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A History of Style : = Literary Criticism in Cold War China.

Record Type:	Language materials, manuscript : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	A History of Style :/
Reminder of title:	Literary Criticism in Cold War China.
Author:	Ji, Yueling.
Description:	1 online resource (301 pages)
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-02, Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International85-02A.
Subject:	Literature. -
Online resource:	click for full text (PQDT)
ISBN:	9798380140447

A History of Style : = Literary Criticism in Cold War China.
Ji, Yueling.

A History of Style :Literary Criticism in Cold War China. - 1 online resource (301 pages)

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-02, Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--The University of Chicago, 2023.

Includes bibliographical references

This dissertation studies the history and methodology of Chinese literary criticism with the aim of understanding the concept of style in literature. Style is an elusive concept in literary studies. Undeniably, readers perceive stylistic differences when they look at different literary texts, to the extent that the author of a text may be identified by those differences alone, which indicates that style is a fundamental property of writing. However, scholars of literature have so far been unable to determine what specific characteristics of a text constitute its style, and therefore cannot reach a consensus on the definition of style. My study aims to relieve the conceptual difficulties surrounding the idea of style and re-introduce style into literary studies.To this end, rather than directly proposing a new definition of style, this dissertation identifies and examines the ways in which the concept has been used in the history of literary criticism. This dissertation identifies four approaches through which prominent Chinese literary critics of the twentieth century have formulated their opinions about the styles of canonical literary works. The four approaches are named the ideological, the pedagogical, the impressionistic, and the linguistic. Each approach stems from a tradition in the history of literary criticism; each highlights a distinct dimension of the concept of style. Based on case studies of the four approaches, I find that style has primarily been used as a tool for the value judgment of literature, which explains why the concept is indispensable in Chinese literary criticism even without a concrete definition. Style plays an essential role in canon formation.In addition, this study of style has led to a discovery of the transregional networks that shaped literary criticism in the Cold War era. The first two chapters of the dissertation focus on early Maoist China, and the last two chapters follow a group of intellectuals based in postwar Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States. Examining the institutions of literary criticism in those locations and the networks between them, this dissertation illustrates the Soviet influence on Chinese socialist literary theory, on the one hand, and the impact of US public diplomacy on literary studies in Hong Kong and Taiwan, on the other hand. In this period of frequent ideological disagreements, literary critics took advantage of the vagueness of style to criticize the literary works that did not align with their ideology, presenting their judgment of the ideas expressed in a work as if it were an objective description of the inherent quality of that work. In this way, the study of style sheds light on how the Cold War shaped intellectual history globally.

Electronic reproduction.
Ann Arbor, Mich. :
ProQuest,
2024

Mode of access: World Wide Web

ISBN: 9798380140447Subjects--Topical Terms:

557269
Literature.
Subjects--Index Terms:

Aesthetic judgmentIndex Terms--Genre/Form:

554714
Electronic books.

A History of Style : = Literary Criticism in Cold War China.
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653 $a Pedagogy
653 $a Style
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