Author: Zhu Guohua
Publication Date: April 2025
Publisher: Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House
ISBN: 9787532186914
The book is divided into three parts. The first part, "Reflections on Literary and Art Studies," reflects on topics including the methodology for reconstructing textbooks on literary and art studies, the evolution of the nature of literary theory as a knowledge system, the localized construction and future prospects of literary and art studies, and even the century-long development history of the discipline. When an ancient culture seeks to undergo a thorough transformation and achieve a "phoenix-like nirvana," there is no shortcut to its growth. It is a long revolution. It relies on the gradual evolution of the concepts of the intellectual class, the in-depth reform of the education system, or more thoroughly, the transformation of the entire national cultural and psychological structure, for the academic culture of a country is nothing but the crystallization of the wisdom of its people.
The second part focuses on interpreting literary and artistic events as well as ideological experiments, with research objects including Yu Dafu's Sinking, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Liu Haisu's "Model Incident," and Lu Xun's Regret for the Past. Events serve as observational portals through which universal elements are concentrated and released. On the other hand, seemingly abstract concepts like aesthetic modernity do not exist elsewhere; they unfold and shine in the occurrence and development of such events.
The third part, consisting of interviews, returns to the literary scene and concentrates on presenting the author's and his contemporary scholars' simple dreams about the future of original Chinese academic research: We need a long revolution. What we are doing now is to build ladders or pave the way for future generations, accumulate academic resources, and adapt Western theories to the Chinese context—tasks that require our long-term efforts.
