This paper centers on Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal," Mark Twain's "Cannibalism in the Cars," and Lu Xun's "Diary of a Madman" to investigate how the taboo act of cannibalism is transformed into a literary representation of biopolitics through unnatural narrative strategies. By examining issues of narrator reliability, narrative temporal focus, and political representation within these texts, the study finds that the manipulation of narrator reliability and the refocusing of the timeframes associated with cannibalistic acts alter the traditional aesthetic implications of horror and suspense in cannibalism narratives, achieving effects of absurdity, humor, and satire. Through these unnatural narratives, the texts critique the Irish Parliament, the U.S. Congress, and Chinese feudal ethics. Consequently, cannibalism transitions from a terrifying unnatural event to a symbolic act imbued with significant political meaning, generating cross-cultural biopolitical aesthetic effects and ideological implications, thereby achieving an activist effect in literature.

In ZhiYin culture, the "echo" of the Guqin, a traditional Chinese musical instrument, plays an important role between soulmates in traditional Chinese culture. According to a legendary story dated around BC 350 described in Lushi History, two characters became close friends through a mutual appreciation for music. The characters were Boya, an accomplished Guqin musician and high-level court official and Ziqi, an ordinary woodsman, and their friendship demonstrates how ZhiYi culture could break through the class hierarchy. T

Among the many works that demonstrate the relationship between Guqin music and ZhiYin culture, the animation work "Feelings of Mountains and Waters" (ShanShuiQing), created in China in the late 1980s, is a unique artistic monument. In the cross-cultural context, this animated work in a Chinese ink painting style, which gained international acclaim, has visualized and highlighted its deep understanding of ZhiYin culture, and it presents the multi-dimension of the Guqin music heritage, as well as the powerful "echo" of cultural memory in China.

This visual masterpiece with a splendid soundscape provided by the Guqin was created by the "art confidantes", Te Wei and Ma Kexuan, as directors at Shanghai Animation Film Studio. Through the art form of animation, the partners also expressed their deep regret about the loss of young contemporary artistic talents amid the transformations of planned socialist economy into the new market economy via reforms in China since the beginnings of 1980s.

ShanShuiQing expresses Zhiyin culture as the interweaving and embodiment of the physical aesthetics of the act of playing instruments, and it further analyzes how the ancient ZhiYin legend reproduces this new “echo” in contemporary China.

I am a Cat is a novel written by celebrated Japanese novelist Natsume Sōseki, who is also regarded as an author with an extensive background in British literature, particularly the British novel. Scholars such as Christopher C. Douglas have established how Sōseki draws from the British tradition of the “Novel of Circulation” or the “it-narrative” in writing I am a Cat. Building on such work, in this paper, I argue that Sōseki’s use of the anthropomorphized figure of the animal and the it-narrative structure creates a platform via which he is able to highlight the Anglo-Japanese confluences present in Japanese society in the early twentieth century. Additionally, drawing on Jacques Derrida’s The Animal That Therefore I Am, I demonstrate how Sōseki’s employment of the narrative figure of the cat gives rise to what I call “the return gaze,” which destabilizes the Anglo-Western conception of the “Orient,” and challenges some of the colonial binaries that had become commonplace in colonial discourse. The feline gaze and narrative voice in Sōseki’s novel complicate and challenge the Anglo-colonial gaze popularized by, for instance, the East India Company (consider the diaries of Richard Cocks), which invariably presented Japan as an exoticized and inferior other as opposed to the Anglo-West that was presumed to be unquestionably superior, more civilized, scientific, coherent, objective, and intrinsically more valuable in the hierarchy of civilizations. The narrative voice of I am a Cat challenges the fetishized appeal for Japanoiseries (despite establishing Japan as an exotic and inferior other) during Sōseki’s time by providing a gritty critique of Japanese society that goes beyond the superficial appropriation of woodblock prints and garden styles, and helps to develop a more complex understanding of Anglo-Japanese exchanges during the author’s time.

The past decade has witnessed a “nonhuman turn” as a challenge to prevailing anthropocentric notions, with nonhuman narratives assuming a pivotal role. The narrative about artificial humans or, “new humans” in contemporary Chinese science fiction, stands as an important category of nonhuman narrative, probing the dilemmas encountered at the intersection of technology and ethics. As a representative work of “new human” narrative, Wang Jinkang’s The Artificial Human depicts various types of “new human” narrators in both physical and digital forms, through whose observations, actions, and ethical choices readers are invited to reexamine the limitations of human existence, reflect upon the unthought-of of humanity, and explore the in-depth meaning of being human. By drawing inspiration from Chinese wisdom that transcends the either-or logic, the ethical choice made by “new humans” in the novel anticipates a harmonious coexistence of humans and artificial humans, which also provides valuable insights for reflecting on the challenges brought about by technological advancements in today’s world.

Hopkins's poetry after 1880 has been criticized for abandoning his original celebration of the diversity of nature in favor of a monolithic religious discourse and negative apocalyptic writings. These criticisms, however, ignore the scientific elements and realistic implications behind this shift. Hopkins followed the Victorian trend of meteorological observation, recording weather conditions in journals through visual perception and physical sensation. His later poems took this approach and combined it with the religious discourse of incarnation known as "sacramentalism," depicting the energy systems that include the intra-action between climate and body. The often criticized apocalyptic discourse in his late poems reveals and dramatizes the slow violence of the consequences of climate change in industrial society. These consequences, as Hopkins noted in his journals, are more often borne by poor workers, which is also reflected in his late poems, revealing the demands of environmental justice. Thus, rather than lapsing into negative apocalyptic discourse with a monolithic tone, Hopkins's late poems boldly confront climate issues in a critical realistic way, combining scientific method with aesthetic and religious imagination. His critical apocalyptic discourse also speaks to the current "soft denialism" of anthropogenic climate change, providing an embedded and embodied imagination for demonstrating climate change in the Anthropocene.

This chapter attempts to revisit Lawrence’s plant writings. Drawing on ideas and theories from vegetal ecocriticism, Anthropocene studies and environmental humanities, this article proposes a vegetal poetics of Lawrence by addressing the following questions: first, how can Lawrence’s vegetal poetics be distinguished from traditional Western ideas on plants? Secondly, what are the ecological messages Lawrence intends to convey in his vegetal poetics? Thirdly, to what extent is Lawrence’s vegetal poetics relevant to current ecological crises, particularly floral extinction? Ideas such as the agency of plants, the interconnected relationships between humans and plants, and Lawrence’s criticism of industrialisation examined under the lens of the Anthropocene can help us better comprehend the rich meanings of Lawrence’s plants in his poetic works, both aesthetically and ecologically.