracle bone and bronze inscriptions by Chinese and Japanese scholars, Léon Vandermeersch sought to create a comprehensive framework that would interconnect various dimensions of the Yin-Zhou Dynasty Institutions. This framework delineates a particular emphasis on the mutual influence among institutions. It examines the family institution, including the marriage system, from the perspective of the ancestral worship system, and describes the kingship system, while uncovers the production institution in the blind spot. The framework demonstrates the logical speculation, the grand multi-disciplinary vision, and the innovative spirit of "Yin-Zhou Institution Theory" by Léon Vandermeersch. Moreover, inspired by the methodological approach of the French Annales School's history of mentalities, Léon Vandermeersch, in contrast to Western juridism based on teleology-logic, unearthed the mentality of ritualism in the ancient Chinese based on morphology-logic during the long period of the transition from the Yin to the Zhou dynasty. Wangdao, which integrated the diachronic and synchronic perspectives of the new theory of the Yin-Zhou Institutions, is the basis of the dimension of "Social System" in Léon Vandermeersch’s sinology system. It has injected vitality into the reflection on the origins of Chinese institutions and deserves more attention and dialogues among the foreign and domestic researchers of sinology (or Chinese studies) and ancient Chinese history.

The New Zealander Rewi Alley was a visionary writer, translator, and poet. He lived and worked in China for 60 years, and wrote nine poems about Beijing. These poems describe the natural landscape, social reality, historical evolution and contemporary role of Beijing from three dimensions, namely, time, space and imagery. The consistent theme in these poems is a strong sense of community. The sense of community in these poems is mainly manifested in three aspects: first, the recognition of and optimistic attitude towards the community of common destiny as revealed in “Peking”, “Summer Thoughts”, “Peking Winter Scene” and “A May Morning in Peking”; second, the idea of opposing war and striving for peace as reflected in “An Afternoon of Peking Spring” and “Winter Dusk at the Summer Palace”; third, the longing for the world proletarian community as shown in “Red Leaves at Hsiang Shan”, “Spring Festival Eve, Peking, 1977” and “Peking, July 7, 1977”. These poems are products of a specific historical period, highlighting words such as “people”, “destiny”, “peace” and “world”, expressing the strong confidence of the Chinese people in building socialism, their friendship with and responsibility for the world’s proletarians. To some extent, these poems are epic poems about Beijing, which help us better understand the historical logic of modern and contemporary Chinese revolution and construction, and understand China’s position, development orientation, and vision in the contemporary world.

This paper examines the representation of nonhuman animals in seven contemporary Philippine novels in English, exploring their roles in shaping cultural and national identity. Drawing from critical animal studies (CAS), postcolonial ecocriticism, and folklore studies, the research bridges the symbolic and material dimensions of nonhuman animals, analyzing their literal and allegorical significance. By juxtaposing the folkloric depictions cataloged in Damiana Eugenio’s Philippine Folk Literature series with their literary counterparts in works published over the past decade, this study investigates the enduring and evolving roles of nonhuman animals in Philippine storytelling.

Highlighting the agency and symbolic flexibility of nonhuman animals, the analysis contributes to global CAS discourse, which critiques speciesism and explores the intersections of ecological and cultural marginalization. Moreover, it situates Philippine literature within international conversations on zoocriticism and the human-animal relationship, while also addressing gaps in local literary scholarship. The findings reveal how nonhuman animals in Philippine novels function as more than narrative devices; they are integral to constructing hybrid identities, challenging anthropocentric frameworks, and addressing pressing ecological and social issues from a postcolonial context.

This study advances comparative literature by examining how nonhuman animals mediate relationships between postcolonial human experiences and the environment. It underscores the importance of Southeast Asian narratives in diversifying global ecocritical perspectives, advocating for an inclusive approach that considers the nonhuman in cultural and literary discourses.

Swiss linguist Fardinand De Saussure (1857-1913) is known as father of modern linguistics and semiotics. Saussure first time introduces the concept of Sign, Signifier and Signified and declares the relationship of signifier and signified arbitrary. Saussure calls this particular linguistic domain as Semiology. Being a linguist, Saussure only includes verbal signs in his analysis. Americian logician Charles Sanders Pierce (1839-1914) makes a remarkable contribution to semiotics by adding non-verbal signs to Fardinand`s Semiology based on verbal signs only and calls it Semiotics. Pierce does not deny Saussure`s basic concept of arbitrariness of the relationship of signifier and signified, but categorizes Sign into three categories as Icon, Index and Symbol. French semiotician Roland Barthes (1915-1980) further elaborates signifier and signified by introducing the concepts of denotation and connotation.

It is very surprising and important to look back at Indian knowledge and scholarship developed in 9th Century in Sanskrit language and in the same domain with the formulations of Acharya Anand Vardhan as Shabdshatis or three powers of word Abhidha, Lakshna and Vyanjana in his famous work Dhavanyaloka. In his interpretation of Lakshna, Anand Vardhan describes twelve types of Lakshna including Roorhi, Paryojnavati, Saropa and Sadhyavasana having almost very close and similar description of the intent or signification as defined by Pierce and Roland Barthes later in 20th Century. Moreover, the terms Upmana and Upmeya are almost similar to signifier and signified. Many other formulations of Indian scholars as Dharmakirti, Dingnag and Bharatrihari and concept as Apoha has similarities with Saussure`s view of oppositional differences between signs.

Present paper will focus on a comparative analysis of Indian and Western notions of various semiological and semantic concepts introduced by Acharya Anad Vardhan, Bhartarihari, Ferdinand De Saussure, Charles Sanders Pierce and Roland Barthes. Main objective of the study is to bring forth the certain relatable congenerous parameters or factors and convergent aspects obtained in the viewpoints of given scholars towards their formulations of semiotics and semiology.

歌集（Shijing）在中国传统学术中具有规范地位，在历史上被视为具有政治意义的文本，作为治理国家的宪法典范。各个王朝对*Shijing*的研究主要集中在语言学、语义学和文本批评上，强调其实际功能。然而，在共和时期，*Shijing*经历了一系列的重新解释，最终被纳入文学史，并被归类为现代文学学科。这种从正典文本向文学分类的转变反映了现代中国学术体系的转变。这种转变的具体过程在共和党学者对*诗经*的民间解释中，强调其抒情价值以及对文本作为诗歌在文学史起源的地位的重新定义中显而易见。这种变化与当时学者不断发展的人文主义观点和新思想的推广密切相关。

For a long period, red hair has been mentioned and endowed with special connotations and assumptions in literature. As one of the time turning points, the Medieval Age left a huge impact on British society appearing in several spheres, especially in literature. Being the trait of the wild nation that historians define, red hair presented two opposite connotations in two periods. In this essay, three questions are put forward. The first one is what are the different connotations of red hair between the Anglo-Saxon period and the Medieval period in British literature? The second one is how the religious connotation of red hair affected the public image of secular literature and what is the specific manifestation of it. The third one is that with the process of the shift of the public cognization of redheads, what is the change of social power? In the theory of Northrop Frye, the dark mythological forces should be identified with the heathen empires that can be connected with the strong political slant of the Bible. Therefore, in this essay, I will select typical literature genres as examples including The Canterbury Tales and illustrate the original image of red hair before the period influenced by Catholicism in the Anglo-Saxon period as well as the religious origin of the redhead connotation and try to explain how these changed images became popular and well-known connotations and the transformation of the social power.

The Legend of the White Snake represents a quintessential example of dynamic cultural narrative transformation, embodying a complex ecosystem of transmedia storytelling and landscape production. This paper explores the legend's contemporary metamorphosis through a multimodal theoretical framework, examining how traditional folklore literature navigates technological, performative, and spatial representations. It aims to extend the theoretical framework while maintaining a rigorous analytical approach to understanding literary narrative transformation.

Contemporary manifestations of the White Snake Legend demonstrate unprecedented medial fluidity. From television adaptations like the 1992 "New Legend of the White Snake" starring Zhao Yaji to diverse performative expressions including theatrical productions, animated trilogies, and short-form digital content, the narrative consistently transcends traditional representational boundaries. Drawing on theories of transmedia narrativity and landscape semiotics, this study interrogates how the legend's core characters and spatial configurations mutually produce and transform each other. The research specifically investigates three critical dimensions: 1) Intermedial Transformation: Analyzing how different media platforms (television, cinema, digital short videos, stage performances) reinterpret and reconstruct the legend's fundamental narrative structures and character archetypes. 2) Landscape Narrative: Exploring how geographical spaces like Jinshan Temple, Leifeng Pagoda, and the White Snake Love Culture Park function not merely as backdrops but as active narrative agents in the legend's contemporary reproduction. 3) Digital Mediation: Examining how new media platforms, particularly short-form video applications like TikTok, facilitate novel narrative experiences and audience engagement with the legendary narrative.

By integrating multimodality theory, performance studies and cultural semiotics, as well as analyzing systematically textual, visual, and spatial representations, the research will demonstrate how the White Snake Legend exemplifies a dynamic, adaptive cultural narrative that continuously negotiates between traditional symbolism and contemporary medial expressions. This research contributes to broader discussions about cultural heritage, intermedial storytelling, and the complex relationships between traditional narratives and emerging technological platforms. In sum, by interrogating the White Snake Legend's contemporary manifestations, we gain insights into how folklore adapts, survives, and thrives in a rapidly changing media landscape.

Two Indian epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, are among the oldest and longest poems ever written. Originally in Sanskrit, stories from the epics have endured for millennia, spawning adaptations and translations into hundreds of languages all over the world. This paper considers the how these epics continue to circulate on the internet and the political stakes of the online discourse surrounding them on transnational Hindu identity. The rehearsing and reaffirming of Hindu identity abounds in transnational digital spaces, whether through the availability of open-source translations on sites such as SacredTexts.com or debates on ethics of the epics on reddit forums such as r/Hinduism. Further, in India or its diasporas, Hindu identity is now also organized around consumer subjecthood in a global capitalist economy.

Drawing on the work of Dheepa Sundaram and Manisha Basu, I argue that the ways in which the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and their adaptations are discussed online have less to do with how the Hindus were in past and more to do with who and how they wish to be in the present and future. Whether as writers in a global literary market or as agents of political change both within and outside the Indian nation, Hindus are looking to stake their claim to cultural capital in a translocal, postnational world. However, this aspiration for cultural capital has also inaugurated a battle over the sacrality and unchangeability of “Indian culture”. An essentialized understanding of the epic is being downloaded and then debated or claimed in digital spaces such as Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Other Hindu or Indian social media users are expected to respond to these images in solidarity or are shamed for being “anti-national” or not respecting their “own culture”. Ultimately, I demonstrate how the epics’ and indeed, Hinduism’s future is in these digital spaces, where loyalties and devotions will be performed in new, wide-ranging, and insidious ways.

The project explores the transnational relationships between the literary fields of Russia, France, and Germany from 2018 to the present. The focus is on boundary work processes as well as the mechanisms of openness and closure within literary borders. The research is based on sociological and literary studies approaches, combining an analysis of the structural characteristics of literary fields with a detailed examination of literary texts. Special emphasis is placed on Russian literature and its interactions with French and German literature, allowing for an investigation of the forms and consequences of transnational literary exchange.

　In Japan, there is a discourse that Ono no Komachi, a poetess who lived around the 9th century, is “the most beautiful woman” in Japanese history. Komachi has even been referred to as one of the "three most beautiful women in the world," a distinction that she has shared with historical figures such as the Egyptian ruler Cleopatra the seventh (69-30 B.C.) and one of the Chinese emperor’s wives Yang Kwei-Fei (719-756).

　It is intriguing to explore the reasons why rather local character Komachi is considered the “world-class beauty”. In this presentation, I will explore the relationship between descriptions in literary works and the judgment of “beauty”.

　An examination of the discourse on the appearance of the "world's three most beautiful women" in newspaper databases reveals that after Japan's victories in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), Japan was considered to be on par with the world's powers. The selection of “the three most beautiful women in the world” was a discourse created during the heyday of nationalism in the early 20th century. The tendency for only women to be the object of the evaluation of “beauty” is also problematic from the point of view of contemporary gender theory.

　The criteria for selecting "beauties" reflect the type of literature read in Japan at that time. Cleopatra is recognized as the representative "beauty" of the West in the translated literature of the Meiji Japan, Yang Kwei-hui was widely known in Japan through Bai Juyi's Chinese poem "Song of Everlasting Sorrow", and Komachi was a poetess whose poetry and legends were widely known.

　Although a discourse born of values more than 100 years ago, Komachi is still sometimes referred to as one of the "three most beautiful women in the world," along with Cleopatra and Yang Kwei-Fei. Even in recent Japanese games, these three have appeared.

　On the other hand, criticism has arisen that it is "wrong" to include the Japanese among the "three great beauties of the world" and that the "correct" inclusion is Helen of Troy. The appearance of Helen is a change in values due to Japan's defeat in the Pacific War, a discourse popularized in part by the screening of the Hollywood film "Helen of Troy" (1956).

　The global context in which a country finds itself, such as winning or losing a war, has an impact on the criteria for selecting a "beauty". Also having a significant impact on the criteria used to select “beautiful people” are stories that are widely known, including movies and games. By analyzing the kind of criticism that appears in "views on beauty," we can gain an understanding of nationalism in contemporary Japan.