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2013

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Web

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#	Year	Text	Linked Data
1	1980-2000	Henry James and China general 1989 Norman Michael Bock : The American : James created a seemingly legendary figure, who incorporates an almost bewildering array of the most attenuated qualities of American selfhood. Chinese readers should not view Newman as a 'realistic' protagonist, but as an aggregate of all the most extreme tendencies of character assumed in a 'national type'. In Newman, we find a man who lacks antecedents, who displays industry and self reliance, who appreciates the future profit to be reaped from present sacrifice, who knows how to persevere, and who is driven to succeed solely for the sweet sake of success. Surreal Newman may seem to Americans, he may seem authentic to Chinese readers possessing little basis for comparison. Daisy Miller : Winterbourne becomes extremely annoyed that Daisy is intimate with him, yet not devoted to him. This brings to mind his colleague's observation that 'American women [are] at once the most exacting in the world and the least endowed with a sense of indebtedness '. Chinese can appreciate in this passage the apparent tendency of Americans to believe that the world owes them much, but they owe the world little in exchange. Although Daisy at times appears shallow to Winterbourne, the mere maintenance of appearances does not satisfy this woman, who illustrates for Chinese readers what James regarded as a characteristic American desire to penetrate the surfaces of 'decorum'. Chinese readers will delight in the Euro-American debate over 'innocence'. When Winterbourne tells his aunt he is not innocent, she responds in typical Old World fashion, 'You are too guilty, then ?' For this man, who retains American sensibilities that even he does not appreciate, innocence connotes 'naivete' ; for his Europeanized aunt, it suggest the opposite of 'sinfulness'. In their understanding of the term 'innocence', Chinese will side squarely with the Americans. Daisy's demise at the end of the story suggests much about James's ambivalence as to the American proclivities toward spontaneity, experience, fresh exuberance, and freedom from social encumbrances. Intriguing these traits remain to him, they seem too impulsive and uninhibited to afford survival amidst a world of harsh physical and social realities. At this point in Daisy Miller, Chinese readers will recognize the many thematic parallels to The American. Some elemental urge in Daisy Miller, this all-too-obvious flowering of American youth, drives her to set aside safety and comfort for new experiences that lead to a fuller sense of being. 2002 Dai Xianmei : Henry James remained largely unknown to Chinese readers even after 1949. Henry James studies in China formally began in 1980. With China's policy of reform and opening to foreign countries, James began to find his readers in China and he even became a hot topic of debate among some Chinese doctoral students. Chinese scholars read the foreign literary works for ideological instruction rather than for their aesthetic mould. Under such circumstances, Henry James, with his pursuit of an aesthetic and philosophical appreciation of the cream of life, seemed far away from Chinese needs. Quite a lot of Chinese intellectuals were unavoidably and understandably involved in political activities and political thinking about their country's future. Zhao Luorui, Hou Wirui and Yang Xiaoping believed that Henry James gave preference to American innocence and morality between the conflicts of the two cultures. Almost all of the early Chinese James critics sensed the difficulty of his language and found themselves willing to accept H.G. Wells's view that James's magnificently artistic form is at the cost of life and content. From political rejection to an artistic appreciation of Henry James, we can sense the change of the Chinese mind or China's attitude towards western culture. The conscious appreciation of James and some other western writers of his kind, sufficiently indicates the fact that Chinese people are becoming more and more open-minded in a new century with the development of economy, science and technology, more and more confident in combining her own ancient glorious civilization with all the other cultures to create a more lively Chinese culture, just like Henry James's enthusiastic pursuit of an ideal cultural combination of the cream of both American and European cultures. 2013 Wang, Liya : The past decades have seen enormous efforts in China to study Henry James's corpus , which reflects a persistent enthusiasm on this literary figure among scholars in the field of foreign literature studies. This paper looks back at studies on Henry James in different historical periods, in China and attempts to uncover the interaction between the reception of foreign classics and China's historical background. From a heavy reliance on the 'traveling theories' in the 1980s to a selective use of Western paradigms later on critics of Henry James in China consistently show a general interest in his major novels and his novel theory. This paper is an historical review of studies on Henry James, works in China from the middle of twentieth century up to the present. Both the phase features of these studies and the factors which influence the formation of these features, in particular cultural background, are addressed in this research. Firstly, form 1934 to 1945, Henry James's works had been introduced into the literacy criticism in China by translators, but the research at that time was constrained by the historical conditions. Secondly, from 1949 to the 1970s, there was very little study done regarding Henry James. It was not until 1980's that scholars has begun to discuss Henry James's works from various perspectives. Henry James was originally regarded as a bourgeois writer who idealized the ruling class and neglected the working class. Influenced by the reflection on the political thinking in literature studies during the Cultural Revolution and the nation-wide revival of humanism in culture, Henry James was interpreted as a humanistic writer who had fully explored human consciousness. However, the aestheticism both in his novel theory and his late works was largely absent during that period. Finally, from the 1990s onward, Henry James has been interpreted according to various critical traditions, such as the formalist tradition and the deconstructive tradition .	Document: Bock, Norman Michael. Expressions of selfhood in classic American fiction : readings from a Chinese cultural perspective. (Ann Arbor, Mich. : University Microfilms International, 1989). Diss. Univ. of Connecticut, 1989. [Betr. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner]. S. 168-170, 183-186. (Twa18, Publication) Document: Dai, Xianmei. From rejection to appreciation : Henry James studies in China. [Paper read at the 2002 International Henry James Conference in Paris]. (JamH3, Publication) Person: James, Henry (1)