The finding of the children is a significant literary theme in contemporary Chinese literature as well as a significant means by which intellectuals in the Republic of China strive to construct a contemporary sense of national identity. The academic community in the fields of modern Chinese literature and cultural history has progressively begun to pay more attention to images of children and women, but the topic of how children and women were discovered and built by modern literature, with “girls” as the key thread, has not yet been completely explored. In order to better understand the survival and mental state of girls during the Republican era as demonstrated by the observation, reproduction, and creation of the girls’ image by writers during that era, this research will examine how girls are portrayed in novels written. By using close reading, literary theorist Susan Sniader Lanser’s female narrative perspective, historical context from the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, and literary theory, this study will examine how the girl image in literature reflects the social and cultural background of the Republic of China and how intellectuals can create a new nation by writing the girl image. The image-building of girls in the Republic of China is a crucial clue for reexamining the literature and social culture of that country. This study also will offer some valuable insights for future research on social change and escalating ideological trends.

This paper delves into the distinct yet interconnected themes of adventure and spirituality in travel narratives. It examines and explores how cultural, historical, and religious contexts influence the portrayal of travel experiences from the west and the east by examining Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard and Karna Shakya's Dolpo. The purpose of this study is to compare and contrast the narrative styles, thematic elements, and cultural reflections in the west and the east. The methodology involves a qualitative analysis of the selected texts, focusing on recurring themes, narrative techniques, and cultural references. The study employs a comparative approach to draw meaningful conclusions about the similarities and differences between these two travel narratives. For this, I utilize Joseph Campbell's concept of the hero's journey to examine the protagonists' quests for self-discovery and transformation; Mircea Eliade's theory of the sacred and the profane to explore the spiritual dimensions of the journeys; and Edward Said's concept of Orientalism to analyze the portrayal and perception of Western and Eastern perspectives on travel and spirituality for the textual analysis and interpretation. Both narratives, however, share a common thread of self-discovery and personal growth through travel. This comparative analysis offers unique insights into their respective cultures and worldviews. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of how travel writing can serve as a bridge between different cultures, fostering greater appreciation and empathy among readers.

There were two major climaxes in the reception of T. S. Eliot in China, the first was from 1930s to 1940s, and the second was in the 1980s. The first climax, or what we call the early reception of Eliot in China, directly arose from educational activities of a group of British and American scholar coming to China during 1930s to 1940s, the most influential ones among whom were I. A. Richards and William Empson. They made three main contributions in introducing and promoting Eliot in China: 1. initial introductions in courses and lectures, arousing Chinese scholars and students’ interests in Eliot; 2. collaboration with Chinese scholars to translate and introduce Eliot in newspapers and magazines; 3. enhancing the face-to-face communication between Eliot and Chinese scholars. Richards and Empson both had their own academic inclinations, and thus inevitably carried personal scholarly imprints and preferences when promoting Eliot. This led to two major tendencies in the early reception of Eliot in China.

The first distinctive feature was that Eliot’s literary theory was widely regarded as a kind of “practical criticism”. Another important tendency was an emphasis of “intellectuality” in Eliot’s poetry, which contributed to the formation of “The Intellectual Poetry” Movement in China. Apart from the influences from the early promoters, Chinese academy’s overall preferences and the demands of Chinese modernist literature were all factors contributing to how Eliot’s poetry and poetics had been translated, interpreted and reshaped in 1930s and 1940’s China.

Ezra Pound was a key figure in the East-to-West transmission of Chinese culture in the first half of the 20th century. His deep engagement with Chinese cultural elements played a pivotal role in exchanges and mutual learning between East and West civilizations. This paper, using an imagological approach within comparative literature, presents a systematic study of Pound’s depiction of Confucius and its underlying ideology, drawing on primary literature and close textual analysis. In works like The Cantos, Pound juxtaposes Confucius with Western heroic figures—Odysseus, Malatesta, Augustine, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson—framing Confucius as a hero who uses wisdom to guide Western civilization out of crisis and aid in the restoration of social order after two world wars. The “heroic Confucius” conception within Pound’s vision as a framework for reconstructing Western civilization, grounded in Confucian philosophy. This model advocates for a shift from unchecked “freedom” toward elite governance as a means of societal order. In addition, Pound’s engagement with core Confucian concepts like “Zheng Ming” and the Confucian view of order influenced Pound’s broader engagement with political and economic reform in 20th-century Western thought.

As the first important work in the history of literary theory and criticism in China that systematically discusses the theory of literary creation, Lu Ji’s Wen Fu has had a significant impact on later generations of literary creation and literary criticism. With the growing interest in the “Chinese classics” at home and abroad, Wen Fu, has increasingly become an important proposition in the study of Chinese literary theory by overseas scholars in the midst of this boom. With the help of WorldCat, Goodreads, and Amazon, as well as other relevant book reviews, this paper examines the worldwide distribution of eight translations of Wen Fu and their impact, and outlines the current status of the translation of Wen Fu overseas. So as to reflect on the existing shortcomings in the process of translating and disseminating Chinese classics, and to provide reference for the “going abroad” of Chinese literature theories.

This study finds that most of the English translations of Wen Fu are in a state of “marginalization” and have not really entered the mainstream vision of Western public readers, especially the translations of domestic translators and translators of Chinese origin. The author believes that in the process of translation and dissemination of Chinese literary theory, we should not blindly pursue word-for-word translation that is faithful to the original work, pile up large paragraphs of complex annotations, but pay attention to the dissemination and acceptance of translated works. It is necessary to establish a sound feedback mechanism, fully investigate the overseas translation of Chinese literary theory, understand the aesthetic and market needs of Western readers, and combine the current situation of Chinese literary translation to select appropriate translation strategies in a targeted manner to improve the acceptance of translations overseas. In addition, sales, as an important part of the translation and dissemination of Chinese literary classics and “going abroad”, cannot be ignored. In order to ensure that the translation can reach readers smoothly, we need to broaden the channels of external communication and dissemination, strengthen cooperation and publicity with Western mainstream media, and make the translation smoothly enter the general Western readership.

Through research, we have realized that there is still a large space for translation of Wen Fu overseas, especially among the public. While promoting the Chinese literary theory to go global, it is necessary to reflect on and adjust the existing translation subjects, channels, audiences, contents and strategies in a timely manner, so as to continuously improve the translation and dissemination capabilities. In the context of cross-cultural context, we should fully explore the modern values of literary classics, effectively interact with and interpret Western literary theory in both directions, and promote Chinese literary theory to “going in” effectively.

China's Anti-Japanese War literature is an important part of the world's anti-fascist literature. Stories of China at War is the earliest collection of short stories about China’s War of Resistance against Japan that was published both in Britain and America. It contains 16 English versions of novels set in War of Resistance against Japan and shows the multiple aspects of wartime China in many dimensions. This collection of novels embodies the characteristics of blending Chinese and western literature in planning and organization, selection of articles and compilation methods, and also highlights the common concept of world anti-fascist literature. By combing the subject, material selection, strategy and effect of translation, this paper explores the reconstruction of wartime China's image in the process of translating China's wartime novels into English, summarizes the path and characteristics of China's anti-Japanese war literature in the English world, and reveals the significance of China's anti-Japanese war literature translation to the construction of China's image during the anti-Japanese war.

Zong Pu’s (1928- ) novella “Hongdou” (“Red Beans,” 1957), a tale of two college sweethearts torn apart by ideological conflicts in 1949, has been frequently mentioned but seldom analyzed in depth in recent Chinese literary scholarship. While scholars have been drawn to the story’s tumultuous romance, they have often overlooked its complex ideological-affective dynamic, which mirrors the formation of modern patriotic discourse in the early People’s Republic of China (PRC). The dynamic is illustrated through fierce debates in “Red Beans,” establishing it as a seminal work on the modern Chinese dream. In this paper, I will do a comparative reading between Zong’s original work and Geremie Barmé’s English translation. Through a comparative analysis of three key terms — “ziyou (freedom),” “dajia (everyone),” and “zuguo (motherland)” — in both the Chinese text and English version, I argue that translatability provides a lens to uncover the distinctive contours of Chinese modernity. The difficulty of translation bespeaks the intense competition between Chinese communists and Western-oriented elites for cultural leadership. Following the communist victory and establishment of the PRC in 1949, patriotic intellectuals successfully reinterpreted individualistic Western modernity within a Chinese context, transforming it into a collectivist ideal that envisioned a brand-new homeland where all people could live freely.

2024년 노벨위원회는 대한민국 작가 한강의 작품을 “역사적인 트라우마에 맞서고 삶의 연약함을 표현한 시적인 산문”이라 평가하며 올해 문학상 수상자로 선정하였다. 이리하여 한강은 대한민국 최초이자 아시아 최초 여성 노벨문학상 수상자가 되었다. 일각에서는 노벨위원회의 이와 같은 평가는 5.18 광주민주화운동에 대한 상처를 다룬 <<소년이 온다>>와 제주 4.3 사건을 배경으로 하는<<작별하지 않는다>>등 대한민국 현대사의 아픔을 작품으로 표현 한 것에 대해 높게 평가된 것이라 보기도 하였다. 비단 역사적 사건에 대한 아픔을 다룬 작품에서만 트라우마를 표현한 것이 아니라, 다른 작품에서도 트라우마는 한강 작품에서 비중있게 다뤄졌다. <<흰>>에서는 “흰”이라는 단어가 동시에 내포하는 삶과 죽음의 의미에 대한 사고를 표현하였고, << 채식주의자>>에서는 꿈에 등장한 과거의 트라우마가 미친 영향을 그려냈다. 위에서 열거한 한강 소설 작품의 서사적 특징들을 종합해보면, 노벨상 선정 이유에서 정신분석학적인 면이 강하다는 것을 볼 수 있다. <<채식주의자>>는 전반적으로 역사적인 사건에 대한 기억을 다룬 작품은 아니지만, 주인공 영혜의 모습을 통해 작가의 시대상을 반영하고 있다. 작품의 주인공 영혜는 자신의 트라우마에서 벗어나려고 하지만 그 아픈 기억의 분위기 속에서 나오지 못하고 있다. 그 이외에 <<채식주의자>>에 등장하는 영혜의 악몽, 예술 욕망, 정신병원등 정신분석학에서 광범위하게 다뤄지는 개념들이 등장한다. 이런 특징들을 보다 자세하게 관찰하고자, 본 논문에서 필자는 정신분석학적 시점에서 <<채식주의자>>를 해석하였다.

본 논문의 주요 내용은 다음과 같다. 첫째, 프로이트의 엠마 부인 광장공포증 치료 사례에서 바라본 영혜의 채식이다. 1장에서 영혜는 악몽을 꾸고 난 뒤 갑자기 채식주의자가 되겠다고 선언한다. 영혜의 채식주의 선언과 엠마 부인 광장공포증과는 유사성을 가진다. 엠마 부인은 자신의 광장공포증은 그녀가 12살 때 상점에서 겪었던 안 좋은 기억에서 형성된 것이라 하였는데, 프로이트가 상담을 하면서 그녀가 12살 때의 기억과 그 이전인 8살 때 겪었던 일에 대한 기억이 복합되어 있다는 것을 발견하고는, 유사한 상황이 주어진 곳에서 병인이 생겼다는 것을 밝혀냈다. 영혜는 고기라는 것은 폭력과 억압의 상징이라 여기고는 채식주의자가 되기로 하였지만, 작품 속에 나오는 영혜의 이야기를 통해 어렸을 적 기억으로 인하여 형성된 것이라 알 수 있다.

둘째, 자크 라캉의 주체 및 욕망 이론에서 바라본 영혜가 참여한 형부의 예술 작품이다. 라캉은 “욕망이 독립적으로 성립된 것이 아니라, 타자의 욕망에 의해 형성된 것”이라 정의했다. 2장 “몽고반점”에서 영혜는 비디오 아티스트인 형부의 시점에서 이야기가 전개된다. 영혜의 형부는 영혜 몸의 몽고반점을 예술적 영감으로 여기고, 영혜의 몸에다 꽃무늬를 그린다. 폭력과 억압의 상징이라 채식주의를 선언한 영혜였지만, 형부의 예술적 욕망에 대해선 거부하지 않았으며, 심지어 영혜는 자신의 몸에 칠해진 물감을 지우지 못하게 한다. 영혜는 예술이라는 미명으로 형부의 욕망을 문제삼지 않는다.

셋째, 프로이트 <<꿈의 해석>>의 자유연상기법을 응용하여 바라본 영혜의 환상이다. 3장 “나무불꽃”에서 영혜는 언니인 인혜의 시점에서 이야기가 전개된다. 형부와의 부도덕적인 관계를 언니 인혜에게 발각되고, 영혜는 병원으로 들어가게 된다. 병원에서 영혜는 음식도 치료를 다 거부하는 상태에 이르고 자신은 한 그루의 나무가 되고 싶다는 환상에 빠진다. 이 환상은 작품 초에서 채식주의자가 되겠다는 선언 이유와 맥락이 어느 정도 상통한다. 나무가 되고 싶다는 환상은 자신의 트라우마를 완전하게 벗어나고자 하는 욕망으로 보이지만, 인혜는 이에 대해 영혜가 꿈에 아직 갇혀있는 상태라고 여긴다. 인혜의 이와 같은 진단은, <<꿈의 해석>>에서 말하는 “무의식에서 형성된 자아 이미지 형성”의 시점에서 해석해 볼 수 있다.

Kim Ae-ran (김애란) is a famous contemporary South Korean woman writer, the attention to marginalization is the theme through her whole creation. Kim Ae-ran depicts the oppressive space hidden in the corner of the city with keen observation, showing the reality faced by the marginal groups of society. In Kim Ae-ran’s novels, there are typical spatial images such as semi-basements, exam hotels and demolition sites. The spatial division has become the symbol of social class differentiation, and the living space of the bottom people is constantly squeezed. At the same time, focusing on the typical situations of women’s survival, wandering in a foreign land, accidental bereavement and physical abnormality, this paper discusses the depression and anxiety of the marginal groups who are separated from the mainstream society in detail. Kim Ae-ran’s novels create typical spatial images and characters through marginal writing, reflecting on the close relationship between urbanization, modernization and individual survival, which is extremely realistic, contemporary and expressive, and profoundly expresses the author's thinking on contemporary South Korean realistic problems and her understanding and concern for marginal groups.

This paper intends to study Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian (2007), translated into English by Deborah Smith in 2015, through the eco-feminist lens offered by Vandana Shiva. Shiva criticizes patriarchal and capitalist systems that exploit both women and nature. She argues that women’s close relationship with nature makes them key agents in resisting ecological destruction. The theory reveals the interconnectedness of the novel’s critique of patriarchal oppression and environmental exploitation. The domination of women is linked with the domination of nature. The protagonist’s rejection of meat reflects a rejection of patriarchal systems that exploit and consume both women and nature. Her desire to abstain from participating in the violence inflicted upon animals reflects an eco-feminist critique of human dominance over nature, often linked to men’s dominance over women. The protagonist’s desire to be transformed into a tree shows an act of defiance against patriarchal systems and an expression of eco-feminist ideals, where harmony with nature is prioritized over human constructs of dominance. This paper investigates to what extent this novel can be analyzed as a fiction which brings Vandana Shiva’s approach together with a critique of male-dominated society in the sense of an ecofeminist position.

This paper will focus on the motive of historical violence and inherited family trauma presented in The White Book (2016) by South Korean writer Han Kang. The main theme of this fragmented narrative is the inherited family trauma resulting from the tragedy of the author’s mother who lost her first daughter shortly after having delivered her. However, the historical violence that occurred in Warsaw during World War II serves as the background and inspiration for Han Kang’s perceptive thoughts aiming to work through this painful personal experience. Not only does she describe her stay in “the white city”, which suffered severe destruction after the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising, but she also builds an analogy between the resurrected city of Warsaw and her deceased sister who arduously strives to reconstruct herself.

What is more, while walking through the streets of the Polish capital, the heroine of The White Book encounters multiple memorial plaques which have been used for decades to commemorate the victims executed by the Nazis. Having discovered that Polish people still light candles and lay flowers to honor the victims of the war, she expresses a regret that the violence which occurred in South Korea has not been properly historicized. This very scene reflects Han Kang’s conviction that trauma can be soothed only when the tragic past is properly exposed, embraced and integrated.

I am also going to present a short story entitled The Dybbuk (1996) written by a Polish writer Hanna Krall, which also provided inspiration for Han Kang in the process of writing The White Book. The protagonist of The Dybbuk is an American Jew inhabited by soul of a stepbrother who died in the Warsaw ghetto. These two works will be analyzed through the lens of the theory of an American psychologist and therapist Mark Wolynn presented in his book It Didn't Start with You (2016). According to Wolynn, tragic experience can be passed down through generations but trauma can be also healed if one uncovers the difficult past and include forgotten or estranged family members back in the family system. This theory will be used to demonstrate that the protagonists of The Dybbuk and The White Book who welcome the souls of their siblings to inhabit their bodies are in fact breaking the cycle of transgenerational trauma.

All in all, the aim of this paper is to prove that The White Book not only copes with inherited family trauma, but also expresses a strong belief that the wounds of the tragic past – coming either from historical violence or painful family experience – cannot be healed unless they become the object of perception and interpretation. In other words, this deeply intimate work of Han Kang highlights the importance of historicization in the process of healing national and personal trauma.

The presentation speech for the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature highlights the poetic as a defining characteristic of Han Kang’s works. This poetic goes beyond exploring rhetoric and language, engaging with the enduring and ever-evolving question: “What is poetry?” This study takes a dual approach, focusing on both the author’s body of work and the study of poetry, to explore the essence of poetic expression in Han Kang’s writing. Centered on her only poetry collection, Dinner Placed in a Drawer, the research draws upon Roland Barthes’ theories of writing and Stanley Cavell’s philosophy of ordinary language and poetics. Through in-depth textual analysis, it explores how Han Kang employs distinctive language, imagery, and forms to achieve genre innovation. By using the human body as a medium, she creates a poetic space that evokes an aesthetic rooted in fragility and pain. Her poetry not only questions the fundamental essence of human existence but also affirms a commitment to the position of individuality through the act of language, providing readers with a bridge that links the personal and the universal, humanity and the world.

This presentation will explore the meaning of history and trauma in Han Kang’s historical novel, Human Acts, through the lens of Jacques Derrida’s hauntology. Han Kang employs poetic diction and the haunting voices of ghosts that linger over the massacre scenes in Gwangju, a tragedy perpetrated by martial military forces. During the Gwangju Uprising, many civilians resisted but were brutally slaughtered by paratroopers sent to suppress dissent and secure Chun Doo-hwan’s coup d’état. The testimonies of this atrocity are conveyed not only by survivors but also by ghosts, whose lingering voices disrupt the flow of time. These spectral testimonies do not merely haunt; they create intra-active connections between the living and the dead, as well as between contemporary society and the past. The voices of the dead reverberate across time, unsettling both history and the unrealized futures that never came to be. This presentation will offer an in-depth analysis of these connections through a close reading of Human Acts.

The London Review of Books (April 5, 2018) draws a compelling parallel between Primo Levi’s The Drowned and the Saved and Han Kang’s works in their representation of devastating historical violence. As testimonial literature, Han’s writings resonate not only with Holocaust literature but also with diverse histories of violence across the globe.

This presentation examines the concept of liminality in the historical testimonial literature of Han Kang from South Korea and Breyten Breytenbach from South Africa. Their works reimagine historical violence through multiple liminal perspectives that transcend conventional boundaries of representation. This analysis explores several intersecting themes: the Buddhist philosophical concept of the endless fluidity between yin and yang; the permeable boundaries between life and death (rooted in Buddhist notions of reincarnation); Breytenbach’s exploration of nothingness in dialogue with Han’s metaphysical use of white; and the dissolution of boundaries between human and animal, leading to post-humanist considerations. Ultimately, both authors posit love and compassion as transformative responses to historical violence.

This comparative study investigates how these two authors, emerging from distinct geopolitical contexts, articulate historical violence and its traumatic aftermath in their respective societies. Their engagement with liminality includes a critique of contemporary violence, the articulation of survivor’s guilt and trauma (embodying Rothberg’s concept of the implicated subject), and the enactment of post-human performances that, following Deleuzian thought, offer healing and empathetic possibilities in contemporary reality. The analysis demonstrates how both authors employ liminality as a literary strategy to navigate historical trauma and forge pathways toward reconciliation and understanding—or toward what Han powerfully conceptualizes as 'love'.

Les recherches sur les arts et la culture, en raison notamment de leur structure disciplinaire, ont relativement peu exploré les productions plurimédiales ou, plus exactement, la part la plus « technique » d'entre elles. Nul ne nierait pourtant l'importance des techniciennes et techniciens du son au cinéma, des coloristes de la bande dessinée, des préparateurs et préparatrices de copies des éditeurs littéraires – et si le théâtre se passe désormais de souffleurs et souffleuses, ceux-ci continuent d'appartenir à l'imaginaire collectif. Cette session aimerait proposer de s'intéresser à ces activités et métiers, ainsi qu'à leurs contributions concrètes à certaines œuvres plurimédiales. Dans une perspective comparatiste et générale, il s'agira de croiser un intérêt historien pour leurs conditions d'exercice et de visibilité avec un intérêt théoricien pour ce que ces techniques permettent de dire de l'intermédialité et des relations entre les arts « majeurs ».

PROGRAMME

Marie Kondrat et Romain Bionda : « Introduction »

Irène Le Roy Ladurie : « Une main seconde : sur la technologie de la couleur en bande dessinée. Contrainte, interprétation et création, trois niveaux d'auctorialité chez les coloristes de bande dessinée (France, seconde moitié du XXe siècle) »

Marie Kondrat : « La trace et la matrice : narrer Lascaux 2 (autour du travail de Monique Peytral) »

Melina Marchetti : « Le poème adapté en clips : une expérience augmentée ? »

Romain Bionda : « Des animaux et leurs humains au générique ? Enquêter sur les arts du spectacle des XXe et XXIe siècles »

Cette communication propose une lecture critique du dispositif éditorial et numérique Raconter la vie (Seuil, 2014-2016), conçu pour visibiliser des expériences dites « invisibles » à travers la publication de récits de vie. À partir de cette étude de cas, il s’agira d’interroger les conditions concrètes – techniques, éditoriales, numériques – qui régissent l’apparition publique de ces récits dans l’espace littéraire et médiatique.

Ainsi, loin d’être spontanée ou immédiate, la visibilité défendue par la collection est-elle façonnée par un ensemble d’agents souvent exclus du récit de la création. Il s’agira donc de situer l’analyse, d'une part, du côté des agents subalternes de la chaîne du livre, dont les gestes, bien qu’invisibilisés, participent activement à la configuration formelle et discursive des œuvres, tout en influençant les problématiques qui s’imposent dans le champ : des préparateurs et préparatrices de copie, aux correcteurs et correctrices, en passant par les maquettistes et les équipes de sélection ou de communication. Loin d’être de simples exécutants techniques, ces agents produisent des effets d'inscription différée dans les régimes de visibilité qu’instaure le dispositif éditorial. Et, à ces gestes humains s’ajoutent, d'autre part, des agents non-humains : des plateformes de publication, aux formats de métadonnées, algorithmes de recommandation, normes de référencement, indexation ou modération automatisée, et jusqu’aux interfaces numériques et aux dispositifs de tri et de diffusion en ligne. Ces dispositifs numériques (encore à définir précisément), en opérant comme filtres actifs et souvent opaques, reconfigurent profondément les conditions de visibilité/invisibilité, en particulier pour les œuvres associées à des enjeux de justice sociale ou de représentation des marginalités. Il s'agira alors de saisir comment ces technologies, loin d’être neutres, participent de l’éditorialisation généralisée du dispositif, redistribuant silencieusement les critères de lisibilité, de recevabilité et de légitimation des récits dits de l’invisibilité sociale.

La diversité de ces agents et métiers dits « techniques », mais décisifs, assure la lisibilité, la forme, la circulation et la reconnaissance des textes – tout en étant structurellement reléguée hors du champ symbolique de l’auctorialité. Or, l’analyse mettra en évidence les tensions entre la promesse démocratique du dispositif et les logiques de cadrage qu’il mobilise : standardisation du témoignage, étiquetage éditorial (« roman vrai »; « démocratie narrative »; « rendre visibles les invisibles »; etc.), hiérarchisation implicite des voix, ou encore incapacité à intégrer les récits non conformes aux attentes de lisibilité (comme ceux issus de mouvements sociaux récents).

The overseas translation and reception of Wen-Hsin Tiao-Lung(《文心雕龙》) is one of the important research propositions of the dialogue between Chinese and Western poetics. As a monograph on ancient Chinese literary theory, Wen-Hsin Tiao-Lung integrates literary connotation, aesthetic value, critical spirit, Confucianism and Taoism, and is of great significance for interpreting traditional Chinese literary and artistic studies, aesthetics, and philosophical thoughts. Among the 50 chapters and more than 37,000 words in the book, there is a “Tsan” at the end of each article. Although it does not occupy much space, it is the “punchline” of each article, and it is also the “craftsmanship” that Liu Hsieh’s exquisite carving, which has extremely high translation research value. Since the beginning of the 20th century, through the unremitting efforts of scholars such as E.R. Hughes, Vincent Yu-chung Shih, Stephen Owen, Siu-kit Wong, Yang Guobin, Cai Zongqi, etc., Wen-Hsin Tiao-Lung has produced three full English translations and eight abridge English translations, which have provided great material support for the overseas research of Wen-Hsin Tiao-Lung and continuously expanded its interpretation space. However, the way of writing in Wenyan (classical Chinese) and micro-words makes Wen-Hsin Tiao-Lung quite different from Western academic backgrounds in terms of linguistic characteristics, terminology system, literary thinking, and cultural context. In addition, different translators also have their own emphases and characteristics based on different aesthetic tendencies, creative purposes, and translation habits. Focusing on small incisions, this paper compares and examines the translation results of “Tsan” in various translations, found that translators’ diverse understandings of “Tsan” directly affect their translation practices of Tsan’s culture-loaded terms and syntactic forms, and there are more or less translation problems in the existing translations. Therefore, in order to keep rejuvenating the vitality of ancient Chinese literary theory classics in the interpretation, and further strengthen the dialogue between Chinese and Western poetics, the academic community still calls for the production of new translations of Wen-Hsin Tiao-Lung.

Japanese War-Supporting Poetry emerged with the onset of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) and evolved over the next fifty years, eventually disappearing after Japan's defeat in World War II. As an instrument of war propaganda, this literary genre played a crucial role in helping Japanese militarists control public opinion and conduct ideological reeducation of the population. Furthermore, it became deeply embedded within the Japanese educational system during wartime, significantly shaping the war memory of the post-war generation. As research on Japanese War-Supporting Poetry has deepened, Japanese scholars have conducted multifaceted critiques of this inhumane genre. However, other East Asian countries, in the process of translating and introducing wartime Japanese authors' works, often neglect this body of literature, which in turn affects the critical evaluation of certain Japanese writers.

Qu You 's classical Chinese novel collection Jiandeng Xinhua, as the first novel in Chinese history that encountered the fate of prohibition and destruction, its influence transcends national boundaries. In the ancient East Asian cultural circle, the literary exchanges between China and the Korean Peninsula have a long history, and they have composed a rich and colorful cultural chapter together. As a neighboring country deeply infiltrated by Han culture, the literature development of Korean is deeply influenced by Chinese literature. In the 15th century, Jiandeng Xinhua spread to Korea and received extensive attention. Jin Shixi, a talented Korean literati was deeply inspired to imitate it and created the first Chinese-language novel Jin’ao Xinhua in the history of Korea. At the beginning of the 20th century, Yin Yunqing counted the Chinese novels outside the domain and compiled them into the Donghai Yiwen, which included two novels in Jinao Xinhua. Taking Jinao Xinhua as the intermediary bridge, Donghai Yiwen has become the return work after the transnational eastward transmission of Jiandeng Xinhua. From the perspective of comparative literature, this thesis will use the theories of doxologie and variation to explore the prohibition and outflow of Jiandeng Xin hua, the acceptance and variation of Jin’ao Xinhua to Jiandeng Xinhua and the text backflow of Donghai Yiwen through the methods of close reading and case study, so as to investigate the transnational dissemination and text backflow of ancient Chinese classical novels and explore the differences of literary acceptance in different social eras and cultural contexts.

In the past history of translation in China, the translators, as the main subjects in translation activities, have unconsciously exhibited their creative role in translating and transferring ideas. However, their subjectivity has been suppressed and neglected for quite a long time. Compared with that of those who translated and introduced foreign ideas and literature into China, the subjectivity of translators of ancient Chinese literary thoughts has been even more marginalized. This situation is based on several reasons: (1) marginalization of Chinese-to-foreign translation activities compared to foreign-to-Chinese translation activities; (2) marginalization of translation of ancient Chinese literary thoughts compared to translation of other Chinese classics; (3) marginalization of the identity of the translators as the subject of the translation of ancient Chinese literary thoughts. In a new era when mutual appreciation and exchange among different civilizations is expected, the translators of Chinese literary thoughts are supposed to play a more active role in order to bring the discourse of Chinese literary thoughts into the world literature stage.

During Emperor Qianlong's reign, which coincided with the rule of King Yeongjo and King Jeongjo of the Korean Joseon Dynasty, there was a significant shift in Joseon's cultural perception of the Qing dynasty towards a more positive view. This, combined with Emperor Qianlong's considerable personal charisma, led to the portrayal of many favorable images of him in the 《燕行录》 (Yanxinglu) written by Joseon envoys. In these accounts, Qianlong is depicted as a dignified figure with sharp yet amiable features, a wise ruler diligent in state affairs and committed to good governance, and a friendly emperor toward the Koreans. These portrayals “idealized” him as an exemplary emperor, often imbued with subjective admiration. At the same time, through careful observation and hearsay, the Joseon envoys also noted more critical aspects of Qianlong’s character and reign. They described him as indulgent in extravagant and wasteful luxuries, with a volatile temper and an autocratic style of governance. These negative traits, they argued, stemmed from the emperor's increasing arrogance and insatiable greed as his personal power expanded unchecked in the later years of his reign. By analyzing these descriptions, we can discern a nuanced image of Emperor Qianlong constructed by the Joseon envoys—one that lies between “ideological” admiration and “utopian” idealization, offering a relatively balanced perspective.

Violence is a recurring poetic issue that South Korean writer Han Kang constantly explores in her works. She repeatedly reflects on these questions: how to face violence, how to understand violence, and how to resist violence. In her creative process, Han Kang not only focuses on the violence that exists within the individual and the violence coming from the family, but also touches violence from society, the state, and history.The former represents internal violence, while the latter is external violence. This paper will analyze how Han Kang responds to the violence present in the human world from three perspectives: the individual, society, and history. Han Kang uses highly poetic but restrained and calm language to depict a silent form of violent resistance, one that rejects humanity and societal language. She also expresses the need to confront the brutal reality of history and embrace the painful historical trauma with love. While contemplating violence, she is probing the deepest aspects of human nature.

Translation semiotics is an emerging and significant subdiscipline within both semiotics and translation studies. It provides a novel framework for exploring the intricate interplay between signs and meaning in translation. This paper undertakes an in-depth interpretation of Yuewei Caotang Biji, a classic work of Chinese literature, and analyses a piece of its English translation, The Great Fire Cracks No Filial Son’s Home by Victor H. Mair, within the theoretical framework of translation semiotics. As an interdisciplinary field, translation semiotics draws upon linguistics, literary theory, sociology, and other related disciplines and theories, offering robust theoretical support for this study. The research systematically categorises and analyses the signs in the translated text, delving into their referential meanings—namely, the concrete objects or concepts represented by the signs; intratextual meanings, which encompass the cultural connotations and symbolic significance inherent in the signs; and pragmatic meanings, which pertain to the effects and significance generated by the signs within specific contexts.

Through a detailed examination of Victor’s translation strategies, the study reveals that the translation of signs necessitates the consideration of multiple factors, such as linguistic and cultural differences, as well as the target audience’s background and cognitive frameworks. In this process, interdisciplinary thinking plays a crucial role, enabling the translator to transcend linguistic barriers and convey the emotions and meanings embedded in the source text.

This research not only enriches the application and understanding of translation semiotics but also provides new insights and methodologies for translation practice. By adopting a sign-centred perspective, translators can more accurately convey the intentions of the original work, thus fostering cultural exchange and preservation. This approach holds considerable significance for enhancing mutual understanding among diverse cultures and promoting the global dissemination of literary works.

The occurrence of the act of Patricide represents an inevitable path for the younger generation in their struggle for the right to express their voice and the establishment of self-awareness. The realization of self-identity cognition through external reflections and ultimately accomplishing a spiritual metamorphosis via Patricide, which shared a common thematic experience embodies the universality and similarity in Oriental Literature. Both Chinese writer Yu Hua's "Cries in the Drizzle" and Turkish writer Pamuk's "The Red-Haired Woman" deeply analyze the distorted father-son relationship within the Oriental cultural world through the power of anguish. The two boys, similarly confronted with the absence of love and a compelling need for spiritual transformation, endeavor to seek a social father within the web of social relations as an "other" to emulate. They collectively undergo the enlightenment and struggle of sexual awareness, striving to transcend yet facing numerous obstacles, ultimately leading directly or indirectly to the occurrence of Patricide. The motif of the "father-son" relationship has been endowed with a new visage by authors in the Oriental Literature, where the underlying opposition and conflict between father and son harbor deeper reflections and implications about the cultural connotations and social essence of their respective nations. In today's fluid and instantaneous modernity society, In today's fluid and instantaneous modernity society, the act of Patricide not only hints at the genuine circumstances of internal social relations and the inevitable outcome of traditional culture being defeated by modern order, but also alludes to the inevitable continuity within culture at the spiritual and identity levels. Modern culture, on the one hand, exhibits like Patricide tendency by abandoning traditions and embracing the neoliberal order. And on the other hand, through the revelation of authentic "father-son relationships", it continues to sustain the operations of traditional humanity ethics and culture, and attempts to draw nourishment from them to address existing real-world issues. It is imperative for us to contemplate how these diverse concepts, traditions, and modernity can better complement and coexist with each other.

This paper examines Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (谷崎潤一郎)’s works Naomi (痴人の愛) and Crane's Cry (鶴唳) from a postcolonial perspective, investigating the potential of “aesthetic foreign concessions” in his works as a “third space” that redefines cultural boundaries. Tanizaki Jun’ichirō expressed his appreciation of the Foreign Concessions (areas governed by foreign powers with extraterritoriality, when late imperial China was partially colonized) in “Thinking of Tokyo” (東京をおもふ), viewing it as an ideal approach for Eastern culture to respond to the impact of Western culture, that is, to preserve the “purity” of culture by establishing strict conceptual and physical boundaries to isolate cultures from one another. In his works, Tanizaki Jun’ichirō attempts to establish “foreign concessions” by presenting Chinese and Western cultures within specific, enclosed spaces. Tanizaki’s view of the Foreign Concessions in China, which reduces the political and economic aspects of the foreign concession and focuses only on its role in maintaining cultural separation, reflects what Karatani Kōjin (柄谷行人) describes as “aestheticentrism.” Therefore, this paper refers to these spaces as “aesthetic foreign concessions.” Tanizaki’s praise of the Foreign Concessions in China is grounded in a colonial discourse that integrates a progressive historical perspective and an inclination toward cultural relativism. Tanizaki believed that there is an essential distinction between various cultures and advocated for the isolation of cultures as a means of preserving their purity. While Tanizaki’s primary aim in creating “aesthetic foreign concessions” was to explore the possibility of limiting cultural exchange in modern contexts, his works inherently engage in an act of cultural translation. Tanizaki’s writing can be seen as a response to cultural hybridity, illustrating the hybrid nature of modern Japanese culture. The hybridity of modern Japanese culture led to anxiety among intellectuals about their cultural identity. Intellectuals like Tanizaki tried to establish cultural boundaries, but the process of defining one’s identity in relation to the “other” essentially facilitated cultural exchange. As a result, Tanizaki’s “aesthetic foreign concessions” serve as Homi Bhabha’s concept of the “third space,” challenging cultural boundaries and prompting a reconsideration of the concept of "culture" and cultural identity within the context of modernization.

About the spread of Wenxindiaolong（文心雕龙） on the ancient Korean Peninsula, the earliest documents that can be seen at present are recorded by Cui Zhiyuan of Xinluo era. One is the Inscription of monk Wuran’s Monument, the other is The biography of the Buddhist monk Fazang, who was the old master of Dajianfu Temple（大荐福寺）in the Tang Dynasty. As the origin of the trace of Wenxindiaolong（文心雕龙） in the history of Korean Peninsula, these two articles are of great significance in the study of text emendation, the outflow and transmission of Chinese Classics, the exchange of literature, culture and literature thoughts between China and Korean Peninsula, and the comparative literature study.

Under the background of mutual appreciation between Chinese and Western civilizations, the study of the mechanisms of translation and dissemination of ancient Chinese literature is an important way to enhance the soft power of Chinese culture. As a literary work that has been lost for thousands of years and then reappeared in Dunhuang's Cave of Sutras,《秦妇吟》（Qinfuyin） has been reintroduced into the field of literary history through the joint efforts of scholars from both Chinese and foreign countries. As Cao Shunqing(2024) mentioned “despite the richness and variety of cultural communication methods, language translation has always been the essence of international communication.” In view of this, this study is the first to utilize the theories of variation and hermeneutics in comparative literature to study the three existing translations of Qinfuyin. According to the author's collection, there are currently three complete translations of Qinfuyin, namely, Lionel Giles' translation in 1925, Robin D.S Yeats' translation in 1988, and Xu Yuanchong's translation in 2005. Different from the traditional translation's concern and requirement of “faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance”, the study of variation pays more attention to variations that occurs when Chinese literature is translated into the English-speaking world. The three translations of Qinfuyin have five types of variations, which are closely related to the translators social environment, study and work experience, and motivation from the hermeneutic point of view, and are reflected in five aspects: phonological variations, predicates variations, toponym variations, rhetorical devices variations, punctuation variations. In the body part of the paper, the author gives a detailed analysis of the five aspects with extensive examples and analysis. The study reveals that the three translators, due to their different cultural backgrounds, translation motives, multiple social positions, present their own characteristics in translating Qinfuyin: Giles is academic-oriented; Robin emphasizes humanistic concern; Xu Yuanchong not only pursues the “three beauties”, but also shows the Chinese translators' sense of subjectivity from passive acceptance to active translation and participation in international communication.However, translation faces the challenges of cross-language and cross-cultural communication. Therefore, how to strike a balance between fidelity and artistry, and how to ensure that the essence of culture can be accurately transmitted without losing its beauty, are key issues that scholars need to continue to explore. Chinese and foreign translators should continue to increase exchanges and joint interpretation, and try their best to dissolve the linguistic and cultural barriers. For Chinese scholars, they should actively undertake the translation and research of Chinese literature in the English-speaking world, and establish the self-subjective consciousness of translation.

The Anthropocene novels of Korean-American writer Chang-rae Lee are typical in presenting the image and existential dilemma of East Asian women. His novel On Such a Full Sea shows the arduous journey of a Chinese woman named Fan. Against the backdrop of the anthropocene climate disaster, she travels through the B-Mor, open counties and the Charter in the United States in search of her boyfriend Reg. This novel is both the discourse of foreign others on China and the discourse of foreign men on Chinese women. This paper takes the image of Chinese women in On Such a Full Sea as the research theme, and uses the methods of iconography and a feminist perspective to analyze the significance of the image of Chinese women in Western Anthropocene novels, explore its causes and limitations, and think about the value and enlightenment of this image.

This study takes the phenomenon of Chinese placenames in Korean Gasa as the core issue.Through meticulous textual analysis and historical investigation, this study deeply analyzes the flexible use of these placenames in literary imagination and the profound construction of symbolic meaning, and then reveals the profound and lasting impact of China-Korean cultural exchanges on the development of Korean literature. As a shining pearl in the treasure house of Korean literature, Korean Gasa not only bear the unique hist orical memory and cultural tradition of the Korean nation, but also play an important role in the long history of China-Korean cultural exchanges, becoming a vivid example of the mutual penetration and mutual influence of the two cultures.

The poems of Tu Fu were introduced in the English world in the 19th Century, but didn’t exert a certain influence on American poetry until the New Poetry Movement. At present, the studies on the overseas dissemination of Tu Fu' s poems at home and abroad mostly focus on principles and strategies of translation, with a few impacts of Tu Fu’s poems on the creation of American poetry.

This thesis explores the influence of Tu Fu on the creation of poetry in America. It takes three periods as clue: the New Poetry Movement, the Mid-and-late 20th Century, and the Contemporary Era. The representative poets in each period are used as examples in the process of argumentation. These poets' translations of Tu Fu’s poems are different from those of professional translators and sinologists, which not only reflect the poets’ individual characteristics, but also have some impacts on the poets’ writing style.

In the period of New Poetry Movement, the themes such as "friendship", and images such as "southern wind" "willow" and "boat" in Lowell’s Chinese style poems, are similar to that of Tu Fu's poems. In the mid-and-late 20th century, the ideology of the American people failed to keep pace with the rapidly expanding material well-being. As a heterogeneous culture, Tu Fu’s poetry ushered in development in America where there was a need for the ideological innovation. It provided ideas for the American people to regain the peaceful mind. Kenneth Rexroth, also known as the Godfather of the Beaten Generation, learned Tu Fu’s rhetoric, imagery and subject matter, and also incorporated Tu Fu's thoughts into his own life and creation. In the contemporary era, the spread of Tu Fu's poetry in America entered a thriving period. During this period, there were more poets who absorbed the essences of Tu Fu's poetry for their own creation, such as Jane Hirshfield and Sam Hamill. They developed a keen interest in Tu Fu after reading Rexroth's translation, and imitated Tu Fu's spiritual temperament in their own creation. Up to now, Tu Fu' s poetry are still being studied and accepted by American poets and scholars, and influencing the creation of American poets.

By analyzing the dissemination of Tu Fu’s poetry in America in three periods, it can be found that American poets did not only simply translate and introduce Tu Fu’s poetry, but also integrated Tu Fu’s poetry into their own creations, and had a profound understanding of the image, artistic conception and spirit. With its abundant connotations and creative forms, Tu Fu’s poetry has met the needs of American poets in different periods, they promoted the innovation of the form and content of American poetry during the New Poetry Movement, and adapted to the American people's desire for spiritual culture in the mid-and-late 20th century. Nowadays, it serves as a bridge to promote the cultural exchanges between China and America.

City of Broken Promises, which is a historical novel and female Bildungsroman published in 1967 by the British diplomat and author Austin Coates (1922-1997), fictionalises Anglo-Portuguese relations in eighteenth-century Macau and Canton, as well as the love relationship of the East India Company supercargo Thomas Kuyck Van Mierop and the Chinese Catholic orphan Martha da Silva, who becomes the richest woman in Macau and one of the city’s biggest benefactresses. The novel is based on oral tradition and historical documents, and it portrays the unique culture and history of Macao during that period. The hidden clue in the story is that Martha’s looking for a name, which is also the unremitting motivation for her growth. In the end, Martha, who has a successful career, even named a commercial cruise ship after herself. This article explores how a Chinese woman achieved self-realization in the historical environment of the colonialism from the perspective of cultural and gender identity.

In the history of Western fantasy novels, the masterpieces crafted by renowned Western fantasy novelists like John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and J.K. Rowling have exerted a profound and far-reaching influence. Since the 1950s, they have not only decisively shaped the creative trends and developmental process of Western fantasy works but have also left a profound impacts on the evolution of contemporary Chinese fantasy novels. With the influx of Western fantasy novels into China via translation and film adaptations, domestic contemporary fantasy literature has embarked on a journey of creative assimilation. Drawing inspiration from the elaborate construction of grand story backgrounds, characterization, thematic ideology and narrative structure, Chinese authors have ingeniously integrated these elements with their rich native cultural heritage. This symbiotic fusion has given birth to a distinctively national and regionally flavored fantasy narrative, emblematic of the growing self-awareness in the pursuit of innovation within the local fantasy genre. Accordingly, this paper is based on a cross - cultural perspective and combines the theory of comparative literary variation to deeply analyze how contemporary Chinese fantasy literature integrates with Western fantasy novels in aspects such as story structure, the shaping of character imagination, themes, and narration. Based on the context of Chinese local culture, it creatively mutates and derives local fantasy novels that integrate multiple elements of Western fantasy, Chinese metaphysical fantasy, and martial arts (Wuxia) novels, etc., thus rejuvenating these novels in the context of the era of cultural exchange and mutual learning among civilizations.

Trees, with their exuberant vitality and astonishing self-healing capabilities, have been an indispensable sacred symbol in human beliefs since ancient times. In India, on the South Asian subcontinent, the tropical monsoon climate has nurtured dense forests and towering trees. On this land, whether in the Vedic myths of ancient India, Hindu mythology, or Buddhist faith, there are legends about the wish-fulfilling tree (Sanskrit: parijata, kalpavriksha). These magical trees, growing in mythical paradises such as Mount Sumeru, the Garden of Eden, and the Kunlun Hanging Gardens, not only symbolize eternal life but also possess the miraculous power to fulfill wishes.

In China, the worship of trees also has a long and storied history, closely intertwined with the propagation and generation of life. The ancient Chinese mythological masterpiece, the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" (Shan Hai Jing), documents numerous divine trees with magical functions. With the eastward spread of Buddhism, the Buddhist faith in Ancient China concretized the veneration of Buddhist doctrines into the worship of the wish-fulfilling tree, a form of reverence that combines the pursuit of immortality and the fulfillment of wishes. In the Thangka art of Tibetan Buddhism, this adoration and faith in divine trees find their most vivid expression. The wish-fulfilling tree in Thangkas has its roots anchored in the realm of Asuras, while its canopy reaches into the heavenly realms, providing the Thirty-Three Heavens with fruits of eternal life when they ripen. The late Ming Dynasty's supernatural novel, "Journey to the West," also records such a magical tree, known as the ginseng fruit tree. Its fruits, resembling infants, grant over three hundred years of life with a single whiff and a lifespan of 47,000 years when consumed.

From the wish-fulfilling tree in Indian mythology, to the kalpavriksha in Buddhism, and then to the ginseng fruit tree in "Journey to the West," we can observe the intricate process of transmission and transformation of the worship of divine trees between India and China. This not only serves as a historical testament to the formation and development of tree worship and belief but also vividly reflects the influence of Buddhist culture on Chinese literature. It allows us to glimpse the rich cultural connotations and historical changes embedded within.

Abstract: The translation of Chinese poems into English by Wu Jingxiong is an important event in the translation of Chinese classical literature in the first half of the 20th century. His translation action was built on the soil of the mutual development of Chinese and Western literature in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, and was generated by the desire of intellectuals at that time to talk about China to the outside world in order to construct cultural subjectivity. This kind of speech is presented by the Chinese self-published English newspaper T’ien Hsia Monthly, in the narrative mode of "using Western grammar to speak about China to the West ". Influenced by multiple identities such as symbolist and patron, the themes and poets of Chinese ancient poetry selected and translated by Wu Jingxiong are closely related to his individual experience and cultural concepts. Most of the symbols in the translated text have volitional rewriting and deformation, which is the product of the translator's translation purpose of emphasizing dissemination and publicity. Multiple identities and translator tasks interweave with texts, either implicitly or explicitly shaping the translation form of ancient poetry.

The thesis "A Comparative study of ecological thoughts in children's literature between East and West -- taking China and Germany as examples" mainly explores the heterogeneity and homogeneity of ecological thoughts in children's literature between China and Germany. The thesis is carried out from five aspects: first, it is about the history of Sino-German children's literature exchange and mutual learning; second, it is about the origin, generation and development of Sino-German children's literature ecological thoughts; then, it is about the isomorphism of Sino-German children's literature; and then it is about the heterogeneity and mutual learning elements of Sino-German children's literature ecological thoughts. Finally, it discusses the feasible ways for the future writing of ecological works of Chinese and German children's literature and the cultivation of children's ecological consciousness.

Suzhou Tan-Ci is a kind of rap art in Jiangnan area of China. Together with Chinese Kunqu Opera and Suzhou gardens, it forms the "three cultural masterpieces" of Suzhou, a famous historical and cultural city. Pansori is a well-known rap art on the Korean Peninsula, and it is also the quintessential art of the Korean Peninsula. As a representative of the Jiangnan area of China and the Korean Peninsula rap performance art, Suzhou Tan-Ci and pansori have their own distinctive aesthetic characteristics.

It is not difficult to find that the script literature and rap performances of Suzhou Tan-Ci and pansori show different characteristics in aesthetic feelings, aesthetic tastes, aesthetic ideals, aesthetic standards and other aspects, which are closely related to the different social and cultural contexts in which they are located and the different aesthetic concepts and habits.

In view of this, on the basis of examining the different social and cultural contexts in which Suzhou Tan-Ci and pansori grow, this paper mainly analyzes the different aesthetic characteristics of Suzhou Tan-Ci and pansori in terms of narrative mode and listening and performance relationship, so as to understand the artistic taste and cultural tension of Suzhou Tan-Ci and pansori more deeply and objectively.

If Suzhou Tan-Ci is a civic art with strong Wu cultural flavor, then Pansori is a folk performing art with Korean folk culture characteristics. When it comes to the social culture of Pansori, the first thing to mention is the witch culture that has a long history on the Korean Peninsula. Because of the carrier of the witchcraft culture, the secular happiness of the Korean Peninsula culture can become a kind of cultural accumulation and inheritance, and gradually form the deepest cultural psychology of the Korean Peninsula people. When we talk about the cultural psychology of the Korean people, we have to mention the unique character and temperament of the Korean people - "Xing", as well as the special psychological complex - "Hate".

The aesthetic characteristics of Suzhou Tan-Ci and pansori are reflected in the composition elements of both -- literature, music and performance. This paper only discusses the different aesthetic characteristics of the two in narrative structure and the relationship between listening and performing.Suzhou Tan-Ci and pansori as rap art, narrative is also their most basic artistic composition factor. The traditional narrative art forms the plot structure with the main line of the vertical development of the character and the fate of the character in the conflict, and unfolds the plot and narrates the story according to the structure of "transition". Suzhou Tan-Ci and pansori are no exception. However, in the expressive form of plot development, pansori presents a single linear longitudinal structure, while Suzhou Tan-Ci presents a multi-linear structure with longitudinal structure as the main and horizontal structure as the auxiliary.

The cross-cultural practice of landscape poetics reveals that landscape, as a dynamic medium of power encoding and ideological representation, permeates the interaction between literary writing and social cognition. Focusing on the landscape discourse in the literary supplements of Xinshu Newspaper in wartime Chongqing, three phases of evolution emerge: the exiles’ nostalgic fetishization of homeland landscapes suturing national trauma, the critical deconstruction of the “wartime capital” exposing power hypocrisy, and the post-bombing sublimation of suffering that reimagined Chongqing as a symbol of national resilience. W.J.T. Mitchell’s theory of “naturalized power” and Karatani Kōjin’s concept of “cognitive apparatus” converge here, highlighting how landscape functions both as a product of Western modernity’s theoretical travel and a localized practice of identity reconstruction in the Eastern context. By symbolizing geographical space, wartime landscape narratives transformed Chongqing from a physical site into a cultural metaphor for the national community. These strategies not only resonate with global critiques of landscape’s ideological role but also exemplify how wartime literature engaged in shaping nationalist discourse. The Landscape Poetics manifests as a complex interplay of natural scenery, cultural memory, and political allegory, ultimately constituting a crucial research perspective on ideological contestation and national identity formation in the context of wartime China.

As a typical achievement of the Sinicization of Buddhism, the myth of Nezha's "taking root and settling down" in China has gone through a long process. To put it simply, it originated from India, took shape in Buddhism, and thrived in Taoism. The god Nezha entered China along with the eastward spread of Buddhism. He was the son of Vaiśravaṇa, the Heavenly King of the North. Initially, his image was merely that of an inconspicuous Dharma-protecting god. Although there were records about him as early as the Northern Liang period, his stories were not widely circulated. During the conflict of foreign cultures, Taoism took the initiative to carry out "localization" transformation on him. Consequently, Nezha gradually evolved from the fierce Hindu Yaksha god and Buddhist Dharma-protecting god into a young sea god wearing a "red bellyband" who was adored by the Chinese public. Stories such as Nezha's Adventure in the Sea, His Battle with Shi Ji, His Returning Flesh to His Mother and Bones to His Father, and His Rebirth with Lotus Roots basically took shape. Meanwhile, the fictional mythological figure Nezha was historicized by novelists in the Ming and Qing Dynasties as the vanguard officer in the campaign against King Zhou of Shang. With the body of a young child, he took on the historical mission of overthrowing the Yin Dynasty and assisting the Zhou Dynasty, becoming a significant part in historical romances. Eventually, the stories of Nezha were finalized. From Hindu and Buddhist scriptures to Taoist literature, and then to the folk literature works in the Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties, the stories of Nezha gradually became richer and more complete, and his character image also became fuller and more vivid, embodying both Buddhist and Taoist features, while also containing cultural elements such as Confucian ethics and folk beliefs. Although Nezha was initially recorded in early Buddhist literature as an attachment to Vaiśravaṇa, the mythological stories of Nezha finally completed the process of Sinicization and localization through Taoization and historicization, and the image of Nezha has also become an iconic cultural symbol of China.

Bao Daizhi Outwits by the Chalk Circle is a typical legal drama written by Li Xingfu, a writer from the Yuan Dynasty in China. In 1832, the French sinologist Stanislas Julien first translated The Chalk Circle into French.Unfortunately, the play did not gain widespread attention in European academic circles at that time. In 1876, the German writer Anton Fonseca translated Julien's French version into German. Subsequently, through the translations and introductions by German sinologists such as Wilhelm Grube and Alfred Forke, the play gradually entered the receptive horizon of German writers in the 20th century. Among them, Klabund's adaptation of The Chalk Circle is particularly notable. The successful staging of this adaptation not only brought international reputation to the writer but also played a significant role in promoting the development of drama in the Weimar Republic. It even sparked a trend of adapting Chinese dramas among German writers in the first half of the 20th century. By this point, the "Two Mothers Contending for a Son"story had truly entered the German-speaking literary world, embarking on its journey around the globe. However, current academic research on Klabund's adaptation remains relatively inadequate. This paper aims to return to the historical context, examining the reasons behind Klabund's adaptation and the initial staging process, and exploring his rewriting strategies and the implied motives behind them. Such an examination of the reception history of this particular case not only clarifies the traces of Sino-German literary and cultural exchanges but also reveals the formation process of a world literary classic.

On November 18, 2024, The New Yorker's FICTION column published a piece by Han Kang, excerpted from her novel 'We Do Not Part' and eventually rewritten into the short story 'Heavy Snow'. As one of the most important literary publications in the United States and even worldwide, The New Yorker occupies a pivotal position in contemporary world literature. The publication of Han Kang's work at this juncture aims to introduce readers in the English-speaking world to the works of the Korean Nobel Prize winner and to realize the exchange between different cultures, making the adaptation of 'We Do Not Part' worthy of further study. Han Kang's work often explores complex, multi-layered psychological and emotional dynamics, uses multiple perspectives, circular digressions, fragmented or even disjointed narrative structures, and focuses on the mood and atmosphere of the characters rather than traditional plot development. Editors unfamiliar with these traditions may attempt to make the narrative more 'linear' or 'coherent' for Western readers by selectively simplifying or removing plot points. More importantly, Han Kang uses many metaphors to depict her personal painful experiences and national traumatic memories. The heart of 'We Do Not Part' is the Jeju Island Incident on April 3, which deeply affected Koreans, and it is Han Kang's mission to record this period of history, which is also an important reason why she was awarded Nobel laureates in Literature. In the revised version of 'Heavy Snow', not only were Han Kang's distinctive personal characteristics lost, but also dilutes and weakens the historical weight of “한(a deep existential pain unique to Korean identity)” , which is the most important element of the original, and recontextualizes it in a way that conforms to the Western narrative framework. As can be seen in 'Heavy Snow', the process of adaptation is also a process of balancing readability and cultural specificity, as the editors of The New Yorker, in their efforts to make the text accessible and universal, have unintentionally culturally transposed Han Kang's work and literarily colonized it as Oriental literature - non-Western works must be reworked to fit into the established categories of Western literature.While the editors may be well-intentioned in their efforts to attract a wider audience to the Nobel Prize-winning works, the nature of the adaptation significantly undermines the richness and depth of the original, making it necessary to take a more critical look at Western adaptations of Eastern literature as well as the delicate balance between cultural specificity and wider accessibility in a globalized literary landscape.

The combination of history and literature helps people build a bridge between the past and the present, the reality and the imagination. Nowadays, historical fiction is experiencing a global renaissance. Outside the Western world, the “Oriental Memory” is also increasingly embedded in the background context of world-historical fiction. This development highlights the necessity for a holistic comprehension of the historical fiction genre within the framework of contemporary globalization. It demands a reconstruction of its evolutionary path and current look, while also reflecting on ourselves and anchoring and constructing our national identities. Despite the significant increase in both the number of studies on historical fiction and the publication of guides to this genre, most of these works remain constrained by entrenched stereotypes, demonstrating a relative insularity and a lag in addressing contemporary developments. The defectives are mainly reflected in two aspects: the deep-rooted Western centrism and the lack of a global vision to examine the development of historical fiction in different cultures by parallel comparison. Within the discourse framework established by canonical texts, the category of “World” is frequently conflated with “West” or even narrowly defined as “Europe,” while Oriental works, which have evolved along distinct historical trajectories, are often marginalized. In literary criticism, existing studies tend to operate within segregated paradigms, dividing discussions between West and East, English and non-English literatures, and among different countries and regions. This fragmented approach lacks a cohesive global perspective and a unifying methodological framework in Novel Typology, which would facilitate an integrative analysis of these diverse literary traditions. Comparative literary studies of world-historical fiction frequently remain confined to single comparisons with Western historical fiction, focusing on how Western historical fiction has influenced the emergence of “modern historical fiction” in other cultures. For example, in China, despite an intuitive recognition that many works representing the pinnacle of our literary achievement are explicitly “historical,” the concept of the “historical fiction” is one of imported goods. This dichotomy has led to “A disjuncture between modern and ancient historical fiction in China, resulting in what might be described as two distinct yet unrelated traditions of Chinese historical fiction.” This narrow perspective not only obstructs a comprehensive understanding of the diversity and complexity of world-historical fiction but also constrains the recognition and appreciation of the value embedded in historical fiction and even historical traditions within different Eastern and Western cultural contexts. Current research urgently requires more cosmopolitan approaches to transcend regional, cultural, and civilizational boundaries.

Hu Shi, as an important figure in modern Chinese intellectual and cultural history, holds profound significance in his writings and reflections on the European Renaissance. Through an in-depth study of The Diary of Hu Shi and his other works, this paper explores Hu Shi’s engagement with, understanding of, and the impact of the European Renaissance on his own intellectual and cultural practices. During his studies abroad, Hu Shi systematically interpreted the essence of the Renaissance through reading works such as Renaissance by Edith Helen Sichel, with a particular focus on the rise of vernacular languages during the Renaissance and its significance for the formation of modern nations. He believed that the Renaissance was not only a revival of literature and art but also a comprehensive transformation of thought, culture, society, and politics, a view that deeply influenced his thinking on the modernization of Chinese culture.

Hu Shi drew parallels between the European Renaissance and the Chinese New Culture Movement, proposing the concept of “China’s Renaissance” in an attempt to drive cultural change in China by learning from European experiences. His advocacy for the vernacular Chinese movement was partly inspired by the linguistic transformation during the Renaissance, emphasizing the use of language reform to popularize national culture and enhance national consciousness, thereby achieving cultural modernization. This idea is not only reflected in his literary theories but also permeates his overall planning and practice of the New Culture Movement.

However, Hu Shi’s interpretation of the Renaissance was not a direct adoption of Western experiences but was combined with the historical and contemporary context of China. He emphasized the “foresight and historical continuity” of intellectual leaders, striving to build an effective connection between modern civilization and China’s traditional civilization. Although Hu Shi’s discourse on “China’s Renaissance” has certain limitations, its role in promoting the modernization of Chinese culture cannot be ignored. By drawing analogies with the European Renaissance, Hu Shi provided important theoretical support for the New Culture Movement and influenced subsequent reflections on the path of cultural change in China.

In recent years, the feminist movement in South Korea has become increasingly intense, and Korean women are urgently calling for their rights. In the Korean feminist movement, the novel KIM JI-YOUNG, BORN 1982 has become one of the representative works of Korean feminism due to its influence and appeal. The author Nam-joo Cho presents the first half of the protagonist Kim Ji young's life in an objective way, like a mirror reflecting the phenomenon of "Misogyny" in Korean society. The novel's unique "scattered perspective" writing style presents the plight of Korean women in multiple ways. KIM JI-YOUNG, BORN 1982 was born during an important period of the Korean feminist movement and also guided Korean women on the path of unity and resistance against injustice. After being translated, remade, and spread globally, it further contributed to the global feminist movement.

In 1780, Lu Yijian, a literati of the Korean dynasty, met and communicated with Bo Ming, a Mongolian literati of Qing dynasty literati . In Lu Yijian's “Sui Cha Lu”, Bo Ming's resume, lineage and appearance were all involved, which could complement the shortage of academic circles. Through the exchange of Neo-Confucianist ideas between the two people, One can gather that Bo Ming respected Cheng Zhu's Neo-Confucianism. His ideological tendency reflected the history of the confrontation between Neo-Confucianism and the heart-mind theory in the early Qing dynasty. And his Neo-Confucianist view coincided with Lu Yijian; The concept of Bo Ming’s literature theory is closely related to the literature theory of the eight masters of the Tang and Song dynasties, at the same time, Bo Ming accepted the influence of the Tongcheng faction. He and Lu Yijian held the Spring and Autumn Annals as the view of the classics, which reflected the rising academic trend of literature and classics during the Qianlong period. Lu Yijian praised Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan, which not only circuitously reflected the debate about the creation methods in the Korean literary world, but also reflected his idea of focusing on Tang in the field of literary creation. His view on the Book of Rites reflected the adherence of Korean Neo-Confucianism to "etiquette".

Though they are hermits, both Tao Yuanming and William Wordsworth have much in concerns for their societies respectively. They cherish concerns for their societies, and the evidences can be found from their poems. They express their concerns for their societies in different manners. Tao Yuanming achieves his purpose in an implicit manner while Wordsworth does it in an explicit way. This difference result from their different cultural roots. In the world history, China’s despotism is the most complex in system, the most profound in connotation, and the most far-reaching in influence, and thus the depression of the individual is the greatest. With this cultural background, Tao Yuanming can only rely on an implicit manner to express his ideas. In contrast, in Britain, the Renaissance leads to a great liberation of thought, the bourgeois revolution shatters the ideological chain of the society, and the industrial revolution improves the consciousness of democracy and freedom. In this cultural context, Wordsworth is free to air his ideas on his society explicitly.

Abstract: Chinese farewell poetry stands as one of the most remarkable literary art forms in the cultural exchange between Eastern and Western civilizations. Over the years of practice, numerous farewell poems have been translated and introduced to the western world, serving as a valuable gateway for Westerners to understand, appreciate and even to develop a fondness for Chinese culture. The current status and the impact of translation and dissemination of Chinese farewell poetry still remain as an unexplored issue and warrant a comprehensive review. Therefore, This paper aims to address this gap by first examining the current statuses of the translation and dissemination of Chinese farewell poetry. Then, it will summarize the theoretical frameworks that have guided these practices. At the end, this paper will analyze effect and roles of these efforts on enhancing the cultural exchange between eastern and western cultures. The results of this paper are expected to provide valuable insights for the translation and dissemination of other Eastern art forms to the Western world.

The Dream of Red Mansions is a masterpiece of Chinese classical novels which has well epitomized the narration features of “chapter novels” —— the typical fiction genre popular in the Chinese Ming and Qing dynasties. This novel have not only integrated the distinctive narrative techniques of Chinese oratory literature and opera arts, but also inherited the narrative patterns of Chinese historical biographies, forming some unique net-like narrative structure. Quite different from the the narrative focuses such as “plots”, “protagonists”, “conflicts”, and “rhythm” in western narration traditions, it tend to unfold a vast world gradually before the readers through the rotating of different scenes and character groups just like in the opera performance. Many scattered narrative fragments are woven together from different directions like in a loom machine. However, it is just because of this unique narration organization that it is quite difficult to grab its general narrative structure picture along some single clues. As an important field of “Digital Humanities”, “Computational Criticism” has further pushed literature studies forward to a quantitative “descriptive” paradigm with the support of big data and other computing technologies, which may offer some solution to this quest. Therefore, a corpus of the former 80 chapters of The Dream of Red Mansions was built with the aid of ParaConc in this paper to capture the narrative structure of the work under a distant reading model. The word frequency of the appellations of the main 34 characters along the chronological order of the whole novel was set as the indicator system. All the 34 characters are divided then into 2 narrative functional sequences, namely “clue character” and “satellite character” based on their Concordance Plot Bar patterns. Putting in a coordinate system, these characters then fell again into 8 narrative function zones from weak to strong. When putting the Concordance Plot Bars together, a picture of the net-like narration structure was presented in a visual and macroscopic way. Through this text mining method, the “opera-scene style” narration pattern was extracted from the rotating character groups, and the net-like narration structure of The Dream of Red Mansions is able to be seen directly. This study served as a exploration of the “Computational Criticism” method on heterogeneous national literature traditions in a more “descriptive” way, which helps to break the barrier formed by fixed and uniformed theoretical frameworks in the past several decades and capture the distinctive beauty of various national literature traditions in their original flavor to form a diversified world literature wealth.

On the basis of the achievements accumulated in the past thousand years, Chinese poetry literature in the Joseon Dynasty has achieved rapid development, not only the number of works is amazing, but also the quality of works is quite high, which can be called the heyday of Chinese poetry on the Korean Peninsula. Throughout the more than five hundred years of development of Chinese poetry in Joseon Dynasty, there have been two distinct changes in poetry style. Taking these two changes of poetry style as the dividing points, the development of Chinese poetry in Joseon Dynasty can be divided into three stages.

In the early stage of the development of Chinese poetry in the Joseon Dynasty, the study of the poetry circle mainly focuses on the poetry works and poetics of Su Shi, Huang Tingjian, Chen Shidao and so on. In terms of of the meaning of the theme of poetry, except free verse, Chinese poetry styles reflect the characteristics of Song style, and the political meaning of "Express Aspiration" is equal to the Neo-Confucianism meaning of "reasoning". From the middle of the 16th century to the end of the 17th century is the middle period of the development of Chinese poetry of Joseon Dynasty. During this period, the Tang style recurred, which had been popular in the Korean Peninsula poetry circle. The literati mainly studied Tang poetry, and the poetry circle took "Tang style" as the mainstream. In the Korean poetry circle after the 18th century, the color of speculation became more and more intense and the content of poetry was more substantial. The group of literati began to reflect on the study of Tang and retro, the status of Song poetry was rising, and the style of Tang and Song poetry showed a trend of gradual integration. However, the compatibility of Tang and Song poetic styles in this period was not a simple combination or to practice both of Tang and Song poetic styles, but a new style that adopts the strengths of others and uses them for itself. With the awakening of national consciousness and the enlightenment of practical learning, the tendency of opposing imitation, advocating stylistic innovation, and advocating "Joseon style" in poetry has become more and more prominent.

An examination of the origin of the name "hollyhock" and its cultural connotations reveals that it is a native flower of Shu, southwest China. Its morphological characteristics, growth habits, and variety of colors are well documented in classical Chinese literature. As hollyhocks are planted overseas, their cultural status flows and elevates, embodying the idea of 'blooming inside the wall, more fragrant outside the wall.' The variation in the connotations of hollyhock across different civilizations exemplifies the dynamic flow of mutual appreciation among multiple cultures. This study revisits Euro-Asian encounters through the lens of hollyhock as a cultural clue, highlighting the themes of equal communication and cultural intermingling.

Rooted in protest against caste-based discrimination, overt and subtle, historical and mutating forms –Dalit literature from India provides a valuable archive of voices of lived-experience. An archive that represents over more than 160 millions of downtrodden population that is spread across the Indian subcontinent. Emanating from at the bottom of the social hierarchy, these voices preserve these cries and protests comparable to that of Slave narratives in the USA.

The first generation of Dalit writers from Maharashtra, (the home state of B.R. Ambedkar, the torch bearer of Dalit rights during Colonial India, and after independence) founded Dalit Panther Movement in 1972. Inspired by Black Panthers movement and their intellectual struggle, the founding members of Dalit Panthers would go on to provide a strong foundation for Dalit literature, as it is known today. Often rejected by the aesthetic tools rooted in upper caste poetics, Dalit literature attains its life from protest– against the very foundation of Classic Indian aesthetics of Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram (the true, the holy, the beautiful) as Sharankumar Limbale postulates.

However, I argue that it is not just an archive of Dalit protest, but “the Protest” that intersects with the voices of protests around the world. This juncture provides a fertile ground for examining Black-Dalit comparative and shared poetic discourse against the “Hegemonic” aesthetics. The presentation also argues in relevance of this converged spatio-temporal literary examination.

The proposed paper is comparative and synthesizing in nature. Presented considerations will be based on research on the literature after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and contemporary nonviolent resistance strategies. In my presentation, I would like to focus on novels that explore (centrally or otherwise) various forms of passive resistance and inconspicuous protests in the workplace. Since they are rarely concentrated on putting pressure on an employer, it may lead us to question their nature. Nowadays, it seems that this field should be expanded to include slightly different issues – reaching essentially to questions about the condition of the subject in general, changing attitudes to work (Great Resignation, quiet quitting, the FIRE, lazy girl job, tang ping, etc.) and the possibilities, effectiveness, and significance of protest in the contemporary world. I propose an analysis that frames Bartleby, The Scrivener (1853) by Herman Melville as a general point of reference for further interpretations of selected novels. I suggest understanding the protagonist’s quiet and pertinacious protest primarily as a disturbance against a workplace in general, deconstructing force in an established, rational, and productive world. Although inconspicuous and perplexing in its meaning, Bartleby’s protest is open and evident. It forces us to question the limits of resistance. The proposed presentation is based on well-known literature on nonviolent protest (among others: Gene Sharp, Helen Fox, James C. Scott, Kurt Schock, Stellan Vinthagen). Additionally, my presentations will use resources exploring the problem of exhaustion, burnout, and subjective passivity in contemporary culture. For instance, I will provide references to Gilles Deleuze’s The Exhausted, various works by Wolfgang Streeck, The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han as well as generation-oriented studies such Can’t Even. How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen. My presentation will focus on contemporary European, American, and Asian novels focused on young, female protagonists. In the selected novels we might recognize a recurring pattern of avoidance in the workplace or even against the workplace. The variety of strategies used in the novels will allow for showing the complexity of the titular dilemma and its cross-cultural differences. In the analysis, I propose to preliminary include such novels as The New Me by Halle Butler, There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura, All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami, Insatiable by Daisy Buchanan, My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. I would propose to understand these novels with direct reference to various strategies of resistance, questioning the uses they make of the work-to-rule and passive resistance. I will ultimately ask what transformations of the subject can we recognize in the inconspicuous protest, avoidance and passivity that occurs in the workplace.

Zhao Chuan is a Chinese "social theatre" advocate and director. In his theatrical evolution from The World Factory(2014) to Homeland(2024), significant societal shifts, such as the 2018 Shenzhen Jasic Incident and the Blank Paper Movement during the pandemic, underscore the limitations and potential of collective action in contemporary China.

The World Factory (2014) uses a documentary theater approach to expose labor exploitation in the context of China’s capitalist expansion, invoking intellectual debates and embodying the spirit of a “social theater.” Yet, subsequent events, such as the Jasic Incident, in which factory workers and students advocating for union rights faced suppression, reveal the real challenges of mobilizing public resistance within China's tightening political sphere.

Homeland (2024) moves inward, emphasizing personal migration stories and everyday life challenges rather than overt social critique. During the COVID-19 pandemic, collective frustration and grief intensified under strict lockdown policies, sparking the Blank Paper Movement. Citizens gathered, holding blank sheets of paper as a silent protest against censorship and pandemic restrictions. This symbolic gesture illustrates the shift in public expression from direct demands to more subdued yet resonant forms of dissent—a shift mirrored in Zhao’s own artistic transition.

Through Homeland, Zhao explores how individual life stories and shared emotional experiences can foster a new kind of public engagement, suggesting that while traditional avenues for collective action may be restricted, the potential for social cohesion remains. The essay ultimately argues that while Zhao’s theater reflects a decline in visible social critique, it gestures toward a resilient, empathy-driven civil sphere that resonates powerfully in a society where collective action is increasingly complex.

A ceremony was scheduled at Frankfurt Book Fair to honor Adania Shibli with the 2023 LiBeraturpreis award for her novel, Minor Detail. However, the award was cancelled soon after the Hamas attack on Israel. This revocation only reaffirms the need to explore the nuanced writing of writers like Shibli on the irrefutable ways through which violent and genocidal histories exert their power on the present. After all, the violence that is portrayed in her book speaks of the horrors of any genocidal machinery, whether Hamas or IDF, that violates the freedom and rights of any citizen across the world. My paper presentation is an essential argument on how genocidal narratives can’t be exclusionary. One cannot condemn the Hamas attack and then renounce award for a book like Minor Detail that denounces another genocidal narrative. This paper presentation explores the complexities of historical trauma, individual accountability and the enduring impact of violence on both victims and perpetrators.

Furthermore, this paper will emphasise on broadening the general meaning of the term “censorship”. In “Censorship and the Female Writer”, Luisa Valenzuela calls censorship as “a hydra with its many heads”. For Valenzuela, censorship could also suggest “a very strong Freudian negation—[for a reader] to avoid the pain of confronting a reality [beyond what one is conditioned to think]”. In essence, censorship then signifies the act of suppressing or stifling perspectives different from one’s own. Renouncing Shibli’s award is an attempt to suppress the Palestinian literary voices that materialise the pain and suffering of Palestinian people on global platforms and therefore a case of selectively censoring the genocidal narratives in general. It is significant to challenge this kind of censorship since it poses extreme dangers to build space for democratic and diverse discursive practices where no one genocidal narrative is bigger than the other and there is equitable space for all these narratives to coexist as a cautionary note that “Never Again for Anyone”.

This talk explores the legacy of protest and dissent in Belarus, highlighting how memories of these events are documented and preserved as forms of resistance. The talk presents the work on the recent publication Belarus—Faces of Resistance as an attempt to memorialize the experiences and stories of those who stood against authoritarianism in Belarus. In contrast to the narrative of collective memory shaped by state-sponsored interpretations, this work underscores the significance of personal and collective efforts to document dissent from below. The presentation demonstrates how these preserved memories contribute to a counter-history that both contests and complements official narratives, offering insights into the challenges of democratization in post-Soviet spaces. It also addresses the question how the methods of Comparative Literature can be applied in Public Humanities.

The long title is deemed necessary in trying to convey the multifaceted and extremely complex situation in Serbia, which began a few years ago with mostly localized protests against the mining giant Rio Tinto's plans to mine lithium in Serbia agricultural and fruit producing region. The Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, and his government have mainly acted as PRs for Rio Tinto, as have the US Embassy to Belgrade, and top echelons of the EU, during their recent visit to Belgrade, organized specifically for this purpose.

On November 1, 2024, with the fall of the roof of the Novi Sad train station under reconstruction, which killed 15 and severely maimed 2 more people, the protests against government's incompetence, secret contracts selling public goods and lands, and general corruption, have reached their peak. As I write this, tens of thousands of Serbian people continue to protest in the streets daily, exposed to government bullies' physical attacks, regime media targeting, and illegal Secret Service interrogations and detentions of dozens of students, even minors.

The symbol of the protest became the "bloody hand," from the accusation that the Serbian government, in attempts to hide its own incompetence and corruption in the case of the fall of the train station roof, but also to protect Chinese investors involved in the restoration, has blood on its hands.

On January 13, 2025, Efraim Zuroff wrote a column for the Jerusalem Times, accusing Serbian Theater actors, who end their performances by raising red hands to the audience, of using the "Hamas symbolism."

The final element in this story is the Serbian government public response to the "bloody hands" protest symbol, by drawing the red middle finger on its own posters and pamphlets.

For the sake of protecting Western economic interests (Rio Tinto excavating lithium in Serbia, rather than in much richer lithium beds in Germany), the Serbian protests have been either misunderstood or downright misrepresented in the, especially Western media, linking them to Russian interference and misinformation campaigns (New York Times, Aug. 18, 2024). The Efraim Zuroff opinion piece in the Jerusalem Post, on the other hand, has a slightly different history, and is linked to the Israeli advisors to the government of Aleksandar Vučić, in the business of discrediting the justifiable disatisfaction of the Serbian people.

By using documentary media evidence, video recordings, and media theories, this paper will explain the ramificiations of Serbian contemporary protests for European, and global politics.

Indigenous communities from the North East of India have been telling their stories to the world in the yarn of the region with endurance, resistance and resilience. Such traditions offer culture as a site of struggle and also account for the socio-cultural changes in the North East by locating trauma, the politics of tradition and continuity, the ecological space.

In his 2018 book, "Strangers No More", Sanjoy Hazarika writes of old and new struggles in the region: “The problems and alienation caused by the non-stop application of AFSPA and the Disturbed Areas Act along with other laws such as the Nagaland Security Regulations Act have created a huge gap of mistrust between individuals and communities in the states caught up in this trouble and the central government and its representatives.” (Hazarika 2018: 341) Situating the role of the protest within local, national, transnational contexts and temporalities in Karbi Anglong, this paper would focus on the turbulent history of conflict and fragmented selfhood in the Northeast of India with particular reference to the Karbi Youth Festival, an event organized by the indigenous communities of Karbi people from Karbi Anglong, Assam, India.

In 1974, Karbi Youth Festival (KYF) was first held in Karbi Club as a form of protest and resistant against the ongoing debates on language in the remote town of Diphu in January coinciding with New Year celebrations. It was a small affair lasting for three days and drew only a limited attendance. But it made a huge impact among the youth and students. Over the years, the KYF grew in strength and prestige as rural youth and students rallied solidly behind it in spite of state government’s apathy, refusing to give any financial assistance. The sustained impact of the festival initiated the possibility of moving beyond simplistic narratives and identities defined by victimization.

The Karbi Youth Festival provides newer opportunities to confront painful histories by ensuring that the festival ground transforms into a site of reclamation and resistance. In the cartographic imaginary, Karbi Anglong, as reiterated by the annual Karbi Youth Festival, has existed and survived over centuries through its myths, legends, songs, dances, artistic traditions as well as through its conflicting history and moribund politics. Most importantly, the Karbi Youth Festival takes cognizance of differentiation rather than assimilation, whereby language plays a mobilizing force in identity formation within the Indigenous Karbi community. The Festival is indicative of cognitive constructs that foster cohesive identity and a source of empowerment and agency. Through the vivid history of the Karbi Youth Festival, this paper would foreground conversations that must be heard, of art that must be seen, of photographs that must be envisioned, of dances that must be re-discovered and of stories that must be retold, again and again.

Protest, as an integral part of public culture since the 19th century, is today deeply engraved in the minds of young people as well as left-wing thinkers. Protests were initially composed mostly of proletarians until the 1960s, when college students from the New Left, the descendants of the French and American middle classes, became involved as protesters. Bob Dylan's lyrics document the changing culture of protest during the years of agitation, as well as the changing discourse of proletarian revolution. Geographically, liberation shifted from intervention in the public sphere to the liberation of the private individual body; at the level of knowledge and discourse, from an intellectual emphasis to a sensual redistribution; and in artistic form, from the straightforward notion of political protest to the notion of artistic selfhood and and the selfhood of life. Bob Dylan used the pop music industry, which is full of the power of cultural capital, to update the classic discourse of pop music and to give the audience an embodied way of experiencing it, injecting the global pop culture industry with the power to liberate the audience. Bob Dylan's public performances focus on the chanting of lyrics, and the verbal power of his performances is intertwined with the public protests of the 1960s in the American sense of John Searle's “words for things”. The culture of protest encompassed in Bob Dylan's art rejects notions of reversing status, eliminating hierarchy, and presupposing distance. In the performance space of his music, the hierarchical distance between singer and audience is eliminated, and community between singer and audience, and between audience and audience is no longer necessary, as his art makes room for personal experience and private life, resulting in a sense of proletarian liberty and emancipation that happens at the end of the performance.

Toward the end of her recently published Eloge de la traduction, protesting in typically rebellious mode against the inhumanity of the migrant camps in Calais, the distinguished French Hellenist, philologist, and theorist of the ‘untranslatable’, Barbara Cassin, reflects on the deeply apposite word ‘entre’ in French, split as it is between the prepositional Latin root inter-, -- thus pivotal to any thinking of difference and translation, or of any interval between two -- and as an imperative form of the verb entrer (to enter); in the context of migration and the refugee crisis, it becomes thus for her the most hospitable word on the border separating insider from outsider, while at the same time figuring translation at the heart of the deeply ambivalent nature of hospitality.

Somewhat surprisingly, readers of Tony Hillerman’s extraordinary Diné/Navajo crime novels have never paid attention to the fascinating role that translation, more often untranslatability, plays in many of them. This often comes at quite pivotal moments in the plot and is crucial to the process of interpreting and reading, both metaphorically and literally, as the two central characters and tribal policemen, Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, set out to solve the most puzzling and seemingly impenetrable of crimes, in the time-honoured mode of detection as decryption.

As well as thrilling and compelling story-telling, I see Hillerman’s novels as culturally significant in their treatment of the complex question of communicability between contemporary Native American communities (principally Diné, Hopi and Zuni), and their richly diverse language, myths, spiritual beliefs and ceremonies (notably what can or cannot be spoken about), and the non-Native world that surrounds them. The novels also dramatize the forms of protest available to these communities in the context of the longer devastating history of American colonial oppression and cultural eradication. I will focus my own reading on two such ‘scenes of translation’, from Talking God (1989) and Coyote Waits (1990), arguing that alongside translation and untranslatability, the shape-shifting figure of anamorphosis is mobilised to powerful and telling narrative effect by Hillerman.

References

Barbara Cassin, Vocabulaire européen des philosophies : Dictionnaire des intraduisibles : Paris : Seuil/Le Robert, 2004. [English translation, Emily Apter et al eds, Dictionary of Untranslatables, Princeton University Press, 2014).

Barbara Cassin, Eloge de la traduction [In praise of Translation]. Paris : Fayard, 2016.

Tony HIllerman, Talking God. New York: Harper Collins, 1989.

Tony Hillerman, Coyote Waits. New York: Harper Collins, 1990.

This presentation explores Parallel Polis as a dynamic framework for protest cultures across two distinct historical and geopolitical contexts: dissident movements in 1970s Czechoslovakia and contemporary globalized art collectives such as the Propeller Group. Both cases illustrate the creation of autonomous spaces that, while deeply rooted in local histories, also engage with transnational influences. This talk examines Parallel Polis as an enduring strategy of cultural resistance and creative innovation by juxtaposing underground samizdat networks with art installations that critique power structures. This comparative analysis highlights how protest cultures adapt to shifting sociopolitical landscapes while maintaining continuity in their tactics and philosophies.

After having been involved in the Hong Kong protests of 2019, Chung Siu-hei left the city and carried on the struggle for self-determination abroad, through an online, participatory performance. "In Search of Our Common Ground" involved a physical audience in Stockholm and Zurich, as well as an online audience located in from Hong Kong. Together, they corrected and rewrote a manifesto provided by the artist, just as citizens of a democracy would amend and rewrite a law.

Concurrently, as the Hindu-nationalist parliament passed the Citizenship Amendment Act targeting the Muslim community (11 December 2019), the theater group Jana Natya Manch (“People’s Theater Platform”) created an inclusive, participatory performance to counter the discriminatory law. "We are the People of India" took place in disadvantaged neighborhoods in the suburbs of New Delhi and within protests against the CAA in the center of the city (as well as online, like Chung's performance, during the pandemic).

Not only did both of these performances shatter the wall that traditionally separates performers and spectators, but they also crossed the border that traditionally separates political arts from political action. These performances amounted to protests. They were devised by theater makers who were themselves—their artistic activity aside— protesters, and they turned silent spectators into vocal citizens. The script was their original creation but was based on official documents. The artists were the original leaders of the performances, but their part faded as they redistributed speech and action to participants.

Based on fieldwork with theater makers and active audiences, this comparative presentation will present analogous contributions of contemporary artists to current politics and question the formal separation between artistic and political action. It will situate these works within a geography of people’s theaters—referring to pioneering figures such as Romain Rolland, Bertolt Brecht, Utpal Dutt or Augustine Mok Chiu-yu—and speak to common debates in the humanities and the social sciences that pertain to the concept of “democracy” today. As they involve participants in the public space and address burning issues, people’s theaters lead to protest performances.