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Anthropology, Epistemology, Ethics, Space
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An Indian Bengali by birth, Amitav Ghosh has established himself as a major voice in what is often called world literature, addressing issues such as the post-colonial and neo-colonial predicaments, the plight of the subalterns, the origin of globalisation and capitalism, and lately ecology and migration. The volume is therefore divided according to the four domains that lie at the heart of Ghosh’s writing practice: anthropology, epistemology, ethics and space. In this volume, a number of scholars from all over the world have come together to shed new light on the works and poetics of Amitav Ghosh according to the epistemic frameworks that form the bedrock of his fiction.

Contributors: Safoora Arbab, Carlotta Beretta, Lucio De Capitani, Asis De, Lenka Filipova, Letizia Garofalo, Swapna Gopinath, Evelyne Hanquart-Turner, Sabine Lauret-Taft, Carol Leon, Kuldeep Mathur, Fiona Moolla, Sambit Panigrahi, Madhsumita Pati, Murari Prasad, Luca Raimondi, Pabitra Kumar Rana, Ilaria Rigoli, Sneharika Roy, John Thieme, Alessandro Vescovi.
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Volume Editors: and
Liu Zaifu 劉再復 is a name that has already been ingrained within contemporary Chinese literary history. This landmark volume presents Anglophone readers with Liu’s profound reflections on Chinese literature and culture at different times. The essays collected here demonstrate Liu’s historical experience and trajectory as an exiled Chinese intellectual who persistently safeguards the individuality and the autonomy of literature, refusing to succumb to political manipulation.

Liu’s theory of literary subjectivity has opened ways for Chinese writers to thrive and innovate. His panoramic view not only unravels the intricate interplay between literature and politics but also firmly regards the transcendental value of literature as a significant ground to subvert revolutionary dogmatism and criticize Chinese modernity. Rather than drawing upon the existing paradigm, he reinvents his own unique theoretical conceptions in order to exile the borrowed “gods.”
What is video game culture and video games as culture? Culture at Play avoids easy answers and deceitful single definitions. Instead, the collected essays included here navigate the messy and exciting waters of video games, of culture, and of the meeting of video games and culture, and do so from four perspectives: Players: Types and Identities; The Human/The Machine: Agents, Ethics, and Affect; Compassion, Recognition, and the Interpersonal; and Learning through Play. As a form of play, video games can greatly affect our lives. As digital objects, they participate in our digital lives. As both, they have a noticeable impact on our relationships with others, with society, and with ourselves, and this is the scope of this book.
Gao Xingjian's Theatre of the Tragic
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In Dionysus on the Other Shore, Letizia Fusini argues that throughout his early exile years (late 1980s-1990s), Gao Xingjian gradually moved away from Absurdist Drama to develop a dramaturgical system with tragic characteristics. Drawing on a range of contemporary theories of tragedy, this book reconfigures some of the key tropes of Gao’s post-1987 theater as varied articulations of the Dionysian sparagmos mechanism. They are the dismemberment of the dramatic self, the usage of constricted spaces, the divisive nature of gender relations, and the agony of verbal language. Through a text-based analysis of seven plays, the author ultimately aims to show that in Gao’s theater, tragedy is an ongoing and mostly subtextual dynamism generated by an interplay of psychic forces concurrently cohesive and divisive.
For the monumental Poetry Competition in Six Hundred Rounds (Roppyakuban uta’awase), twelve poets each provided one hundred waka poems, fifty on seasonal topics and fifty on love, which were matched, critiqued by the participants and judged by Fujiwara no Shunzei, the premiere poet of his age. Its critical importance is heightened by the addition of a lengthy Appeal (chinjō) against Shunzei’s judgements by the conservative poet and monk, Kenshō. It is one of the key texts for understanding poetic and critical practice in late twelfth century Japan, and of the conflict between conservative and innovative poets.
The Competition and Appeal are presented here for the first time in complete English translation with accompanying commentary and explanatory notes by Thomas McAuley.
This volume of fourteen essays explores Chinese poetic modernism in all its facets, from its origins in the 1920s through 21st century manifestations. Modernisms in the plural reflects the complexity of the ideas and forms which can be associated with this literary-historical term. The volume’s contributors take a variety of focus points, from literary groups such as “9 Leaves” or “Bamboo Hat,” to individuals such as modernist sonneteer Feng Zhi 冯至, or Taiwan experimentalist Xia Yu 夏宇 (Hsia Yü), and Hong Kong modernist Leung Ping-kwan 梁秉钧, to non-biographically oriented chapters concerning modernist language, poetry and visual art, among other issues. Collectively, the volume endeavors to present as complete a picture of modernist practice in Chinese poetry as possible.
The Writing of Fiction in the Great Transformative Epoch of Modern China, 1937-1949
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In Contending for the "Chinese Modern", Xiaoping Wang studies the writing of fiction in 1940s China. Through a practice of political hermeneutics of fictional texts and social subtexts, it explores how social modernity and literary modernity intertwined with and interacted upon each other in the development of modern Chinese literature. It not only makes critical reappraisement of some renowned modern Chinese writers, but also sheds fresh lights on a series of theoretical problems pertaining to the issue of plural modernities, in which the problematic of subjectivity, class consciousness and identity politics are the key words as well as the concrete procedures that it employs to undertake the ideological analysis. The manuscript signifies a new paradigm in studies of modern Chinese literature.
Ideas and History in China’s "Independent Cinema", 1988-2008
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In Postsocialist Conditions: Idea and History in China’s “Independent Cinema,” 1988-2008, WANG Xiaoping offers a comprehensive survey and trenchant critique of China’s “Independent Cinema” by the sixth-generation auteurs. By showing the multi-valence of the postsocialist conditions in contemporary Chinese society, their films articulate a new cultural-political logic in postsocialist China, which is also the logic of the market in this era of neoliberal transformation, brought about by the forces of marketization since the late 1980s. The directors laudably show the spirits of humanism and the humanitarian concerns of the underclass, yet the shortage and repudiation of class analysis prohibits the artists from exploring the social contradictions and the cause of class restructuration.
Poetry, Translation, Chineseness
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What makes a Chinese poem “Chinese”? Some call modern Chinese poetry insufficiently Chinese, saying it is so influenced by foreign texts that it has lost the essence of Chinese culture as known in premodern poetry. Yet that argument overlooks how premodern regulated verse was itself created in imitation of foreign poetics. Looking at Bian Zhilin and Yang Lian in the twentieth century alongside medieval Chinese poets such as Wang Wei, Du Fu, and Li Shangyin, The Organization of Distance applies the notions of foreignization and nativization to Chinese poetry to argue that the impression of poetic Chineseness has long been a product of translation, from forces both abroad and in the past.

Mao Dun's Early Novels and Chinese Literary Modernity
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Editor / Translator:
In Revolution and Form, Jianhua Chen offers a detailed analysis of several early works by Mao Dun, focusing in particular on their engagement with themes of modernity and revolution, gender and desire. One of the leading authors of the early twentieth century May Fourth period, Mao Dun had a complicated relationship with both the Communist Party and the women’s liberation movement, and his fictional works reflect these twin concerns with revolution and gender. Chen’s study examines Mao Dun’s early fiction in relationship to the biographical and historical conditions under which it was produced.

Translated by Max Bohnenkamp, Todd Foley, FU Poshek, Nga Li LAM, LI Meng, and Carlos Rojas.