Volume 8, No. 1

SHEN Dan is one of China’s most prestigious First-Class Professors in the humanities and social sciences and a Boya Chair Professor of English at Peking [Beijing] University. She is an internationally famous scholar, being on the advisory boards of the American journals Narrative (2012— ) and Style (2011— ), on the editorial or advisory boards of the British Language and Literature (1999— ), JLS: Journal of Literary Semantics (2008—2021) and The Translator: Studies in Intercultural Communication (2001—2014), as well as a consultant editor of The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. She is also on the editorial or advisory boards of more than ten CSSCI indexed prestigious Chinese journals.

As we can see from Jiang Hong’s introduction in the Guest Editor’s Column, SHEN Dan or Dan Shen in English is an internationally famous scholar and one of the most influential and respected scholars in the humanities in China. Her research spans several fields, including narrative studies, stylistics, and translation studies. This interview singles out some important issues to discuss. Shen first shares her insights into the following issues: the essential relation between classical narratology and post classical narratologies, the contextual potential of the second and third generations of the Chicago School (rhetorical narrative theory), the complementary relation between narratology and stylistics, and Derrida’s misrepresentation of Saussure’s theory of the language system. Then Shen goes on to explicate why she created “covert progression” and “dual narrative dynamics” and how these original theoretical concepts and models can extend and transform narrative studies, stylistics, and translation studies.

This paper enquires into SHEN Dan’s interdisciplinary studies especially at the intersections of three apparently distinct disciplines, i.e. stylistics, narratology, and translatology, by focusing on her prolific international publications. First, it investigates how she combines linguistics and literary criticism and enriches stylistics through innovating linguistic models and proposing new critical concepts; secondly, it explicates how her approach of combining stylistics and narratology to the study of narratives has contributed to the development of both disciplines; thirdly, it discusses how her taking the combined interdisciplinary approach to fictional translation studies has remolded translatology from both disciplinary perspectives, and shows how her translation studies has retroactively transformed literary stylistics and narratology. It concludes from a semiotic point of view that Shen has theoretically and methodologically blazed new trails in the study of language and literature, broadened stylistics, narratology, and translatology by promoting their interactions, and offered insights into further interdisciplinary studies.

SHEN Dan is a pioneering and leading figure in the field of narrative studies over the past few decades. This article provides an overview of Shen’s outstanding contributions to narrative theory and criticism both in China and in the West, including how she clarifies and develops theoretical concepts, issues, and models in classical narrative poetics and postclassical narratologies, how she reveals various kinds of significant relations both within narratology and between narratology and stylistics. In particular, the article will explicate how Shen’s profound interest in the underlying meanings of literary texts has driven her to offer innovative interpretations through an interdisciplinary approach, culminating in the establishment of her new theory and criticism of covert progression and dual narrative dynamics, which goes beyond the Aristotelian tradition focusing on plot development and which has extended and transformed not only narratology but also fictional stylistics and fictional translation studies.

SHEN Dan stands as one of the most significant and influential scholars in the humanities in contemporary China. She is also a famous scholar in the international academia of narrative studies, with significant contributions to rhetorical narratology in particular. Her theoretical innovation in rhetorical narratology extends beyond the Aristotelian tradition. Her main contributions in this field are the following: (1) championing the notion of “comprehensive structure-style analysis” by taking an interdisciplinary approach; (2) proposing an integrated model of intratextual-extratextual-intertextual “overall-extended close reading” through taking into consideration sociohistorical context and extending attention to intertextual comparison; (3) putting forward the concept of “covert progression,” revealing the undercurrent paralleling the plot development; (4) pioneering the exploration of dual narrative dynamics and revealing the joint functioning of plot development and covert progression which contrast or conflict with each other.

SHEN Dan’s theory of dual narrative progression forms a significant breakthrough in contemporary narrative studies against the backdrop of the pervasive trend of “post-theory.” It has garnered widespread attention and sparked heated discussions among researchers both at home and abroad. The “after theory” era is of paramount importance for constructing innovative theoretical systems and serves as a pivotal juncture for Chinese scholars to engage in the development of the international discourse system in the field of literary theory. Drawing from the research paradigm of contemporary rhetorical narratology, Shen’s theory of dual narrative progression goes beyond the traditional focus on plot development by introducing the concept of “covert progression” and, moreover, by paying attention to the joint functioning of covert progression and plot development. Its narratological theoretical framework is built upon eight “dual” models, providing an effective approach for interpretative narrative texts across various literary genres and media. Situated in the “post-theoretical” context, this essay reviews the three dimensions of the theory of dual narrative progression: the post-theory context of its production, the construction of its theoretical framework, and its application in critical practice.

This essay discusses the representations of Holocaust perpetrators in Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader and Rachel Seiffert’s The Dark Room. The narrator/ protagonists in the two stories are thrown into ethical chaos upon realization of the multiple identities of their loved ones and they strive to gain ethical judgment by exercising reason and through different ways of education before finally taking eth- ical action to accept the past of their perpetrator (grand)fathers. Their experiences reveal that the second and third-generation German war descendants find diversified ways of recognizing the contradicting identities of their ancestors. The essay further argues that the writers of the two stories use similar writing strategies to sustain the basic ethical position in treating materials in relation to mass killing.

Who hasn’t questioned one’s identity? Pachinko is a direct record and testimony of the narrative of Korean-Japanese who is struggling with his or her identity under the discrimination and prejudice that has continued from the past to the present, including the people who wander adrift. In the words of Foucault, we should hold a skeptical view toward ourselves, our present, our appearance and here and today. In this sense, the boundary crossing of Koreans described in Pachinko showcases the potential for enabling readers to critically contemplate violent discrimination in the era of multiculturalism and multiracialism, increasing their understanding of minorities and their cultures, and ultimately acquiring ethical insights from new perspectives. Furthermore, Pachinko can be seen as contents that present the possibility of acquiring ethics by understanding those who are discriminated against in society. This study examines narratives of discrimination and prejudice as they are represented across media in the novel Pachinko and the TV series Pachinko. This study also examines various aspects of life that move toward a decolonizing subject through the struggling life of characters. We interpret the existential aspect of characters as trans-identity and illustrate various aspects of identity transformation of characters that appear in narrative contents. Humans cannot be free from their ethical and identity related anxieties through the past, present and future. We are sure that literature, or content can continue to play a role that criticizes and supports those anxieties.

Meaning generation is a central issue in contemporary semiotics. How to integrate the symbolic presentation of meaning, the ethical intentions of real-life situations, the release of meaning, and the care for life into a coherent framework is a shared objective of semioethics and cultural semiotics of Jingshen. Based on the concept of “life as situated” found in the Commentary on the Book of Changes, this article his article engages in a reflection on semioethics within the perspective of cultural semiotics of Jingshen. It does so by drawing upon relevant discussions in ethical literary criticism and literary creative practices. Through an analysis of the relationships between “signs” and “symptoms,” “brain” and “body,” “text” and “being,” the article emphasizes the importance of caring for all forms of life, including “the self,” and even extends this consideration to non-living entities, viewing them as possessing “individuality.” This approach highlights a path of semiotic research that involves returning to nature, being, the release of meaning, and the pursuit of freedom. This path is characterized by an ecological perspective on cognition, that is, treating cognition as ecological activity.