Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture, 2020

This article opens with a reflection on the extrinsic and intrinsic causes of the neglect of Chinese prose in sinological literary studies, followed by the construction of a patterning-based scheme for codifying Chinese prose forms. An in-depth analysis of eight famous texts, drawn from antiquity through the Qing, reveals how continual innovations in extratextual patterning and textual patterning have given rise to manifold and inherently related prose forms over the millennia. The close reading also sheds light on these prose forms' distinctive artistic features, as well as their symbiotic relationships with the three types of genres (narrative, descriptive, and expository) and with broad sociopolitical and cultural developments. It is hoped that these findings will generate serious interest in prose studies among literary sinologists. Keywords Chinese prose forms, Chinese prose art, parallel prose, ancient-style prose, eight-legged essay In Western-language (sinological) studies of Chinese literature, an extraordinary lacuna has eluded the attention of most scholars: the absence of any comprehensive anthology of artistic, nonfiction prose (hereafter just prose), even though prose is an independent literary genre privileged (with poetry) over fiction and drama. Compounding this neglect, all general anthologies of Chinese literature in translation have to date relegated prose to the margins. Monograph studies of Chinese prose art are practically nonexistent. The rich heritage of Chinese prose art has been reduced to mere samples of famous prose works in unguided translations. Thus, as a first step toward restoring prose to its rightful place in sinological literary studies, we have created a comprehensive guided anthology,

1999

(This is just the preface to the first edition. The second edition will come out soon.)

Journal of Second Language Writing, 1997

Columbia University Press, 2022

In Western-language (Sinological) studies of Chinese literature, an extraordinary lacuna has eluded the attention of most scholars: the absence of comprehensive anthology of artistic, nonfiction prose (hereafter just prose). In China, prose is an independent literary genre privileged (with poetry) over fiction and drama. Compounding this neglect, all general anthologies of Chinese literature in translation, to date, have relegated prose to the margins. Monograph studies of Chinese prose are practically nonexistent. The rich heritage of Chinese prose art has been reduced to mere samples of famous prose works in unguided translations. Thus, as a first step toward restoring prose to its rightful place in Sinological literary studies, we created this comprehensive guided anthology.

Asian Englishes, 2022

There has been limited research on Chinese English literature (CEL) in the domain of contact literatures. This article reports on a study of a representative Chinese English (CE) literary work well received by a worldwide audience – Qiu Xiaolong’s Enigma of China. With the aim of exploring CE by analysing the unique ‘Chineseness’ in this CE literary work from the paradigms of corpus linguistics and sociolinguistics, the language innovations and sociocultural meanings embedded in different levels of the work are examined. Further, by adopting a corpus-based approach and conducting keyword analysis, a number of language innovations were identified. These included the use of innovative hybrid compounds at the lexis level, the use of hybrid Chinese sentences of parallelism at the syntax level, and the use of discourses on political ideology and employment of ancient Chinese poems at the level of discourse pragmatics. It is argued that these language innovations are manifestations of a transfer of traditional Chinese culture norms and political ideology. The question of how to integrate CE corpus into courses on English creative writing in China is also discussed.

Journal of Chinese Humanities, 2019

2005

In his recent studies on classical Chinese text structures and contemporary Chinese composition textbooks, Andy Kirkpatrick claims that Mainland Chinese students are taught to write Chinese compositions in contemporary" Anglo-American" rhetorical style.

Shulin Yu & Junju Wang

The authors of Chinese Rhetoric and Writing offer a response to the argument that Chinese students' academic writing in English is influenced by "culturally nuanced rhetorical baggage that is uniquely Chinese and hard to eradicate." Noting that this argument draws from "an essentially monolingual and Anglo-centric view of writing," they point out that the rapid growth in the use of English worldwide calls for "a radical reassessment of what English is in today's world." The result is a book that provides teachers of writing, and in particular those involved in the teaching of English academic writing to Chinese students, an introduction to key stages in the development of Chinese rhetoric, a wide-ranging field with a history of several thousand years. Understanding this important rhetorical tradition provides a strong foundation for assessing and responding to the writing of this growing group of students.