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1
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A New Argument on the Love / Erotic Discourse in The
Dream of the Red Chamber — Focusing on the
Reflection of the Scholar-Beauty Romance Pattern
The Dream of the Red Chamber counts the Romance of West
Chamber and Peony Pavilion as Scholar-Beauty romances,
and has deep reflection on their common desire discourse
and narrative pattern. This paper reconsiders the
reflections proposed in the novel. First, I clarify the
difference between the romance novels and romantic
traditional Chinese operas (戲曲), and show that what
The Dream of the Red Chamber addresses is the novel
genre rather than Chinese opera genre. Then, the
reflection proposed through the mouth of Grandmother Jia
(賈母) is carefully analyzed. Contrary to the usual
claim that this opinion is dogmatic, repressive and
trite, this reflection is comprehensive, deep and indeed
the attitude of The Dream of the Red Chamber towards the
novel genre of Scholar-Beauty romances. As a result, I
confirm that Cao Xue-qin (曹雪芹) consciously refutes
the beauty ideal and romantic love as embodied in
Scholar-Beauty romances.
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Ou, Li-chuan
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2
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Transnational Sinophone Articulation: Taiwan- Sinophone
Malaysian Literature
Current Chinese studies tend to conceptualize the idea of
global Chinese imagination in terms of cultural nostalgia
and the responsibility to inherent the Chinese culture.
However, with the rise of local consciousness in the
Sinophone world, we are increasingly called upon to pay
attention to a new type of transnational connection,
namely, the transnational Sinophone articulation. This new
type of minor transnationalism concerns how the Sinophone
world is articulated by the shared structures of the
feeling of being ashamed of one's Chinese heritages and
identity. This paper argues, via the case study of Ng Kim
Chew’s novel, how this new type of transnational
connection enhances our understanding of the notion of
“Sinophone.” Ng Kim Chew’s works were first published in
Taiwan and have been entangled with the development of the
nativist movement in Taiwan since the 1980s. His
transnational literary production helps shed light on the
intriguing connection, interplay, and intersection between
the localization of the Taiwanese identity and the
Sinophone Malaysian identity. Insofar as heterogeneity is
celebrated in Sinophone studies, this paper also seeks to
critically examine the dark side of such a heterogeneous
Sinophone imagination.
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Zhan, Min-xu
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3
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Toward “Post-human Poetry”: Views of
Science Fiction in Chen Ke Hua’s Poetry
The fusion of science fiction and poetry has both
widened the scope of science fiction and renewed styles
in poetry; yet, however, the current scholarship
concerning this area has remained extremely limited. The
present article seeks to explore science fiction poetry
within the whole of Taiwanese literature in order to
establish a comprehensive standard for evaluation. A
focused study will furthermore be made on Chen Ke Hua,
an important figure in science fiction poetry, with
consideration towards his more representative works. The
long science fiction poems of Chen’s early period
reflected a modernist spirit, breaking the then popular
trends of narrative poetry. By his middle and late
periods, Chen’s works became shorter in length and
science fiction increasingly evolved into the dominant
influence of his vision, thus giving birth to a variety
of unique metaphors, imagery, and emotions. Other
elements (e.g., urbanism, politics, and the physical
body) also concurrently became intermingled into his
writing, creating new forms.
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Liu, Cheng-chung
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4
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On the Meaning of "Absolute Nothingness" in Middle
Nishida's Philosophy: Placing Focus on His "The
Intelligible World"
In this paper I
attempt to shed light on the basic meaning of Kitaro
Nishida’s "Absolute Nothingness" in middle Nishida. During
this period of his philosophy Nishida concentrated on the
establishment of a "system of self-consciousness" that
reached from the universality of judgment to the place of
absolute nothingness. Specifically, I focus on his essay
"The Intelligible World" written in 1928. For Nishida,
"being" meant to be determined by or located in a
universal. This state of affairs can also be expressed as
the "self-determination of the universal," which is a key
concept in his system of self-consciousness. By
demonstrating a path of immanent transcendence which goes
deep into the direction of predicate or
self-consciousness, Nishida finally reaches the basho of
absolute nothingness. In this essay I try to reconstruct
Nishida's path, leading from being to nothingness, and to
expound some possible meaning of absolute nothingness in
his middle period. The study is divided into four
sections. After a brief introduction of the theme and
methods of the article (section one), I try to reconstruct
Nishida's transcendental path from the "world of
consciousness" to "the intelligible world" (section two)
and then the transition from "the intelligible world" to
the "basho of absolute nothingness" (section three). The
intelligible world is the world in which ideal beings
(such as truth, beauty and good) are located. Finally in
the last section (section four) I make a summary of the
meaning of absolute nothingness. Through comparison with
Heidegger's elucidation of the experience of nothingness
in anxiety, as outlined in his article "What is
Metaphysics?" in 1929, I also attempt to expound some
possible horizons that are opened by Nishida in his
discussion of the experience of nothingness. It is my view
that the experience of nothingness is not an extraordinary
experience, but a hidden moment inherent in our daily
experience.
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Huang, Wen-hong
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5
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Beauty and Truth: The Argument between Jacques
Maritain and Etienne Gilson
Jacques Maritain
and Etienne Gilson, despise the fact that they came from
the same country, shared the same religious beliefs and
belonged to the same philosophical school (Neo-Thomism),
expressed opposite opinions towards certain points in fine
arts. It is worth the effort to find out why and how this
controversy appeared because their views help us to see a
deeper meaning of art. This paper starts with illustrating
Maritain and Gilson’s respective views on fine arts.
Through discerning the boundary between beauty and truth,
art and knowledge, this paper presents the key points of
their arguments. After realizing why and how the conflict
arose, this paper offers a different view on truth
concerning art, and also shows that the disagreements
between Maritain and Gilson may not be treated as an
uncompromising conflict; rather, these two philosophers
simply dealt with fine arts from different perspectives
and thereby demonstrated respective aspects and meaning
about art and fine arts.
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Katia Lenehan
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6
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The “Twofold Truth” of Instrumental
Music: Franz Brendel’s Writings on Program
Music
Franz Brendel, one of Franz Liszt’s strongest allies and
a spokesman for the New German School, was closely
engaged in the aesthetic debates concerning program
music in the mid-nineteenth century. Influenced by the
Hegelian philosophy of history (Geschichtsphilosophie),
Brendel’s music criticism emphasized the importance of
artistic progression that also respected traditional
German aesthetics. This dialectical perspective informed
his aesthetic defense of program music, which prompted
opposition from the adherents of “absolute music” led by
Eduard Hanslick. Although Hanslick’s aesthetic treatise
On the Musically Beautiful (Vom Musikalisch-Schonen,
1854) would provoke responses from defenders of program
music, neither Richard Wagner and Liszt replied
immediately to Hanslick. One of the immediate responses
to Hanslick from the New German School was offered by
Brendel, who examined the historical and aesthetic basis
of programmatic music in his article “Program Music”
(“Programmmusik,” 1856). Surprisingly, Brendel did not
attempt to refute Hanslick’s position; on the contrary,
he adopted a conciliatory tone. James Deaville has
argued that through the article, Brendel was attempting
to conclude the entire aesthetic debate. Differing from
Deaville, this paper examines the arguments laid out in
Brendel’s article along with his other writings to
highlight Brendel’s dual perspective regarding
instrumental music. Adopting a term introduced by Carl
Dahlhaus to describe Wagner’s complex attitude towards
instrumental music, the paper suggests that we conceive
Brendel’s seemingly compromising tone as a reflection of
the “twofold truth” held by composers of the New German
School: the indeterminate quality of German music could
coexist with an admission of the representational
quality of music. This paper argues that this
assimilation of diverse aesthetic positions embodies a
utopian aspiration conditioned by Hegelian philosophy
and German Romantic ideology.
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Annie Yen-ling Liu
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7
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The Pathogenic Female Tongue: A Galenic and Paracelsian
Diagnosis of Macbeth
This paper argues that Shakespeare exhibits in Macbeth a
certain pre-existing cultural anxiety about female
rhetoric in positioning the woman’s tongue in the play as
less a dramatic representation than a pathological
socio-cultural locale, one that “sickens” and thus
threatens male subjectivity. With its power to transgress
and transform, the female tongue remains a pathogenic site
in the early modern era. In Macbeth, this tongue may be
seen as the source—or rather as a metaphor or metonym for
the source—of rhetorical infiltration that infects the
(especially male) self like a disease, attacking it from
the inside (Galen) and/or from the outside (Paracelsus).
On the one hand, armed with malevolence which she will
pour into her unwary husband’s ear, Lady Macbeth could be
characterized as the “breeder of poison.” She triggers in
Macbeth the inner passion for rebellion, even for going
against or inverting the natural order. On the other hand,
from the Paracelsian pathological standpoint, the evil
words spoken by witches are incarnated as agents of
infection that invade a healthy individual’s body, or
healthy socio-political organism, like the very “seeds”
(in modern terms the germs) of evil. The witches’ cauldron
has alchemically transformed this body, not by purifying
it into gold but by corrupting and corroding it, killing
it, bringing it to the edge of death.
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Lin, Ying-chiao
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8
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Place and Gender in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and
Woman’s Honor
Recognized today as the mother of American drama, Susan
Glaspell (1876-1948) plays an important role in
20th-century American literature. Her plays were
commercially and critically welcome by the people of her
time, but faded from public interest after her death. It
is not until feminists in the second wave of the Women’s
Liberation Movement that Glaspell finally reclaims her
reputation. Glaspell, portraying the Midwest in her works,
is usually labeled as a local colorist. However, this
paper re-reads Glaspell’s Trifles (1916) and Woman’s Honor
(1918) from the perspectives of place and gender in order
to explore the interrelationship between the two in
Glaspell’s works, such as how place identity is associated
with gender identity and how gender relations are
constructed in a place. In light of such a new reading,
Glaspell becomes a feminist geographer.
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Shih, Yi-chin
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