In the fall and winter of 2018, the reputation of the Swedish Academy and its Nobel Prize in Literature hit rock bottom. At the magnificent prize ceremony in Stockholm in December, the esteemed Nobel honours were given to physicists, physiologists, chemists and scholars of economics, but the literary category was omitted. The empty chairs on the podium where the Swedish Academy was supposed to sit, displayed the shameful metoo-scandal and the time-honoured, learned assembly’s inability to handle it. It was not a secret that the administration of the world’s most important literary prize was on the verge of being given to another institution.

A year later, the Academy’s attempts to restore its status totally backfired: Olga Tokarczuk’s prize was a perfect fit, but the choice of Austrian novelist Peter Handke did not go down well at all with the international critics. Yet again, the 18 members of the Swedish Academy had proven too incompetent to handle the Nobel Prize.

But since that moment in 2019, the world has witnessed a remarkable recovery. Year by year, the Swedish Academy has successively regained its respectablitity, and by the time Korean author Han Kang received the prize in December 2024, the world’s most notable literary award was no no longer tainted with shame. What mechanisms made this fast and smooth process possible? How could the world forget the quite recent shortcomings of the Swedish academicians? This presentation will explore the details of the extraordinary survival of the Nobel Prize in Literature, drawing on internal practices of the Swedish Academy as well as on the media logics behind the prize’s unique position on the international cultural stage.

This review explores Han Kang's The Vegetarian through the lens of literary, philosophical, and geopolitical traditions. As the 2024 Nobel laureate’s novel, The Vegetarian, introduces themes and characters rarely encountered in Korean literature, it represents a departure from established norms. However, through the lens of plant-like characters and poetry as a “vegetablic” genre, the novel can be situated within the tradition of Yi Sang’s Wings from the 1920s, which, for instance, presents a male protagonist appearing as a plant-like character.

In terms of genre history, both European and Arabic literary traditions have occasionally described not only characters but poetry as a whole as “vegetablic.” The German romantics notably remarked on “vegetablic poetry, animalic philosophy, mineralic ethics,” a concept introduced by F. Schlegel, albeit without detailed explanation. Within the natural philosophy of Romanticism, poetry was categorized as vegetablic. Furthermore, both European and Arab traditions have metaphorically compared poets to gardeners. This metaphor provides a useful entry point for understanding the hybrid literary form of poetic prose exemplified in The Vegetarian.

The philosophical aspect of Han Kang’s vegetarianism can be examined by reflecting on the traditional philosophical discourse around animal consumption, which the novel presents as a form of initial violence against animals and other humans. Traditionally, the justification for animal consumption has rested on the belief that animals lack self-consciousness. This argument is used to justify human violence toward other beings while emphasizing the distinctiveness of the human species within the food chain. Han Kang’s vegetarianism challenges this hierarchical view of modern subjectivity.

This ethical dilemma regarding animal consumption intersects with the colonial period, where an Indian colonial subject asked European missionaries, “How can a being that eats animals tell the truth of God?” (Homi Bhabha) This Indian perspective on vegetarianism posits it as a prerequisite for assuming a transcendental position, deemed necessary for revealing absolute truth.

The vegetarianism of Han Kang is analyzed through these three lenses: literary, philosophical, and geopolitical. The discussion seeks to uncover transcendental implications of Han Kang’s vegetarianism, positioning it as an ideal of poetic spirit that resists the violence produced by monolithic modern subjectivity. Ultimately, it invites us to reconsider the fundamental interconnectedness between humans and other beings.

Abstract:This paper focuses on the comparative study on feminist themes in the novels of Korean writer Han Jiang and Chinese writer Zhang Ailing. Han Jiang's novels often show the struggle and awakening of Korean women under the interweaving of tradition and modernity, while Zhang Ailing is good at depicting the complex emotions and survival dilemmas of women in the old Shanghai city. Through the close reading of the texts, this paper analyzes the similarities and differences in the portrayal of women and the use of narrative strategies in their writings, reveals the common tenacity and helplessness of women in the context of East Asian culture, provides a unique perspective for cross-cultural feminist research, expands the in-depth understanding of the connotation of women's literature, and helps deepen the discussion of contemporary women's consciousness.

The evolution of women’s writing in East Asia has not only been shaped by but also contributed significantly to global literature in the 21st century. This paper explores a comparative analysis of Can Xue’s The Last Lover (2005) and Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (2007), examining their innovative representations of violence within a global framework. Both novels experimentally depict the sensations and deformations of the female body, illuminating the oppression and resistance women face within stifling familial relationships and rigid social structures. By examining the body as a sensory medium, a distorted image, and an embodied allegory, Can Xue and Han Kang collectively redefine and reflect on women’s traumatic experiences—historically marginalized within male-centered artistic and intellectual traditions. This study argues that the modernist reconfiguration of corporeality, femininity, and marginality in these works transforms the portrayal of violence, both historical and gendered, in contemporary fiction, advancing the empowerment of women’s writing in global literature. This interdisciplinary study further highlights how female authors challenge patriarchal literary traditions, bridging East Asian cultural transformations with global socio-historical modernization and offering valuable insights into the cultural and intellectual shifts explored in comparative literature.