Shielded Grandeur: A Conversation between Daoism and Frankfurt School in Chen Chuncheng’s Short Stories
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Can Daoism serve as a tool in the criticism of modernity and offer an alternative way of living? This thesis intends to put the ideas in Daoism into dialogue with Frankfurt School scholars to analyze four short stories of a contemporary writer Chen Chuncheng 陳春成. In his first collection of short stories published in 2020, Chen juxtaposes a realistic world with a mystic cosmos through natural objects and the practice of crafts. This juxtaposition invokes both Frankfurt School’s criticism of the modern society and a Daoist worldview, both of which yearn for corporeal and experiential connections to a cosmos where every being, whether animated or not, is harmonically integrated into a grand course of the world. Relentlessly writing about the practice of a craft in various socio-historical settings and literary styles, Chen re-writes this motif that links Zhuang Zi’s allegorical tales with Walter Benjamin’s interpretation of the storytelling tradition. He situates this premodern practice in a modern setting to interrogate the efficacy of human language and communicability of experience, comparing the temporality of human society and that of nature.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | December 8, 2023 |
| Publication date | December 8, 2023 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Zhong, Yiyin (Mia) |
|---|---|
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University, Stanford Global Studies, Center for East Asian Studies |
| Thesis advisor | Wang, Ban |
Subjects
| Subject | Stanford Global Studies |
|---|---|
| Subject | East Asian Studies |
| Subject | Daoism |
| Subject | Ecocriticism |
| Subject | Chinese literature |
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Zhong, Y. (2023). Shielded Grandeur: A Conversation between Daoism and Frankfurt School in Chen Chuncheng’s Short Stories. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/vg744kh0379. https://doi.org/10.25740/vg744kh0379.
Collection
Stanford Center for East Asian Studies Thesis Collection
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