Volume 8, No. 2

In this interview, Wang Shouren introduces and reviews the journey of his literary research on British literature, American literature, and world literature. In an academic career of almost 40 years, he is apt at applying the socio-historical approach to make nuanced contemplation on the complicated relationship between literature and life. Juxtaposing literature with its historical context, his studies illustrate the authors’ insights into their life and time by relating literature to socio- historical factors. Wang Shouren’s systematic study on the principles of literary realism brings new life to socio-historical criticism and predicates that literature creates cognitive as well as aesthetic values in its representation and construction of reality. Wang Shouren’s research on foreign literature bridges the gap between China and the West, meanwhile, he insists on the Chinese standpoint and maintains his own subjectivity as a Chinese scholar. Through translating literature in English, editing foreign literary histories and encyclopedia entries, and publishing articles and monographs, he demonstrates a character of praxis which is nourished by Chinese culture and history, and makes significant contribution to constructing China’s systematic body of knowledge regarding foreign literature.

The study of British literature in China played a significant role in societal development of the 20th and 21st centuries. As a prominent scholar in China, Wang Shouren first attracted the attention of global academic community with his study of the 19th century English unacted drama in the 1990s. In his almost forty-year career of teaching and research on British literature, Wang has made a remarkable contribution to the advancement of British literary studies in China by broadening the horizon of research on classic British authors, promoting the study on contemporary British literature, and revisiting the development of literary theory in Britain. In his works on British literature, he introduces a research paradigm combining social criticism and aesthetic criticism, examines contemporary British literature with an emphasis on representation of societal development, and provides new perspectives for the study of British literary theory. Focusing on the Chinese elements in British literary works and adopting a comparative approach in editing textbooks, Wang Shouren demonstrates keen observation and creative intelligence of Chinese scholars, and establishes himself as one of the most influential scholars of foreign literature studies in China.

As one of the earliest and most renowned scholars engaging in the study of foreign literature in China since the reform and opening-up, Wang Shouren has achieved fruitful results in the translation and research of foreign literature, with particularly notable accomplishments in the field of American literature translation and research. Starting with a comprehensive understanding of literary traditions, he has examined Eastern and Western cultures on the foundation of inheriting the achievements of his predecessors, explored the path of American literature research, and carved out an innovative academic route. Wang Shouren stands at the forefront of reinterpreting the works of classic writers, like Henry David Thoreau and Willa Cather, while also dedicating attention to modern American writers such as Toni Morrison. His work is centered on uncovering fresh interpretations and insights into literary themes. Moreover, he broadens the scope of his research to encompass American ethnic literature, exploring both its scholarly importance and practical relevance. Wang Shouren’s investigations into the history of American literature and its criticism are characterized by a unique approach that blends critique with historical context, aiming to rejuvenate academic traditions. His efforts in developing a framework for an independent body of knowledge of American literature studies with distinct Chinese-Characteristic are visionary. This approach not only integrates Chinese and Western perspectives but also amplifies the Chinese voice, elucidates Chinese features, and effectively represents China’s image on the global stage. This paper begins with the context of a hundred years of translation and research of American literature in China, attempting to comprehensively discuss Wang Shouren’s academic contributions to the construction of a Chinese- characteristic body of knowledge of American literature, in the hope of providing useful inspiration for the current construction of an independent body of knowledge regarding American literature research in China.

The emergence and subsequent predominance of instrumental rationality catalyzed a paradigm shift, bringing the utilitarian aspect of literature to the forefront, thus elevating the issue of “use of literature” to prominence in China. The four-volume Post-WWII History and the Development of Foreign Literature written by Professor Wang Shouren and his colleagues is a Chinese response to this paradigm shift. It redefines the Chinese perception of literature from a perspective that transcends eurocentrism, marking a significant stride in interpreting literatures of the world. By advocating holism and value judgment, the dynamic representation theory of literature and taking realism as epistemology, this History affirmed the value of literature. Meanwhile, one of the most noteworthy contributions of History lies in its introduction, as implied by the title, of a new concept for periodization: post-World War II literature. And the layout of these four volumes corresponding with the logic and method of the “beam-column style assembly” in traditional Chinese architecture, sets up a unique model for literary history writing, one that based on relational philosophy. In this sense, History is a landmark in the continuation and renewal of the tradition of the writing of the history of foreign literature in China.

Amid mounting discourse on contemporary literary realism in international academia, Wang Shouren, a leading Chinese scholar of foreign literature stands out as a championing figure in marshalling the recent academic turn to realism in China. In the past few decades, he has made unremitting endeavor towards constructing a systematic body of knowledge regarding literary realism. Weaving his way through voluminous scholarship on realism and histories of the 20th century and contemporary literature, he proposes a set of keywords (truth, mimesis, reality, fiction) and pathways (cognitive, aesthetic, affective, intermedial) to set up the theoretic foundation of realism for more meaningful academic exploration. At the same time, being a historian of postwar foreign literature, he teases out a steady strain of realism running through a variety of postmodern literary texts—first mainly sourced from postwar Anglo-American literature and later from a much wider scope of world literature including contemporary Chinese authors. As a result, Wang Shouren’s outlook on realism extends both along the global and local axes towards a glocalized perception of literary realism as a pluralistic form open to proliferation and permutation in the remapping of the world literary system. In particular, his Chinese identity equips him with a distinct Chinese scope of view which consists in Chinese perspective, Chinese stance, Chinese insights and Chinese resources, enabling him to be an outstanding spokesperson for realism’s contemporary manifestations in world literature.

Over the course of his distinguished career, Wang Shouren has published on a wide range of subjects, from traditional literary criticism to reflections on the place of literary studies in China and the rest of the world. Much of his work has drawn on insights from a range of cognate fields, not least from history. This article discusses the role of history in Wang Shouren’s writings, focusing mainly on his English-language works. The article begins by discussing his use of biographical analysis to explicate literary works, before moving on to explore his use of literary genealogy to throw light on nineteenth-century English unacted drama. The article then analyses how Wang Shouren’s literary scholarship has drawn on cultural history, and it concludes by explaining how he has applied historical and literary knowledge to provide insights into contemporary social and political issues. Overall, the article provides a glimpse into a richly impressive scholarly career which has contributed a great deal to the study of literature both in China and around the world.

In contemporary China, Wang Shouren has been widely acclaimed not only as a leading scholar in the field of foreign literature studies, but also a national outstanding professor of English and foreign literature. His pedagogical ideas of teaching foreign literature in the Chinese context are all-encompassing and up- to-date, reflecting an open-minded call for diversity, strong local awareness, and broad comparative vision. Furthermore, his teaching practice exhibits wholehearted embrace of cutting-edge information technology, resulting in significantly enhanced effectiveness. This paper contends that Wang Shouren has consistently adhered to his pedagogical ideas and teaching methods: understanding both our own culture and the world at large; disseminating Chinese and foreign cultures; cultivating well- rounded individuals with cross-cultural awareness through literary exploration. Wang Shouren’s such teaching ideas have been widely recognized and resonated in the field of foreign literature teaching. His teaching practices have also achieved remarkable results, worthy of learning and reference by future educators.

Professor Marjorie Perloff was a distinguished scholar, poetry critic, and theorist. Her profound insights and unique perspectives on modern and contemporary American poetry have earned her high recognition in the international academic community. She was not only an Emeritus Professor at Stanford University and the University of Southern California but also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the American Philosophical Society. Her research spanned multiple fields, with outstanding achievements particularly in avant-garde poetry and modernist and postmodernist theory. Her works, including The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage, Radical Artifice: Writing Poetry in the Age of Media, Infrathin: An Experiment in Micropoetics, have not only provided new perspectives for understanding modern poetry but also advanced the development of poetry theory, establishing leading theories such as the poetics of indeterminacy and micro- poetics. Professor Perloff also served as the long-term president of China-American Association for Poetry and Poetics, actively promoting cultural exchange between China and the United States and fostering deep cooperation in the field of poetry research. Though Professor Perloff passed away, she has left behind us a valuable academic legacy. We will always keep her in our hearts.

The Chinese academia’s old friend, the world’s leading scholar of avant-garde poetry, Marjorie Perloff died on March 24. Perloff was celebrated for her ability to explain difficult experimental poetry. This ability is seen in her early work on Yeats, middle works on 20th-century modernist movements as well as in her last books, 21st-Century Modernism: (2002), Unoriginal Genius (2010) and Infra- thin (2021), comparing the new century’s experimental poetry with early modern- ism. This paper, focused on the books of her later years, demonstrates her responses to the 21st-Century modernism and foregrounding the ideas and legacy in poetics of her later years, and reveals one of her major ideas that modernism is back in the forms of Eliot’s verbivocalvisual complex and Duchamp’s ready-mades, delays in glass, and the infrathin.