Research Article
A Keyword in Western Literary Theory: Text
Issue:
Volume 12, Issue 1, February 2024
Pages:
1-7
Received:
27 November 2023
Accepted:
23 December 2023
Published:
8 January 2024
Abstract: We hope to describe and explain the origin of the concept of "text" in Europe, as well as its significant impact in China. The replacement of the concept of work by the concept of text is the most important conceptual event in literary theory discourse after World War II. The word “text,” common in Western languages, and “work” constitute a pair of interrelated concepts, the former referring to the objective, material dimension of literature, and the latter pointing to its subjective, value-based, and spiritual dimensions. This seemingly taken-for-granted opposition and hierarchical division was strongly challenged in the 1960s and 1970s: on the one hand, structuralist literary theory demanded the “scientificity” of literary research, and therefore put aside the "work", which was colored by subjective values, and shifted its focus to the study of the objective laws of the literary text. On the other hand, although the French theory after the rise of post-structuralism inherited the theoretical method of structuralism, it denied the pursuit of scientificity in literary research. Barthes, Kristeva, and Derrida, among others, turn to the practice of the text, which has regained its value, except that the value of the text, contrary to the value of the work, manifests itself in the subversion of value itself. This is a paradox in itself: the value of the text is a subversion of value in the sense of an uninterrupted subversion of significance. The word “text” was translated into Chinese as wen ben from 1980s, and became a keyword in Chinese literary theory and critics. The introduction of this word produced some new conceptions of literature, but on the other hand it brought about some misunderstandings, since there is not the opposition of text and works in Chinese.
Abstract: We hope to describe and explain the origin of the concept of "text" in Europe, as well as its significant impact in China. The replacement of the concept of work by the concept of text is the most important conceptual event in literary theory discourse after World War II. The word “text,” common in Western languages, and “work” constitute a pair of...
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Research Article
Spiritual Disorientation: A Study of Place in Linda Hogan’s Solar Storms from the Perspective of Human Geography
Issue:
Volume 12, Issue 1, February 2024
Pages:
8-15
Received:
16 January 2024
Accepted:
31 January 2024
Published:
20 February 2024
Abstract: Linda Hogan is a Chickasaw writer grown up in the Native American Renaissance, who feels much obliged to figure out an effective way of guiding the colonized native people out of ecocide and ethnocide wrought by the Euro-American colonization. As an author wholly drenched in the indigenous cosmology, Hogan bestows great concern on the issue of place in the literary creation, which is a pivotal cosmological element in the native epistemological system and thus can be taken as a means for her to decolonize her people. This paper is to investigate the issue of colonization and decolonization through the lens of place in the register of human geography by exploring the spiritual disorientation attributed to land loss represented in her novel Solar Storms (1995). Based on detailed textual analysis, it is unfolded that the spiritual disorientation in the Indian community has been overtly embodied in two aspects: native men’s alcoholism and their conceding to white masculinity, and child abuse conducted by women for their suffering from intergenerational trauma, which truly represents the mental or psychological crisis of indigenous peoples triggered by and attendant to the land loss. In conclusion, the decolonizing process in Hogan’s fiction necessitates reviewing the horrible outcome of the native people’s land loss history so as to enhance their recognition of the communal place, stimulate their sense of community and develop new sites and strategies of resistance.
Abstract: Linda Hogan is a Chickasaw writer grown up in the Native American Renaissance, who feels much obliged to figure out an effective way of guiding the colonized native people out of ecocide and ethnocide wrought by the Euro-American colonization. As an author wholly drenched in the indigenous cosmology, Hogan bestows great concern on the issue of plac...
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