Event

On Thursday, May 15th from 5:15PM to 7:15 PM in Campus North Room 154 and onZoom.(PLEASE NOTE THE SPECIAL TIME AND LOCATION.) Yueling Ji will present her paper “Aesthetic Categories in Chinese Literary Criticism.” This workshop will focus on pre-circulated materials and will be largely discussion-based. The paper can be found HEREwith the password litphil. Please do not circulate the materials without the author’s permission. We hope to see you at the workshop!

Abstract: Aesthetic categories are a type of adjectives commonly used in conversations about literature and the arts, such as “graceful,” “coherent,” or “fascinating.” These adjectives are neither the description of objective features (“90-minute long”), nor the explicit expression of value judgment (“five-star”), but in a class of their own. The nature of aesthetic categories and their function in literary and art criticism have long been debated in aesthetics and philosophy of art (e.g. Immanuel Kant, Frank Sibley, Sianne Ngai). However, little has been said about aesthetic categories in non-western aesthetic traditions. This article offers an overview of the nature and function of aesthetic categories in Chinese literary criticism. It makes two arguments. First, the ubiquity of aesthetic categories should be recognized as a defining feature of Chinese literary criticism. A large repertoire of aesthetic concepts accumulated in Classical Chinese poetics and continues to shape the lexicon of criticism in the contemporary day. Second, aesthetic categories have been used as a gatekeeping tool in criticism to reinforce the boundary between intellectual insiders and outsiders. The critic can leverage aesthetic categories to assert their authority over readers, students, and other critics. The second argument is explained through the case study of the critics C. T. Hsia (1921-2013) and T. A. Hsia (1916-1965), who are generally considered the founding figures of modern Chinese literary studies in Cold War America.

Presenter: Yueling Ji is a Teaching Fellow and former PhD student in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Her research interests include Chinese literary criticism, Cold War studies, and Sino-Soviet relations.

Discussant: Richard A. Rosengarten is an Associate Professor of Religion and Literature at the University of Chicago. His scholarship and teaching are anchored in the Enlightenment and its import for religious (especially Christian) thought and practice. He focuses on how modern prose forms (the novel, but also satire, autobiography, and the essay) enact, absorb, engage, and transform that impact, and on how the work of “criticism” – in its literary, biblical, and philosophical expressions – comes to have exponential import for thought and culture.

Please feel free to contact Jessie (alperinj@uchicago.edu), Jiawen (jiawenw@uchicago.edu), Nicole (yliu07@uchicago.edu), or Lilian (lkong168@uchicago.edu) with any questions you might have, and we look forward to seeing you at the workshop!