Volume 10, No.2

This interview with Stefan Collini examines the function of cultural criticism in a changing world. The interview focuses on topics like the tradition of Cambridge literary criticism, the Two Cultures Controversy, scientific selection and AI literature, the roles of intellectuals, and ideas about universities. Stefan Collini expresses his continuing commitment to scholarly values in the context of the development and changes in the new era. Collini’s insights suggest a nuanced and multifaceted approach to literary and cultural studies. With an emphasis on intellectual adaptability, Collini’s perspective on intellectuals highlights their evolving role, influenced by changes in media and communication. Ultimately, Collini considers universities as the home of free inquiry. He understands liberal education as a broader sort of education which attempts to equip people with mental and cultural capacities which should be used for any kind of employment.

Human society and world civilization are currently under the dual threat of extreme climate conditions and artificial intelligence technologies. Finding ways to alleviate or even resolve these crises has become an urgent priority. Though the problems appear to originate in the natural environment and in science and technology, they are essentially the combined result of human greed, the profit-driven nature of capital, and technology’s inherent drive for novelty. To promote the sustainable development of world civilization, we must abandon traditional anthropocentric thinking, the hegemonic “Euro-American centrist” mindset, the confrontational logic of the “clash of civilizations,” and the parochialism of “technological determinism.” It is necessary not only to protect biodiversity and foster harmony between nature and humanity, but also to give full play to the guiding role of the true, the good, and the beautiful—values championed by the humanities—in order to regulate and steer science and technology toward human-centered, positive, and benevolent development. We should advocate the concept of a community of science, technology and the humanities, so as to achieve common progress between science, technology and the humanities, and promote the shared prosperity of world civilization.

Japanese science fiction of the 2010s shows a reorganization of narrative agency shaped by technological systems and mediation. In two works from this period, BEATLESS by Satoshi Hase and Angels of Johannesburg by Yusuke Miyauchi, representations of falling, girl-related agency, and technological mediation distribute unevenly across narrative progression. These distributions point to narrative change structured by localized reconfiguration rather than gradual accumulation. Each domain is traced through recurrent lexical and action cues across segmented narrative units. Position-based analysis differentiates cumulative development from abrupt shifts, while topic modeling clarifies changes in surrounding semantic contexts at key turning points. Agency does not change evenly across narrative time. In Angels of Johannesburg, agency appears in situational and reversible forms without consolidating into a dominant configuration. In BEATLESS, redistributed agency loss concentrates at a limited set of turning points and persists thereafter, accompanied by expanded technological mediation and a retreat of human-centered action. Taken together, these patterns show that narrative change in 2010s Japanese science fiction emerges through redistribution across narrative positions rather than cumulative development.

The close connection between literature and ethics is undeniable, whether we start from literature or moral philosophy. Using Fowles’ novel The Magus as an example, we will show that the reason for this close connection lies in the a priori structural affinity between the nature of ethical judgement and literary discourse. Aristotle already noted that the ethical judgement or value of a given action depends essentially on occasional circumstances, on context. It is usually a singular matter that cannot be represented in theoretical discourse, but only in literature. Consequently, literature is a privileged instrument for discussing ethical issues.

This paper examines the narrative structures of Lee Yangji’s novels Nabi T’aryŏng and Yuhi to explore the ethical conflicts that define the literature of Koreans in Japan. Drawing on Nie Zhenzhao’s Theory of Ethical Literary Criticism, the study situates Lee’s works within their historical and moral context to analyze the ethical dilemmas arising from issues such as naming, discrimination, naturalization, and the linguistic tension between Korean and Japanese languages. The pursuit of identity in this context emerges as a process of continual ethical dialogue and self-examination. Employing Nie’s core concepts of the ethical line—which delineates the boundary of moral consciousness—and the ethical knot—where conflicting ethical forces become entangled—this paper demonstrates how Lee transforms moral contradictions into the driving force of her storytelling. Furthermore, by introducing the ethical limbo, which describes a psychological and moral state of being caught between self-affirmation and self-denial, the analysis reveals how Lee’s protagonists, as Koreans in Japan, inhabit a gray zone of ethnic identity. Through these interrelated concepts of the ethical line, knot and limbo, Nabi T’aryŏng and Yuhi emerge as paradigmatic examples of how ethical conflict operates as both structural and thematic cores of Lee’s storytelling. Ultimately, her works paint literature as an ethical practice—one that confronts identity fragmentation through moral reflection and invites readers to reconsider their own ethical relationships with others.

The Legend of Madam Park (Pakssi-jeon) is a Korean-language novel from the mid-Joseon Dynasty. Set against the historical backdrop of the “Byeongja Horan” (1636-1637), a Manchu invasion that shook the Korean Peninsula in the first half of the seventeenth century, it recounts the remarkable life of its protagonist, Madam Park. Previous scholarship has commonly classified the work as a “military romance” or a “historical novel.” However, when reexamined from the perspective of ethical literary criticism, the novel reveals itself to be essentially a domestic novel. The ethical narrative centers on Madam Park’s identity crisis within her husband’s family and its resolution. It portrays in depth how, navigating the constraints of the patriarchal clan system, she makes rational and ethically sound choices to gradually dispel the anxiety of being a wife in name only. In doing so, she achieves individual identity construction and self-realization. Through wisdom and virtue, she resolves internal family conflicts and gains the respect of her husband’s family. Furthermore, at a critical moment, she extends her domestic virtue to the broader Confucian ethics of “ordering the state and harmonizing the world,” thereby earning broad social recognition. Madam Park’s trajectory thus transcends her personal fate to symbolize the collective will and ethical aspirations of countless Korean women caught in identity crises under the patriarchal marriage and family system of the Joseon Dynasty.

While Hsiung Shih-I’s play Lady Precious Stream has achieved wide international recognition, it has also been drawn into public debates over self-Orientalization. To clearly articulate a Chinese cultural position, Hsiung Shih-I constructs Lady Precious Stream in the play as a figure confronting intersecting value conflicts: tradition versus modernity, and the East versus the West. Through this characterization, the play seeks to transcend the cognitive predicaments implied by the notion of “China’s doll’s house.” The critical ethical choice of Lady Precious Stream’s breaking away has facilitated her transformation from a subordinate within the patriarchal ethical system to a subject capable of active negotiation. The transformation process is marked by fluidity and openness, through which a dynamic “third space” is established. This space carries multicultural consciousness, and through sustained ethical negotiation, makes possible the formation of value consensus, thereby presenting the “real situation of China” to the world. The narrative of Lady Precious Stream’s breaking away not only demonstrates the feasibility of ethical negotiation and cross-cultural dialogue, but also offers significant theoretical and practical insights for Chinese drama to “tell Chinese stories well” in the context of exchanges and mutual learning between Chinese and foreign civilizations.

Richard Strauss’s opera Der Rosenkavalier, while regarded as a masterpiece in the history of musical drama, has been predominantly examined through textual lenses. Existing scholarship either explores the intertextual relationships between its libretto and European dramatic traditions, or investigates its musical language’s drawing on historical styles. This text-centered approach has effectively illuminated the work’s profound cultural grounding, yet its focus remains largely confined to semantic associations, thereby failing to fully capture the complexity of Der Rosenkavalier as a “media complex.” Employing Irina O. Rajewsky’s intermedial classification system as the core analytical tool, this paper systematically reconstructs an interpretation of the opera from three dimensions: medial transposition, media combination, and intermedial performance and remediation. The study not only examines the medial transposition from literary pretexts to operatic libretto, but also analyzes the media combination of German folk song, waltz, and classical/romantic styles within the music. Furthermore, it reveals how the performers’ bodies become convergence points for intermedial signs, and how different stage productions and recording media engage in the remediation of the operatic text, ultimately demonstrating the generative mechanism of Der Rosenkavalier as a multi-medium hybrid.

Philip K. Dick’s science fictions manifest the features of alternation of reality and virtuality, alternative history and combination of truth and illusion. His narration of “large spaces” refers to the spaces of modern life, while the “small spaces” in his stories with constant variations can be either a city or one’s subjective world that represent the predicament in the process of ethical pursuit of the self identity, the emotions and humanity. The narration of the variations of spaces violates the traditional linear structure, displaying physically, logically or humanly unnatural narrative. Firstly, the variations of urban space, as an antimimetic form, provide characters with the environment to find themselves and reconstruct the subjectivity between reality and illusion. Secondly, variations of memory space are the places where the events happen in history, reality and future, with the overlapping and connection of events to carry historical truth and probe into subconscious desires. Lastly, the purposes and functions of the variations of spaces lie in that they not only serve to develop plots, but reflect human minds and ethical choices as well. Therefore, in form and content, the narration corresponds with the theme of alienation of science and technology, providing the ways to understand and comprehend the reality.