Chinese Narratologies

This book provides a more rational and systematic explanation for the origin and evolution of the Chinese narrative tradition, based on studies of Chinese literary classics, local culture and items such as bronze wares and porcelain vessels with “portrayed stories.” By doing so, it uncovers forgotten interconnections and reestablishes obscured or unacknowledged lines of descent. Furthermore, it makes an initial study of acoustic narrative. Going beyond the field of literature, it employs tools and materials from diverse fields such as anthropology, religious studies, mythology, linguistics, semiotics, folklore and local culture. The book also offers an archeological inquiry into the knowledge found in various narrative texts, objects with “portrayed stories” and perceptions with “relevant plots.” Providing a wealth of insights, inspiring investigative methods and practical tools that can be applied in narrative studies, the book is an essential resource for researchers and students in the fields of comparative literature, narratology and ancient Chinese literature.

Narratology has been flourishing in recent years thanks to investigations into a broad spectrum of narratives, at the same time diversifying its theoretical and disciplinary scope as it has sought to specify the status of narrative within both society and scientific research. The diverse endeavors engendered by this situation have brought narrative to the forefront of the social and human sciences and have generated new synergies in the research environment. Emerging Vectors of Narratology brings together 27 state-of-the-art contributions by an international panel of authors that provide insight into the wealth of new developments in the field. The book consists of two sections. "Contexts" includes articles that reframe and refine such topics as the implied author, narrative causation and transmedial forms of narrative; it also investigates various historical and cultural aspects of narrative from the narratological perspective. "Openings" expands on these and other questions by addressing the narrative turn, cognitive issues, narrative complexity and metatheoretical matters. The book is intended for narratologists as well as for readers in the social and human sciences for whom narrative has become a crucial matrix of inquiry.

Since the reform and opening up of China in 1978, Western literary criticism has begun to flourish and gain in popularity within the country’s academic literature community. These two volumes meticulously select and examine nine of the most influential keywords from Western literary theory while identifying the intricate historical sources of these terms and analyzing their relevance to other disciplines and ideas. The result shows how these words function as heterogeneous cultural contexts in the complexity of experience but also how they function within the context of Chinese culture as well as Chinese literature and criticism. In this volume, the editors focus on discourse, text, narrative, literariness and irony from the perspectives of etymology, documentation, meanings and other core factors. Students of literature and languages, and especially Chinese literature, will benefit from this two-volume set.

As the second volume of a two-volume set on Chinese narratology, this title investigates the quintessential characteristics of the Chinese narrative style, with a focus on image and perspective. The first chapter introduces two opposing concepts of perspective: “focalization” and “blind spot,” to connect “perspective” with traditional aesthetics, highlighting the mutual relation of the nonexistent and the existent. The author believes that both the narrator and perspective are central to the narrative forms and strategies adopted by Chinese writers and that study of the narrator and perspective is integral to understanding the cultural, aesthetic, and philosophical connotations of the narrative text and the spiritual world of the author. Drawing on perceptual phenomenology, the chapter on image broadens the extant knowledge of “image” and points out that image narration is unique to Chinese narratology and central to Chinese aesthetics. The final chapter illustrating the achievements of influential critics of classical Chinese novels, proving that these critics have contributed to the canonization of the genuine masterpieces of Chinese narrative literature. The book is a must-read for scholars and students interested in narrative theory, Chinese culture and literature, and dialogue between Chinese and Western narratological studies.

As the first volume of a two-volume set on Chinese narratology, this title introduces the cultural fundamentals that nurture Chinese literary works and investigates the structure and time of Chinese narrative. In the introductory chapter, the author examines the intrinsic association between Chinese writers’ narrative techniques and China’s cultural background by putting forward a Principle of Duixing to facilitate the study of those techniques and three steps to revisit Chinese narrative. Based on Western narrative theories and a close reading of outstanding Chinese literary classics, the volume focuses on structure and time in Chinese narrative. The first part on structure (jiegou) identifies five essential themes to analyze the dual dynamic structure of Chinese narrative. In terms of aspects of time, the author demonstrates how the holistic view of time and space in the Chinese tradition influences the chronological framework of narratives and shapes the outset of a story. The book is a must-read for scholars and students interested in narrative theory, Chinese culture and literature, and the dialogue between Chinese and Western narratological studies.

The Routledge Companion to Narrative Theory brings together top scholars in the field to explore the significance of narrative to pressing social, cultural, and theoretical issues. How does narrative both inform and limit the way we think today? From conspiracy theories and social media movements to racial politics and climate change future scenarios, the reach is broad. This volume is distinctive for addressing the complicated relations between the interdisciplinary narrative turn in the academy and the contemporary boom of instrumental storytelling in the public sphere. The scholars collected here explore new theories of causality, experientiality, and fictionality; challenge normative modes of storytelling; and offer polemical accounts of narrative fiction, nonfiction, and video games. Drawing upon the latest research in areas from cognitive sciences to complexity theory, the volume provides an accessible entry point for those new to the myriad applications of narrative theory and a point of departure for new scholarship.

This book presents 18 highly influential essays on Chinese literature and semiotics by Professor Zhao Yiheng, including his analysis and discussions of the development of Chinese literature and its characteristics from traditional to modern times. It is divided into three parts: traditional Chinese literature, contemporary Chinese literature, and semiotics. In the first part, Professor Zhao summarizes the core elements of narrative cultural relations, ethical dilemmas, and narrative features. He also provides a comprehensive description of the formal structures in Chinese traditional literature. Taking the traditional Chinese play White Rabbit as a case, he discusses the connections between the narrative structure and the characteristics of Chinese novels and stratification of Chinese culture.

For a very long time, I have been preoccupied with the exploration of the academic blind spots that have cropped up in the organic combination of poetic studies and narrative studies that is inclined to give a lot of perceptive and cognitive inspiration to the systematic and strategic con-struction of the theoretical frameworks and theoretical systems of poetic narratology to provide more perceptive and cognitive convenience for the vast majority of readers and scholars to give a much more profound and perspicacious interpretation and illustration of the ideological and epistemological values implied in the diverse and distinctive narration of most poetic narrative texts in an unnoticeable fashion and in an untraceable fashion.