The Not So Soft Power of Chinese Literary Theory and Criticism: A Review of Literature and Literary Criticism in Contemporary China by Zhang Jiong

Style ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 257
Author(s):  
Zhang ◽  
Huang
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Review Of Literature ◽  
Contemporary China ◽  
Theory And Criticism ◽  
Literary Theory And Criticism

scholarly journals NEW MATERIALISM: PROJECTIONS INTO LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM

2021 ◽  
pp. 153-159
Author(s):  
Mariya Shymchyshyn
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
New Historicism ◽  
New Criticism ◽  
Theory And Criticism ◽  
Binary Oppositions ◽  
Literary Theory And Criticism

The article considers the recent (re)turn to materiality in philosophy and theory, in particular, such schools as speculative realism and object-oriented philosophy. They offer rethinking of objects and criticism of anthropocentric worldview. The attention to materiality privileges matter, body, and nature. Theorists of New materialism reject the binary oppositions (nature/culture, human/nonhuman, etc.) and insist on intra-action as a new materialist orientation. The author argues that the new materialist critique of conventional critique will be useful for literary theory and criticism. According to Latour, critique should be productive and collaborative. As far as critical judgments rely on thelogic of representation that in its turn is based on similarity, analogy and opposition they restrict the analytic enterprise. Moreover, it is necessary to rethink conventional practices of interpretation and explanation. In this context, K. Barad proposes to substitute these strategies with the practice of ‘diffraction’. In the second part of the article, the author analyzes Graham Harman’s article The Well-Wrought Broken Hammer:Object-Oriented Literary Criticism. We pay attention to Harman’s critique of New Criticism, New Historicism, and Deconstruction in their contrast to object-oriented philosophy. In his analysis of New Criticism, Harman figures out the taxonomic fallacy within this theory. He argues against the idea that only poetry has all the non-prose sense while other disciplines have the literal sense. His second argument against New Criticism problematizes the unity of all the elementsin a literary work. Harman outlines the assumptions of New Historicism and points out that it turns everything into interrelated influences. Instead, he argues that contextuality is not universal. In his criticism of Deconstruction Harman underlines that Derrida wrongly believes that ontological realism automatically entails an epistemological realism. In his turn, Harman insists that the thing is deeper than its interactions are.

scholarly journals Topos og motiv. Et forskningshistorisk rids

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (123) ◽  
pp. 23-36
Author(s):  
Christian Dahl
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Classical Rhetoric ◽  
Critical Term ◽  
Theory And Criticism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literary Theory And Criticism

The aim of this article is to clarify how literary topology relates historically and conceptually to the study of literary motifs. Topos and motif are associated concepts in literary theory, but attempts to define and compare them are evasive and few. While literary topology was, according to Ernst Robert Curtius, founded on the basis of classical rhetoric and concerned primarily the literary tradition of rhetorical eloquence, the notion of motif was, as I will argue, on the contrary conceived as a critical term at a time when rhetoric was loosing its grip on literary criticism at the end of the 18th century. My article will survey a number of influential positions in the history of literary theory and criticism concerning the study of motifs and topoi from Goethe to contemporary contextualist approaches.

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