Louie Kam (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9789888083794
- eISBN:
- 9789882209060
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888083794.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Eileen Chang (1920–1995) is arguably the most perceptive writer in modern Chinese literature. She was one of the most popular writers in 1940s Shanghai, but her insistence on writing about individual ...
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Eileen Chang (1920–1995) is arguably the most perceptive writer in modern Chinese literature. She was one of the most popular writers in 1940s Shanghai, but her insistence on writing about individual human relationships and mundane matters rather than revolutionary and political movements meant that in mainland China, she was neglected until very recently. Outside the mainland, her life and writings never ceased to fascinate Chinese readers. There are hundreds of works about her in the Chinese language but very few in other languages. This is the first work in English to explore her earliest short stories as well as novels that were published posthumously. It discusses the translation of her stories for film and stage presentation, as well as nonliterary aspects of her life that are essential for a more comprehensive understanding of her writings, including her intense concern for privacy and enduring sensitivity to her public image. The thirteen essays examine the fidelity and betrayals that dominate her alter ego's relationships with parents and lovers, informed by theories and methodologies from a range of disciplines including literary, historical, gender, and film studies. These relationships are frequently dramatized in plays and filmic translations of her work.Less
Eileen Chang (1920–1995) is arguably the most perceptive writer in modern Chinese literature. She was one of the most popular writers in 1940s Shanghai, but her insistence on writing about individual human relationships and mundane matters rather than revolutionary and political movements meant that in mainland China, she was neglected until very recently. Outside the mainland, her life and writings never ceased to fascinate Chinese readers. There are hundreds of works about her in the Chinese language but very few in other languages. This is the first work in English to explore her earliest short stories as well as novels that were published posthumously. It discusses the translation of her stories for film and stage presentation, as well as nonliterary aspects of her life that are essential for a more comprehensive understanding of her writings, including her intense concern for privacy and enduring sensitivity to her public image. The thirteen essays examine the fidelity and betrayals that dominate her alter ego's relationships with parents and lovers, informed by theories and methodologies from a range of disciplines including literary, historical, gender, and film studies. These relationships are frequently dramatized in plays and filmic translations of her work.
Panagiotis Agapitos
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474403795
- eISBN:
- 9781474435130
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474403795.003.0020
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter examines a particular way in which feelings of love are expressed in the Palaiologan romances (c. 1250–1350). This manner of expression is presented through the systematic use of an ...
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This chapter examines a particular way in which feelings of love are expressed in the Palaiologan romances (c. 1250–1350). This manner of expression is presented through the systematic use of an imagery and vocabulary of lamentation, that incorporates into these highly artful poetic narratives a discourse deriving from folk poetry. These amorous laments (moirologia), as they are sometimes called by the narrators or even the characters, are not direct quotations of actual folk laments or songs as folklorists in the early twentieth century believed. They are a way of presenting amorous feelings to Byzantine listeners or readers (initially within an aristocratic courtly milieu, later also within a bourgeois environment) in a manner attuned to their contemporary and specific socio-cultural context, yet structurally keeping to the conventions set by the ‘Hellenising’ novels of the Komnenian age. These folk-like songs reflect a new type of poetic and emotional sensibility in late Byzantium, partly in response to Old French romance as it was available in the thirteenth century (orally, at least), partly in response to a growing interest in ‘folk subjects’ as attested by the collections of vernacular proverbs and popular lore.Less
This chapter examines a particular way in which feelings of love are expressed in the Palaiologan romances (c. 1250–1350). This manner of expression is presented through the systematic use of an imagery and vocabulary of lamentation, that incorporates into these highly artful poetic narratives a discourse deriving from folk poetry. These amorous laments (moirologia), as they are sometimes called by the narrators or even the characters, are not direct quotations of actual folk laments or songs as folklorists in the early twentieth century believed. They are a way of presenting amorous feelings to Byzantine listeners or readers (initially within an aristocratic courtly milieu, later also within a bourgeois environment) in a manner attuned to their contemporary and specific socio-cultural context, yet structurally keeping to the conventions set by the ‘Hellenising’ novels of the Komnenian age. These folk-like songs reflect a new type of poetic and emotional sensibility in late Byzantium, partly in response to Old French romance as it was available in the thirteenth century (orally, at least), partly in response to a growing interest in ‘folk subjects’ as attested by the collections of vernacular proverbs and popular lore.
Laurie Langbauer
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198739203
- eISBN:
- 9780191802348
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198739203.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
Jane Austen’s juvenilia complicate notions of development in ways that recast our understanding of the rise of the novel. Her teenage writing invokes burlesque specifically to critique history as ...
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Jane Austen’s juvenilia complicate notions of development in ways that recast our understanding of the rise of the novel. Her teenage writing invokes burlesque specifically to critique history as progress, lampooning the Whig historicism that views the novel as the fulfillment of Romance’s inadequacies, or adulthood as progression beyond youthful immaturity. The prolepsis of Austen’s juvenile writing is satiric, drawing on an active heritage of juvenile satire now overlooked, found in joke books or school magazines, including Eton’s Microcosm (the teenaged George Canning, later prime minister, was an editor) or the Oxford single-essay humor magazine The Loiterer, edited by Austen’s brothers. In her juvenilia and novels, Austen directly responds to Canning’s reflection on juvenile writing. When we understand Austen as working in a satirical, juvenile tradition, we see that her early work mocks the assumptions of developmental history to clear a space for the voices those assumptions otherwise devalue.Less
Jane Austen’s juvenilia complicate notions of development in ways that recast our understanding of the rise of the novel. Her teenage writing invokes burlesque specifically to critique history as progress, lampooning the Whig historicism that views the novel as the fulfillment of Romance’s inadequacies, or adulthood as progression beyond youthful immaturity. The prolepsis of Austen’s juvenile writing is satiric, drawing on an active heritage of juvenile satire now overlooked, found in joke books or school magazines, including Eton’s Microcosm (the teenaged George Canning, later prime minister, was an editor) or the Oxford single-essay humor magazine The Loiterer, edited by Austen’s brothers. In her juvenilia and novels, Austen directly responds to Canning’s reflection on juvenile writing. When we understand Austen as working in a satirical, juvenile tradition, we see that her early work mocks the assumptions of developmental history to clear a space for the voices those assumptions otherwise devalue.
