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1
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The Role of Paradigm Formation in Tao Yuanming’s Sense
of Nostalgia
Two obvious aspects of the sense of nostalgia present in
Tao Yuanming’s writings are exemplary models of
character and images of paradise, both of which are
significant in terms of paradigm formation. This deep
implication is jointly conveyed through the use of
history and of myth in his writing.
There are several parts to the argument presented in this
paper. First of all there is an analysis of how Tao uses
paradigmatic thinking to understand the meaning of
history. Secondly, there follows an analysis and
discussion of how, by threading together history and myth,
he reveals and holds up paradigms of fighting spirit.
Next, I will present an explanation of how Tao constructs
a paradigm that fuses reclusion and impoverishment in
order to find a home for his own spirit, which
incorporates both these aspects. Following on from this I
will compare the differences between paradise in myth and
the paradise of the immortals in order to illustrate how
Tao Yuanming combines the paradise of remote antiquity
with historical culture and rural conditions and customs,
and then bringing this image of paradise into the human
realm, forms a brand new paradigm of paradise, the Peach
Blossom Spring. To conclude I will summarize the
significance to the times of the writer’s formation and
use of exemplary models.
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Tsai, Yu
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2
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Original Characters in Chinese Dialects and the
Search for Pronunciations (2): Da（大）and
Phonetic Correspondences between Literary and
Vernacular Pronunciations
We start by noting the rule whereby the original
character of particular word is already known for a
dialect, the literary and vernacular pronunciations of
that character evidence phonetic correspondence. Likewise,
the basic assumption for determining the original
character for a word in a particular dialect is that if
the literary pronunciation and the original character are
already known or determined, the phonetic position of the
vernacular pronunciation and the original character will
be identical. Next, we focus on one of the most basic
words in Chinese – da – and its two historical
pronunciations. Interestingly, the word dais an
exception to the above rule insofar as its literary and
vernacular pronunciations may be either, or neither, of
the two readings given above. We continue by considering
the fact that sometimes it is necessary to search for
evidence for which character is best suited to represent a
word either internally, through correspondences between
literary and vernacular pronunciations, or externally,
from words common to different dialects or from cognatic
relations among related dialect words. Once this
distinction is made, research into Chinese historical
linguistics, the history of dialects, or the history of
dialect regions will be able to provide valuable
historical/cultural evidence that could also be of use in
resolving the big problem of the word da.
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Hsu, Fang-min
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3
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Aristotle’s Theory of Categories
This paper deals with Aristotle’s theory of categories.
Aristotle’s categories not only represent different
forms of predication, but also reflect different modes
and the basic structure of beings. The paper analyzes
the development of Aristotle’s theory of categories from
its inception in the Topics as a linguistic
theory of predications, then through the reformulation
with the ontological theory of primary substance in the
Categories, and to finally reach its
ontological summit in the Metaphysics. The
developed categories offer a framework for grasping not
only the manifoldness of diversified beings, but also
the dynamics of change in the empirical world. Moreover,
the paper examines possible guiding principles behind
Aristotle’s choice of categories, discussing whether and
to what extent the ten categories can be understood as
an inventory of questions or a system of the lexical
categories of the ancient Greek. Although Aristotle does
rely heavily on linguistic analysis, his choice of
categories is not determined by the Greek language.
Instead, linguistic analysis is taken only as a point of
departure, from which Aristotle advances to explore the
universal structure of thought and reality by
philosophical reflection.
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Lau, Chong-fuk
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4
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Mnemonics and Bacon
This essay is
mainly to investigate the influence of mnemonics on the
formation of the scientific method on the part of Bacon.
The article proper is largely laid out in two main parts.
The first part, by briefly surveying the works of Plato,
Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, and Augustine, traces the
genesis of mnemonics in the West, particularly the
characteristic tendency in classical mnemonics to
associate things to be memorized with specialized images
and to position these images in a particular space. Based
upon the conclusion reached in the first part, the ensuing
part attempts to show that mnemonics, as being cognate
with rhetoric, exercises an indirect but unmistakable
influence on the scientific method in its budding stage.
Bacon is not particularly interested in whether mnemonics
can help people acquire dazzling memorization skills, and
what really arrests his attention is the service mnemonics
can possibly render: enhancing our ability in
classification. This essay also adduces the example of
Giordano Bruno, an older contemporary of Bacon and, more
significantly, one of the precursors of modern science, to
demonstrate that Bacon might not be an isolated case in
his time in terms of the effort to generalize principles
of classification from artificial memory. In trying to
expound the extent of the prevalence of mnemonics around
Bacon’s time, the second part also touches upon how Matteo
Ricci and Giulio Aleni introduced classical mnemonics to
seventeenth-century China.
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Sung, Wei-ko
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5
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Genre, Narrative, and History in Timothy
Findley’s The Wars
Timothy Findley’s
The Wars (1977) started to investigate the
underlying ideological assumptions about the writing of
history before the rise of the postmodern epistemological
and ontological questioning about history. Its
problematization of realist presumptions of historical
representation has been analysed by commentators, but the
way Findley engages in genre transgression in order to
unsettle history’s claims to authenticity and objectivity
has not received adequate critical attention. This essay
is concerned with how he employs the biographic form for
his protagonist’s story but juxtaposes it with a nameless
researcher’s collection of information about him and
investigation into related historical documents as a
metafictional device to problematize the writing of
biography and history as mimetic representation. The focus
will be on the narrative strategies used to achieve genre
transgression and blur the distinction between biography
and history.
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Wang, Mei-chuen
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6
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Writing Natural History: Alexander Wilson’s
Delineation of Early America’s “Lovely Face of
Nature”
Alexander Wilson is an early voice in the tradition of
American natural history writing. He composes many
nature essays and poetic works of natural history, such
as American Ornithology and
The Forester. In his works, Wilson closely
describes the beauty of the pristine environment and
innumerable birds in America and was recognized as
America’s foremost authority on birds in his time.
However, it is surprising that for a long time Wilson
played a significant but largely unexamined role in
American literature and in American nature writing
tradition. Today he is remembered only as the “Father of
American Ornithology” by most people.
Exploring Wilson’s delineation of Early America’s “Lovely
face of Nature,” this essay examines Wilson’s
effectiveness as a writer of literary natural history. In
this essay, I contend that Wilson’s works of natural
history should be regarded as significant pieces of
American literature because, introducing the scientific
knowledge about America’s birds into American prose and
poetry to educate the American public about their own
land, these works define a uniquely American subject.
Also, Wilson’s verses and nature essays should be deemed
important pieces of American literature because they
introduce many proto-ecological ideas, thereby initiating
a tradition of proto-environmental ethics for early
America.
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Lu, Li-ru
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