NCL invited Prof. Hsiang-Yin Sasha
Chen to speech on “Rearticulations of Foreign Literature Studies in Taiwan:
Anti-Romanticism and the Translation of Subjectivity” in the collaboration with
the Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences on
November 9, 2021, at 5 pm (Taiwan time).
Prof. Hsiang-Yin Sasha Chen is an Associate
Research Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia
Sinica. Her research targets Russian-Soviet and Chinese culture in the
twentieth century, with a particular emphasis on literature and cinema.
The lecture was held online with the opening by Dr. Ágnes Kelecsényi and
moderated by
Kornélia Major. At the beginning of the talk, Prof.
Chen investigated the theme of "Learning from Russia" during the May
Fourth period, with a specific reference to the crazed, possessed and
superfluous characters in the prose of
Lu Xun. She examined the association between the theme of madness and the
consciousness of darkness in the works of Nicolai Gogol (1809-1852) and Lu Xun
(1881-1936), showing how the two writers inherit Russian literary legacy and
Chinese “little tradition” of the dark world, respectively. A comparative
analysis of Gogol’s Evenings on a Farm
near Dikanka and Pu Songling’s story collection Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio demonstrates not only a Chinese
modernity acquired from Russia, as many scholars have done, but also the
Russian Eurasian mentality resembling Chinese transcultural characteristics.
Similarities in the two works account for Lu’s admiration and appreciation for
Gogol and motivate both writers to create the image of madness through
absorbing the imagination of the strange and of others, which originated
correspondingly from Ukrainian folklore and Chinese “little tradition”.