Comparative Literature in the Light of Chinese Prosody (eBook)

Shudong Chen (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2018
278 Seiten
Lexington Books (Verlag)
978-1-4985-7339-9 (ISBN)

Infos

With exemplary cases of original texts from across disciplines and cultures, this is the first book that discusses how reading and understanding could often be surreptitiously and serendipitously influenced by the “invisible” but prosodically indispensable text-enlivened “trivial” function words.

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In the light of Chinese prosody and various mutually illuminating major cases from the original English, Chinese, French, Japanese and German classical literary texts, the book explores the possibility of discovering "e;a road not taken"e; within the road well-trodden in literature. In an approach of "e;what Wittgenstein calls criss-crossing,"e; this monographic study, the first ever of this nature, as Roger T. Ames points out in the Foreword, also emphasizes a pivotal "e;recognition that these Chinese values [revealed in the book] are immediately relevant to the Western narrative as well"e;; the book demonstrates, in other words, how such a "e;criss-crossing"e; approach would be unequivocally possible as long as our critical attention be adequately turned to or pivoted upon the "e;trivial"e; matters, a posteriori, in accordance with the live syntactic-prosodic context, such as pauses, stresses, phonemes, function words, or the at once text-enlivened and text-enlivening ambiguity of "e;parts of speech,"e; which often vary or alter simultaneously according to and against any definitive definition or set category a priori. This issue pertains to any literary text across cultures because no literary text would ever be possibleif it were not, for instance, literally enlivened by the otherwise overlooked "e;meaningless"e; function words or phonemes; the texts simultaneously also enliven these "e;meaningless"e; elements and often turn them surreptitiously into sometimes serendipitously meaningful and beautiful sea-change-effecting "e;les mots justes."e; Through the immeasurable and yet often imperceptible influences of these exactly "e;right words,"e; our literary texts, such as a poem, could thus not simply "e;be"e; but subtly "e;mean"e; as if by mere means of its simple, rich, and naturally worded being, truly a special "e;word picture"e; of dasDing an sich. Describable metaphorically as "e;museum effect"e; and "e;symphonic tapestry,"e; a special synaesthetic impact could also likely result from such les-mots-justes-facilitated subtle and yet phenomenal sea changes in the texts.

Autor

Shudong Chen is professor of humanities at Johnson County Community College.

Inhalt

Foreword by Roger T. AmesAcknowledgmentsPart One: Content WordsChapter 1: A Word that Makes a World of DifferenceChapter 2: “Le Mot Juste” and “Content Words”Chapter 3: “Les Mots Justes” as ChoicesPart Two: Function WordsChapter 4: The Unheard Melodies of the TrivialChapter 5: Indispensability of Function Words as Life-MakersChapter 6: Serendipity of the FamiliarChapter 7: Function words as “Les Mots Justes”Chapter 8: “Museum Effect” as “Le Mot Juste” – Mediated “Symphonic Tapestry”Bibliography

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 31.10.2018
• Vorwort: Roger T. Ames
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Schulbuch / Wörterbuch ► Wörterbuch / Fremdsprachen
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Sprachwissenschaft
• Schlagworte: Aesthetics • Asian Literature • Chinese literature • Chinese prosody • Comparative Literature • Comparative Philosophy • function words • museum effect • Poetics • Prosody • symphonic tapestry • Synaesthesia • visual onomatopoeia
• ISBN-10: 1-4985-7339-8 / 1498573398
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4985-7339-9 / 9781498573399