Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Imagination of China'

Judith Gautier caresse un vif intérêt pour les temps anciens et le monde inconnu. Parmi toutes les contrées lointaines, c’est en Chine qu’elle conçoit son rêve le plus charmant et son monde intime le plus merveilleux. La Chine dans son ensemble la séduit, répondant à la fois à sa curiosité envers l’Antiquité et à son désir de décrypter des documents indéchiffrables. C’est de là qu’elle a tiré ses meilleures inspirations pour ses créations littéraires. Basée sur les écrits de Judith Gautier sur la Chine, d’une part, et sur leurs sources d’inspiration, d’autre part, notre thèse projette d’examiner les spécificités rêvées de la Chine de l’écrivaine, de mesurer la distance entre son art imaginatif et la situation réelle de ce pays et de repérer les éventuels facteurs ayant contribué à la formation de son style. Les œuvres de Judith Gautier constituent un grand terrain d’exploitation, dont l’intérêt de la recherche est caractérisé par sa fécondité, présentant une quantité considérable de sujets à découvrir, par son érudition, qui englobe une large dimension culturelle de l’Orient à l’Occident, ainsi que par sa préférence de la liberté, qui entraîne des choix arbitraires quant aux traductions et aux adaptations. La découverte de la vie et des œuvres de Judith Gautier est un voyage formidable, où sont manifestés des idées inédites, des images inconnues et des horizons nouveaux et insolites
Judith Gautier takes a keen interest in the ancient times and the unknown world. Among all the distant lands, it is in China that she conceives her most charming dream and her most wonderful intimate world. China as a whole seduces her, responding to her curiosity towards antiquity and her desire to decipher indecipherable documents. The culture of this country gives Judith Gautier a lot of inspirations for her literary creations. Our thesis plans to research the characteristics of Judith Gautier’s fantasy vision of China and measure the distance between her imaginative art and the actual situation of this country. We plan to find the possible factors that contributed to the formation of her style and the sources which gave her inspirations. The works of Judith Gautier constitute a large field to be explored. They present a considerable number of subjects to be discovered thanks to the fertility of the author and encompass a large cultural dimension from the East to the West. Besides, Judith Gautier’s preference for the freedom leads to her arbitrary choices of translations and adaptations. The discovery of her life and her works is a wonderful journey, where new ideas and unknown images are revealed

The intent of this thesis is to analyse both the characteristics of the participation of women in war and the social and ideological context in which the imagery of the armed woman proved useful in two distinct cultures which produced an inordinate number of historical and fictional women warriors. Specifically, it is intended to test the following three hypotheses which arise from an analysis of the secondary literature in this field in the context of the societies of seventeenth and eighteenth century France and Imperial China: 1. That women were generally excluded from military combat and leadership roles. This exclusion was the result of gender and not biological constraints. 2. That some women in history were able to modify the masculine/ military equation. This was based on one or more of three factors: rank, religion, rebellion/revolution. 3. That the images of women warriors in imaginative literature and art did not reflect the actual scope or nature of women's participation in war. Rather, they reflected and reinforced attitudes towards ideal social and sexual hierarchies and behaviours. The present study examines the subject of women and war within a more limited cultural and historical framework than that which is usually employed in this field. While significant variations are discovered in the analysis of Chinese and French history and culture, the finding is that these three hypotheses prove to be correct. This is not to suggest that the two cultures were the same. Rather, it suggests that within two very different social hierarchies, there were comparable sexual hierarchies which were underlined and reinforced by similar ideals in respect to the division of labour and to the appropriate behaviour which accompanies this division.
Arts, Faculty of
History, Department of
Graduate

Tout au long de notre thèse, nous avons montré qu'il y a une renaissance de la pensée imaginative sous forme tout à fait nouvelle dans la situation actuelle, et que cette pensée imaginative, qui n'est ni simplement une faculté ou une fonction de la pensée, ni un moment de mentalité historiquement dépasse, est un état ou un mode de pensée, existant parallèlement avec la pensée abstraite. Ainsi, l'innovation de la perspective est considérable : d'une part, dire que la pensée imaginative est une méthode indépendante de la connaissance, c'est rejeter le préjugé selon lequel la pensée imaginative est seulement une faculté psychologique, elle n'intervient que dans un petit moment du processus cognitif; d'autre part, c'est rejeter ainsi un autre préjugé selon lequel la pensée imaginative est le commencement de la conscience, liée inévitablement à la mentalité primitive, absolument inferieure a la pensée civilisée ou au dehors de la conscience rationnelle. La nouvelle théorie de l'imagination s'est fondée sur la nouvelle conception de l'image qui est à la charnière de l'absence et de la présence, à la fois actuelle et virtuelle. Les deux modes d'existence de l'image se réunissent dans un circuit ou le réel et l'imaginaire courent l'un derrière l'autre, échangent leur rôle pour découvrir les couches de plus en plus profondes de la réalité. De Descartes à Kant, de Husserl a Bachelard, nous avons démontré que les ruptures conceptuelles sont les mêmes lieux privilégies ou se noue leur réflexion, ou se cache le temps continu. Dans le développement de la pensée imaginative, la continuité et la discontinuité, la nécessité et le hasard sont tout à fait complémentaires.

La Fête du Printemps (la fête du Nouvel An du calendrier agricole, soit le premier jour de la première lune) est une fête à la fois politique et populaire. Elle est également une fête aux nombreuses connotations. Elle comprend tout d’abord des pratiques et des symboles hérités du passé et encore célébrés aujourd’hui en Chine. Le pouvoir politique de chaque époque s’est évertué à façonner l’imaginaire de cette fête, à travers notamment l’invention et la réinvention de nouvelles « traditions ». En perpétuelle évolution, cette fête est marquée non seulement par des phénomènes d’accumulation et de sucession de pratiques et d’imaginaires, mais aussi par une double tâche, celle de la destruction de l’« ancien » et de la création du « nouveau ». Cette étude se propose de traiter des mutations politiques et sémiotiques de la Fête du Printemps au cours du long XXe siècle en Chine : le débat autour de la Fête du Printemps et du calendrier agricole à l’époque de la République de Chine (1912-1949), la propagande politique et idéologique de la Fête du Printemps du PCC à l’époque de Mao (1949-1978) et le processus de nationalisation de cette fête de l’époque de Deng Xiaoping 邓小平 (1904-1997) à celle de Xi Jinping习近平 (1953-)
The Spring Festival (the Chinese New Year's Day of the agricultural calendar, the first day of the first moon) is a party both political and popular. It is also a festival with many connotations, filled first by the practices and symbols inherited from the past and applied in the Chinese mass of today and then imagined by the power of each era by inventing and reinventing new “traditions” typically political. It is finally an evolving party, marked not only by a sort of accumulation and succession, but also by a double task as the destruction of "old" and creation of "new". This study deals with political and semiotic transformation of the Spring Festival during the long twentieth century in China: the debate around the Spring Festival and the agricultural calendar at the time of the Republic of China (1912-1949), the political and ideological propaganda of the CCP's Spring Festival at the time of Mao (1949-1978) and a process of nationalization of this feast of the time of Deng Xiaoping邓小平 (1904-1997) to that of Xi Jinping习近平 (1953-)

碩士
元智大學
中國語文學系
98
Yang Liang can be named as the main poet of The New Period Literature; his poems not only like a river that can reflect the changes of The New Period Literature, but also show the culture at sight exactly. In modern China, the 1980s bears the heavy weight of reflection on cultural revolution and the construction of new cultural/ literary subjectivity. The proper making of the poem is a form of right action and a part of the religious duty of the poet, so Yang’s poems are continually concerned with the right words as well as the poet’s spiritual journey in the muddy world.Yang’s abundant life experiences have so much to do with his literature performance, and thus succeed in achieving a rich fusion of Oriental and Occidental wisdom. The theme of this essay is to survey the “root-seeking” revealed in Yang Liang’s poems, based on his writing timeline in two phases. Finally, tries to apply Yang''s poetics upon his poems; so as to indicate Yang’s status in the history of literature.

碩士
國立臺北教育大學
國民教育學系碩士班
101
The aim of this study is to develop an assessment project for future imagination combined with the four facets of future imagination and the principle of performance. It also involves the scaffolding facilitation by idea-objects, group brainstorming, inspiring cards for imagination, peer feedback and self-reflection. The participants consisted of 34 eighth-grade students. The assessment project, which infusing in the course of geography in social studies learning area, "Chapter III - Western China", takes“ Western China in 2030” as the topic, aiming to evaluate students’ geography and future imagination abilities. Results of tasks are assessdby the rubrics of the future imagination criteria. The final performance and the developing were both assessed. For validating the project, the imagination test, imagination dispositions scale, consensual assessment and the periodical tests of geography will be used to be criteria of concurrent validity. The inter-rater reliability was examined, too. The results of this study were summarized as follows. I. Development of the Assessment Project for Future Imagination 1. The assessment project can effectively assess students' future imagination and geography abilities. 2. The assessment project was significantly associated with the periodical tests of geography, indicating the assessment project can effectively evaluate students' academic ability of geography. II. The Reliability and Validity of this Assessment Project 1.The task and the assessment rubrics of the project were strongly supported by expertise validity, and the students' work in four facets and the final performance were significantly correlated, validating the construct validity of the assessment project. 2.The concurrent validity was statistically significant between the project and the results of consensual assessment, the imagination test, imagination dispositionsscale, and the periodical tests of geography. 3. The inter-rater reliability of assessment the project was high. Regarding the research results , suggestions about practice and future research were discussed.

碩士
國立臺灣大學
中國文學研究所
105
With the keywords "sound" and "wen", this thesis aims at exploring the relation between classical and modern literature by re-examining the discussions around yan (speaking) and wen (writing). I take three groups of figures from Late Qing to Early Republican China as examples to illustrate how the heritage of Six Dynasties literature was used to redefine the essence of wen and participated in the construction and transformation of Chinese literature in Late Qing and Early Republican China. The second chapter explores two kinds of interpretation about Six Dynasties literature in Late Qing, by which I prove that there were two distinct perspectives of sound in Late Qing. For one thing, Ruan Yuan extended Dai Zhen''s theory of sound in Phonology to literary criticism and took rhythm as the essence of literature; therefore, he set pianwen (rhythmical prose) of Six Dynasties as the paradigm of literature. For another, with the Confucian view of sound which emphasizes that sounds in literary works can reflect and influence political condition, Late Qing literati represented by Zhang Zhidong attributed the decline of Qing to the prevalence of Six-Dynasties-style poems. However, Shen Zengzhi, a Late Qing poet, raised the theory “Huo Liuchao” (literaly, living Six Dynasties) to appreciate the achievement in literature and philosophy in Six Dynasties, which redetermined the value of Six Dynasties literature beyond those oppositions. The third chapter focuses on the literary theories of Zhang Taiyan, Liu Shipei, and Huang Kan. As scholars of Wan, they inherited the tradition of Philology and Phonology studies in Qing Dynasty. But different from their progenitors, they combined traditional studies of sound and text with Western positive linguistics, and in the meantime responded to the demand of unifying speaking and writing by re-interpreting the literary theories in Six Dynasties, especially Wen Xin Diao Long. Their discussions laid a theoretical foundation for transforming Chinese literature. The final chapter mainly discusses how Lu Xun creatively transformed Zhang Taiyan and Liu Shipei’s theories of wen (text and literature). His idea of “xinsheng” (sound of heart) is a combination of Six-Dynasties literary concepts, European Romanticism and Nietzsche’s idea of Übermensch. And the “sound of heart” should also be understood with the double meanings of Weijin fengdu (Wei-Jin Demeanor) –Shixin Shiqi (Following the heart) and Yiner bu xian (Concealing the heart) –which resonates with Lu Xun''s acute sense of pain and nothingness when he faced the cruel political reality and the collapse of the revolutionary ideal. Therefore, he integrated the Six-Dynasties’ tradition of Shangshi (Mourning for the dead) into his writings, and began a new important tradition in modern Chinese literature.

博士
國立中正大學
中國文學研究所
107
1949 was an important time limit. The civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party is actually an extension of the power of the two cold camps of the world. The government of the ROC lost its power and migrated to Taiwan.Based on the Korean War, ROC regained the attention of the United States and the started its glory days. In geopolitics and international diplomacy, ROC becoming the core of the anti-communist defensive line , and the orthodox representative of China. In terms of culture and emotion, it is the motherland and emotion of Chinese people at home and abroad. It’s even has the Laurel of Chinese culture and literature. In this background, the study of Taiwanese poetry publication after the war was very interesting. Especially the "Art of China" (1955-1967), it actively operating overseas markets and literati communities since its inception. Poetry publishes works by poets at home and abroad ,in addition to providing a cross-border communication platform, it’s also observe the political and cultural discourse of official nationalism at the time. It’s an important prism of viewing the “Chinese community” construction. Without official spportting on policy and funds, Art of China created by the people. But recruiting political parties to hold important positions, between poet creation and respond, it absorbed the dispora China Literati, Taiwan Local Poet, and Overseas Chinese, constructed an “Chinese community”. My research based on three perspectives: “Chinese community”, Field, and diaspora, to study the reflection of “Chinese community” imagination and practice, from Art of China. And conduct research structures based on the definition of “people, territory, government, sovereignty” in the most common countries. Firstly, deal with the development and evolution of the Art of China, followed by the political discourse of the community / the motherland and the territory, community's cultural memory / festivals and poetry activities, and then the people of the community / from the imagination to the actual compatriots. At last,concluding and construction the significance of the era of Art of China.

博士
國立臺灣大學
歷史學研究所
106
What does it mean to produce ‘a knowledge that is capable of representing China''s economy as a whole’? This type of knowledge has not appeared before, but became focus of attentions in the 20th century. Taking this as a starting point, this dissertation explores an important change of the governmentality in modern China: the goverment tried to regulate private economic activities directly. In this dissertation, I would like to discuss the process of this change and its historical meaning, based on the production of the economic knowledge at that time, and the confusions, thoughts and prospects left by the people working in the forefront. As the historical documents indicate, ‘China''s national economy’ was not an already existing entity, but a sphere constructed by the interactions between the government and private economic activities since the last years of the Qing Dynasty. Surrounding this sphere, a series of knowledge productions, institutional arrangements, and political engineerings with new imaginations of state emerged together. In the late imperial China, the government did not regulate private economic activities directly. The bridges between the two sides were various informal institutions and middlemen, such as local gentries, petty officials, monopoly merchants, and brokers of marketplace. This system enabled the government to rule a large empire with a small bureaucracy. Facing the social changes brought by commercial developments since the 16th century, this system kept the order of society by implementing according to local conditions. In the 19th century, the internal and external crises increased the amount of informal institutions as well as the financial demands. From the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, the Chinese government and the private economic activities were getting closer and closer. As the result, the gray area of this system of governance also expanded and went out of control. The impact of the world system of trade also aggravated the deterioration of this system of governance. At the intersection of these two changes, a new governmentality emerged. Since then, the fiscal principle had changed from arranging the expenditure according to the income, to arranging the income according to the expenditure. The aim of politics had changed from doing nothing but removing drawbacks, to improving developments. And from indirect governance, to a direct and full scale one. This process released tremendous energy and caused tremendous chaos, engulfing all the people into this whirlpool Henceforward, economic activities in China began to be considered as a whole. Knowledge, institutional arrangements and power relations about the economic activities had developed gradually in order to grasp this sphere full of energy and chaos. There were two opposite but dependent tendencies in this process. The first one made a strong top-down mechanism of the administrative control, while the second one regulated the economic activities by the rules of the economic sphere through knowledge surveys. This sphere attracts people of all positions. Some sought to seize and interpret the facts, some sought their own interests, and some sought the blueprint for a public sphere. In the period of the Republic of China, the government lacked strong administrative capacity and private economic activities lacked tight organization. These two situations made financial officials and social scientists confused. "There is nothing called economy in China as its definition in the West." They found out what they studied from the West were not useful in China. This confusion, however, urged them to go beyond the border of the economic knowledge originated from the West and to think about the true nature of ‘China''s national economy.’ Since the beginning of the financial liquidation in the late Qing Dynasty, people in the forefront found out the disorder of the private economic organizations and the need for government intervention, but also became concerned of the failure of the arbitrariness of the government. "Which type of governance is effective?" Between the dangers of dictatorship and disorder, they asked this question. They tried to produce a set of knowledge based on the economic activities, in order to draw the line between intervention and non-intervention. They tried to establish an institutional arrangement to include both government and people, drawing them to support and constrain each other at the same time. The effort to produce knowledge for effectively governing this unconstructed political-economic sphere reached its peak between the late 1920s and 1940s. In the crisis of the Great Depression and the ensuing wars, people worked hard under the goal of rationalizing the organizations of China''s national economy. From the liberalism to the Marxism, from the fieldwork to the aggregate analysis, economic theories and knowledge tools from the historical experiences in Western Europe were transformed in order to recognize and respond to the reality of China. Through these works, they created things based on the economic logic, and at the same time discovered the things that didn’t fit into the theories. They had gradually realized the distance between the economic knowledge and the reality, thus found out the political nature of the social science. Due to the civil war and the inflation, the government and the private economic activities were growing closer than before at the end of the 1940s. Following the state-building process, the top-down administrative control had been strengthened. However, contrary to its intention, this development worsened the economic disorder. Under this situation, many Chinese intellectuals were attracted by the idea of radicalization, but some chose the other direction, hoping to answer the difficulty of the reality with a holistic knowledge. The dilemma between dictatorship and disorder was worsening day by day. Facing this sphere harassed by chaos of politics, economy and ethics, the intellectuals proposed a new blueprint of humanities and social sciences, in which they started from public discussion of the macro-economic knowledge, then go on to ask "what is a reasonable intervention?" then reflected the results of the discussions on "what is a good state?" Some scholars went even further to discuss the governmentality of economy beyond the economic sphere. By retrospecting the system of governance of the imperial China, they took a holistic view to find the organic links in hope of reconstructing the out-of-order China. Inspecting China''s economic modernization in a historical view, they realized that these organizations and institutions that made up the economic sphere were not merely the products of economic sphere itself, but also the results of the social and cultural practices. They noticed that the coordination of numerous middlemen in the past could not be superseded by the administration of the government itself, nor could the operation of the market alone. Effective economic reconstruction and governance, therefore, require the production of a public knowledge, in which all the economic actors participate. That is, as the object of this sphere, they should also become the subject of it. After 1949, this sphere was answered by the single voice of Chinese Communist Party-state. The production of the holistic knowledge and the construction of its public imagination were abruptly halted. However, this is not just a story of a transitional period. With the most powerful administrative machine in the history of modern China, the authorities found out that there are always unseen economic elements that can not be regulated under planned economy. The distance between the government planning and the operation of the reality cannot be resolved by revolution. The result was quite different than what Marxist economics thought. When the production of economic knowledge was completely under the control of the government and the public discussion disappeared, the government found that itself had to face the problems of human relations outside of the economic factors. When calculating the inherent rationality of a socialist economy, the government had to ask itself "what is a state?" and "what is economy?" after all. Eventually, these questions were replied with the establishment of the market economy in 1980s. Today, both government capabilities and economic organizations are stronger in China, and it seems as though ‘China''s national economy’ has become an entity. However, things which could not be included in the knowledge produced by the state-building and economic formation have not disappear. They are still hovering in the darkness, asking and waiting for answers. The birth of ‘China''s national economy’ has not yet been completed, and the echoes of the production of economic knowledge and imagination of public discussion in 1940s still linger in our ears.

碩士
國立中興大學
中國文學系所
104
Abstract As an increasing number of female figure sculptures were unearthed, one after another, in various regions of the world, the subject of goddesses in mythology has begun to gain unprecedented attention, and has ignited a heated debate in academic communities. The figures’ protruding breasts and the exaggerated shapes of their private parts, abdomens and hips all indicate the “importance of reproduction and nutrition” as proposed by Bronislaw Malinowski (1884 -1942). In those primeval times of fierce competition, the continuation of groups/species was of great importance. This study explores this concept, centering on the discussion of protruding, rounded abdomens and many other relevant symbols. The concrete symbols include containers, gourds, frogs and “the cosmic eggs”; the abstract ideas include chaos, the great circle, the atmosphere, darkness and paradise. The study aims to examine the origin of breeding, the development of myths leading to philosophy, on the basis of diverse information, such as traditional literature, cultural relics, paintings and statues, and folk customs and rites. The key points of this study are as follows: First, by revisiting the age ruled by Mother Goddess figures, we reexamined the sacredness of a mother’s body. Secondly, we explored the implications of a number of things that resemble the female abdomen (or the womb), such as a gourd, an egg, a frog and Nuwa (a Chinese goddess) through analogical thinking, and then discussed the divinity of Nuwa with her dexterity in the creation of life and the world. Thirdly, we clarified all related concepts of world creation surrounding the concept of “chaos”, including water, air and darkness, anarchy and circle that are most frequently referred to in mythologies and philosophical works. Fourth, we compared the notion of “eternal regeneration” mentioned in the Iliad with those metaphysical ideas of an eternal cycle proposed by Taoism, including chaos, the pristine state and wholeness. All of these suggest that the “womb” plays a crucial role in the imagination about the myths and a paradise that once existed. To sum up, the mother’s body, especially the abdomen (or the womb), can be ubiquitously found in the images created by various peoples on earth and the texts written since ancient times till today. The hidden terms, symbols and signs can be discovered in many discourses from religion, myths, philosophy and history to literary works, thus rendering its archetypal power in human history.

碩士
國立臺灣大學
中國文學研究所
100
As a geographical literature, Shan Hai Ching describes and records the landscape and scenery of the world, as well as the relevant local living things by itemizing its descriptions. At the first glance, it looks confused, disordered and ill-systematized. Moreover, its authors and the time it was written was left unknown. Thus, the lack of the relevant information about its creation makes it impossible to clarify the intention of the authors. This study aims to specify the spatial characteristics of this mythological world, as well as the order of the thought involved, by observing the ill-organized descriptions in Shan Hai Ching. 　　Four main topics are discussed in the current study: the creation of the imaginary space, the philosophy of life and death, the conception of categorization, and the foreigners from afar in Shan Hai Ching. By a thorough study of the four topics, it emerged that though Shan Hai Ching seems like fantastic myth, it in fact illustrates the ideal world which the authors attempted to create. By the clear illustration of the order of the space and all things in the world, the authors of Shan Hai Ching created stable and tranquil sacred areas within and abroad. These areas may be in either Central Plains or the end of the world. Different modes of spatial divinization apply to different areas according to the distance. The purpose of spatial divinization is to wipe away chaos and transform the whole world into a holy “common place”. The characters and things in Shan Hai Ching are closely related to the features of the spaces they exist. For example, on the one hand, the Shan Ching, which contains both common and uncanny spatial features, is composed of descriptions of both common and uncommon characters and things. On the other hand, the Hai Ching, which contains unusual spatial features, is composed of descriptions of aliens with strange appearance who live far away. Furthermore, the categorization of the characters and things in Shan Hai Ching also implies the well-ordered world view of the book. In sum, based on the descriptions of the real world, Shan Hai Ching is a literature in which a fictitious ideal world is built and orderized with the authors’ imagination.

This project explores Japan’s complex literary and cultural negotiation with China from the twelfth through the sixteenth centuries, focusing on the role of intermediary texts (dictionaries, encyclopedias, and commentaries) and the different modes of receiving and constructing Chinese culture depending on historical periods and scholarly lineages. As the larger process by which Chinese history and literature became part of the Japanese literary culture has long been studied on the assumption that there is direct textual continuity between Japanese texts (in literary Sinitic) and Chinese continental texts, the tracking down of citations, allusion, and references to Chinese source texts has commanded great scholarly attention. Yet this assumption obscures other, equally important histories – such as a popular understanding of Chinese culture, or a conceptual perception of Chinese culture, that was NOT based on direct textual continuity – that lies at the heart of this project. The introduction outlines three modes of receiving and constructing Chinese literary culture in pre-modern japan. One was the text-based, canonical view of Chinese history and literature, which relied almost exclusively on texts and genres that were canonized in the Nara and Heian periods state university (daigakuryō) – Confucian classics, Chinese official dynastic histories, and Chinese poetry. In contrast with it was a more popular, name-based understanding of Chinese culture that emerged from various intermediary genres (such as anecdotal literature, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and commentaries) both in China and in Japan. This mode of reception and construction was not based on texts so much as on what I call “cultural signs” (particularly Chinese names, well-known anecdotes, and visual cues) and required no knowledge of the original literary Sinitic. Third was a conceptual, term-based perception, manifested in such concepts as “loyalty” and “filial piety.” Written in the same kanji characters, these terms served as common threads linking Chinese and Japanese literary writings on the one hand, but also took on new meanings and associations in the Japanese cultural imagination. Chapter 1 outlines the importation of Chinese books and manuscripts in relation to the center of scholarship and the main intellectual groups up until the twelfth century. Drawing on evidence from commentaries on the Wakan rōeishū (The Collection of Japanese and Chinese Poems for Recitation, 1013) and from The Tales of China (Kara monogatari, late Heian period) on the themes of exile and loyalty, I discuss the rising interests in referencing anecdotal literature and compiling intermediaries (dictionaries, encyclopedias, and commentaries) in the twelfth century that eventually contributed to the formation of a more popular, name-based understanding of Chinese history and literature. Chapter 2 investigates the Japanese medieval interpretations of Chinese official histories (“Chūsei Shiki”), which features a tension and negotiation between the canonical and the non-canonical texts and gravitates towards recurring themes, character types, and core values. In particular, I look into the themes of wisdom, virtue, loyalty, and filial piety in A Miscellany of Ten Maxims (Jikkinshō, 1252) and The Tales of the Heike (Heike monogatari, ca. 1308-1311), which were largely constructed from a relatively more classical, Tang-based perspective, in despite of the fact that Chinese Song dynasty culture had already been imported to Japan along with the introduction of Chinese Chan (J. Zen) Buddhism in the thirteenth through fourteenth centuries. In Chapter 3, I examine the Taiheiki (A Chronicle of Great Peace, 1340s-1371), a unique text that acts as a nexus for many themes of this project. Analyzing the use of Chinese tales, maxims and proverbs, and poetry in relation to the themes of loyalty, wisdom, righteousness, and filial piety, I show that, unlike The Tales of the Heike, the Taiheiki revealed a thriving concern with the Song culture, which involved new editions, new commentaries, and new poetic theory. I also show that a conceptual, term-based perception of Chinese culture was taking shape. Chapter 4 explores the suddenly intensified scholarly exchange among different intellectual groups – the Zen monks, the Shintō priests, warriors, and court aristocrats – in the fifteenth through sixteenth centuries. Tracing the threads of new books and new theories in Kiyohara Nobukata’s lecture notes on the Mōgyū (Inquiry of the Youth), The Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars, and the picture scroll (emaki) of the Xianyang Palace, I discuss the expansion of knowledge and audience from priests and aristocrats to influential military families and wealthy commoners in late medieval Japan, the formation of new imaginations regarding Chinese history and literature, and the final transition from a pro-Tang prospective to a Song-centered understanding of China. In conclusion, I argue for the literary and cultural reception and construction of Chinese culture as not only a large and complex source text, in a long history of Sino-Japanese intertextuality, but as a complex cultural construction that was packaged and modified, sometimes for easy consumption, to reinforce key values (such as loyalty and filial piety), and that was readily identified even by those with limited access to literary Sinitic. By illustrating the processes by which Chinese history and literature were largely filtered through and transmitted by intermediaries into medieval Japanese literary culture, this project provides a new history of the reception of Chinese culture in the Japanese literary imagination.

陳芃欣.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 126-133).
Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Abstract in Chinese and English.
Chen Pengxin.