During much of Chinaâs tumultuous 20th century, May 4th and Maoist iconoclasts regarded their classical literary heritage as a burden to be dislodged in the quest for modernization. This volume demonstrates how the traditions that had deeply impressed earlier generations of Western writers like Goethe and Voltaire did not lose their lustre; to the contrary, a fascination with these past riches sprouted with renewed vigour among Euro-American poets, novelists, and other cultural figures after the fall of imperial China in 1911. From Petrograd to Paris, and from São Paolo to San Francisco, Chinaâs premodern poetry, theatre, essays, and fiction inspired numerous prominent writers and intellectuals. The contributors survey the fruits of this engagement in multiple Western languages and nations.
Zong-qi Cai teaches at Lingnan University of Hong Kong and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has published thirteen scholarly books in English and five in Chinese, the most recent of which are his monograph Grammar and Poetic Visions (2021), and his edited volume How to Read Chinese Prose: A Guided Anthology (2022).
Stephen Roddy teaches Asian Studies at the University of San Francisco. He has published articles and monographs about late-traditional Chinese fiction, prose, and poetry, and recently translated (with Ying Wang) Li Yuâs 1651 play, The Fragrant Companions (2022).
Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors
Introduction
âStephen Roddy and Zong-qi Cai
1 Walter Benjaminâs China
âWilliam Cheung
2 The Chinese Written Character and the Reinvention of Western and Chinese Poetry: Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound
âXiaohui Zhang and Zong-qi Cai
3 A Semiopoetic Reimagination of Concreteness: Chinese Ideograms in Haroldo de Campos
âInez Zhou
4 A Poet-Knight-Errant Traveling North: Three Russian Poetsâ Translations of Li Bai
âXiaolu Ma
5 Robert Hans van Gulik and the Reinvention of Chinese Detective Fiction
âYunte Huang
6 Rethinking Pearl S. Buck and Tanci Fiction
âYu Zhang
7 Transcultural, Transmedial Reinvention: Shuihu zhuan æ°´æ»¸å³ (Water Margin) from Chinese Classic to Italian Comic Art
âMartina Caschera
9 Global South Feminisms in Maxine Hong Kingstonâs Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts and Patricia Galvãoâs Industrial Park
âAna Paulina Lee
10 Sino-Pacifism: China in the Peace Work(s) of Maxine Hong Kingston, Kenneth Rexroth, & Lou Harrison
âStephen Roddy
Index
Undergraduate and graduate students in Chinese and comparative literature; specialists in Sino-Western cultural contact; general readers with an interest in twentieth century Western literature related to China.