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1、Chapter 19. Literature and Popular Culture,Of all literary systems known in history the classical Chinese system has been able to resist change the longest, precisely because undifferentiated patronage limited both the producers and the readers of literature to a relatively small coterie dominated b
2、y the court and the mandarins, and also because it could impose its ideology and its poetics by making them a (sizable) part of the requirements to be met by those who wanted to belong to that coterie.,Andr Lefevere: Translation, Rewriting & Manipulation of Literary Fame,Even those who never passed
3、the imperial examinations, eking out a meager living as recluses or vagabonds, continued to write in terms of the dominant ideology and the dominant poetics because they had to rely, at least to a certain extent, on the charity of their former classmates or other mandarins glad to be able to enjoy t
4、he company of cultured gentlemen (even though their appearance might ostensibly belie that fact) while sitting out their stints in remote provinces.,Andr Lefevere: Translation, Rewriting & Manipulation of Literary Fame,This state of affairs could - and did - continue only as long as the environment
5、was itself relatively homogeneous and secure. The literary system kept producing works of literature in a language no longer spoken by the majority of the population and with little or no bearing on what was actually happening in the environment.,Andr Lefevere: Translation, Rewriting & Manipulation
6、of Literary Fame,当那个环境受到外部的压力日益增加时，而且，当新生的群体，例如，在那个环境内部滋生出来的新生资产阶级，能够提供替代保护时，文学体系受到内部大量改写（即西方文学翻译）的颠覆，会很快跨掉。大量借助日语的媒介提供新感觉，成为中国文学现代化的一个模式。,Chinese literary themes,Chinese literary themes are universallove, bravery, murder and intrigue, drunken reverie, jealousy, adultery, war, heroic men and women,
7、moral uprightness, physical prowess and so on. They provide a lively and entertaining way to learn more about China.,Chapter 19. Literature and Popular Culture,Chinese thinkers & writers often challenge an age-old distinction between elite and popular culture, between the civilized and the “vulgar.”
8、 Some of Chinas most exciting new writers, like Wang Shuo in Beijing or 李碧华 who wrote the novel behind the Academy Award-winning film Farewell my Concubine霸王别姬, attract attention precisely because they blur or even demolish this distinction, mixing the sublime with the ridiculous until they become a
9、lmost impossible to distinguish.,张国荣: ON BOTH SIDES OF LOVE: LIFE & DEATH,Chapter 19. Literature and Popular Culture,Today we associate popular culture with mass media, advertising, and technology. To bring Chinese popular culture into focus, though, we must highlight the ways tradition lives and br
10、eathes in the contemporary imagination. Popular culture has always been the driving force, stimulus for change, and source of variety for Chinese literature. Fathoming just how much writing has been produced in China over the past 3,000 years is somewhat like imagining the distance to the nearest ga
11、laxy 银河.,Chapter 19. Literature and Popular Culture,That literature embodies seething, wrangling cultural diversity. Confucianism dominated, but many other traditions came into play as well. Over the long course of Chinese cultural history, writers and artists distilled into writing, visual arts, an
12、d drama a vast multiplicity of entertainment, religious, and everyday social practices.,Chapter 19. Literature and Popular Culture,It is true that almost all we know about popular culture in ancient and early modern China comes through the prism of the writings and art of the literate elite, who cap
13、ture only part of the richness of creative popular expression in their times. Nevertheless, looking through this prism, we can reconstruct the rich and diverse cultural panorama lying behind it.,WRITING: THE HUMAN PATTERN,It is often thought that the Chinese language is totally different from other
14、languages because of its tonality (often misunderstood as “musicality”) and its pictorial elements. Such notions, though inaccurate, were an important inspiration for modernism (particularly Imagism) in English and French poetry.,WRITING: THE HUMAN PATTERN,The Chinese writing system lends itself to
15、such theories because its characters look a bit like pictures, but by the time the earliest Chinese texts were written, the pictures in Chinese characters had long since ceased to be the primary means through which meaning was conveyed.,WRITING: THE HUMAN PATTERN,Still, the fact that written Chinese
16、 did not develop into a phonetic system like the Greek and Roman alphabets had far-reaching implications for literacy and literary expression. Because written Chinese involved learning tens of thousands of distinct characters, it was very hard to learn to read and write even in the earliest timesso
17、hard, in fact, that the few who were able to manage it remained a small and closely knit group throughout the centuries.,WRITING: THE HUMAN PATTERN,Indeed, the “literati” can almost be equated with the ruling class insofar as literacy was the sole avenue to power and responsibility. The written language was their stock in trade, and it made them socially indispensable.,
