Volume 9, No. 2

Fu Xiuyan’s narrative studies can be divided into two phases: the first phase from 1989 to 2004 and the second phase from 2015 to the present. During these two phases, Fu Xiuyan has published nearly a hundred papers on narrative studies, authored seven monographs, and edited a seven-volume set of books. His narrative research mainly focuses on three aspects: the formation and origin of Chinese narrative tradition, auditory narrative, and comparative studies of Chinese and Western narratives. He has achieved remarkable accomplishments in all three areas. Fu Xiuyan’s narrative research is characterized by four features: innovation, broad spectrum, Chineseness, and humanism.

Fu Xiuyan has made systematic and outstanding contributions in the field of foreign literature studies, particularly in the field of John Keats’ poetics. The successive publication of John Keats’ Letters, The Biography of John Keats and The Modern Values of John Keats’ Poems and Poetic Theories has effectively promoted the spreading and reception of Keats’ poetry and poetics in China. The core concepts of Keats’ poetics-“Negative Capability,” “The Poet Has No Self,” and “What The Imagination Seizes As Beauty Must Be Truth”-are systematically interpreted and constructed. Through multi-dimensional academic exploration, Fu Xiuyan has not only expanded the breadth and depth of the study on Keats’ poetics, but also provided an important theoretical framework and methodological inspiration for the study on romantic poetry. At the same time, it has also offered forward-looking references for the development of related fields such as narratology and ecological literature, demonstrating the academic value and innovative significance of interdisciplinary research.

“Auditory narrative” is a new research paradigm of narratology created by Professor Fu Xiuyan in recent years, which is a major breakthrough in narratology, and a new milestone in the academic history of Chinese narratology and in the world. This original narrative research path proposes for the first time to start from auditory perception and use the method of “listening to the classics again” to create a new auditory narrative research system. This essay focuses on Fu Xiuyan’s research on auditory narrative theory by analyzing his significant pioneering contributions. 1) It creates a new path of contemporary narratology; 2) It proposes a new method for the study of auditory narratives; 3) It establishes a new discursive paradigm of auditory narrative; 4) It discovers an auditory aesthetics in Chinese narratives; 5) It reveals the deep cultural structure of “auditory” emphasis in Chinese and Western narratology.

Professor Fu Xiuyan is one of the earliest and the most prominent theorists and practitioners in China of narrative studies of things. Fu has made three important contributions in this field. Firstly, it is he who has laid the foundation for narrative research of things in China by initially proposing that “literature is not only about humans, but also about things” and by his ongoing exploration of the narratological functions of things. Secondly, he argues for the three modes of listening for thingness, which is an apt illustration of how a Chinese scholar can contribute to the world’s academic discourse. Finally, by combining the local traditions and the international perspectives, he has created the kind of material ecocritical discourse that is both locally and practically oriented.

This article attempts to start from the context of the “New Enlightenment” in China in the 1980s, from cybernetics, systems theory, and information theory as the technological discourses and ideological paradigms of the 1980s, and from media transformation of narrative forms, modes, and power relationships, to provide an overall review of Fu Xiuyan’s academic journey. In order to reconstruct Chinese narratology based on the systems theory, Fu Xiuyan has built a comprehensive discussion of narrative patterns across media and multiple disciplines through liberating narratology from the narrow structuralist school of the West, through discussions on methodology, through sensory transformations of narrative modes among visual, auditory, olfactory, and gustatory senses, and through going beyond the postcolonial paradigm. He has also dedicated to a systematic reading and modern interpretation of Chinese literary traditions through multiple senses. And then we can say he has established the ontological, epistemological, and ethical values of narratology in the context of “how to be a human being today.”

Fu Xiuyan’s research into Chinese narratology has made significant contributions to the development of global narratology and the construction of China’s independent theoretical discourse. Firstly, he has constructed a traditional Chinese narrative spectrum. He defines narrative as “orderly narration,” paving the way for the expansion of narratology research. His research objects involve various narrative forms and classic texts expressed through various symbols, genres, carriers, and media in ancient China. This has constructed a traditional Chinese narrative spectrum. His genealogical method and interdisciplinary perspective have methodological significance. Secondly, he has laid the foundation for the study of Chinese object narratology. By sorting out the theories of objects in Chinese culture, he proposes that “literature is both ‘human studies’ and ‘object studies’.” focusing on the narrativity and cultural construction of objects, and providing new ideas and paradigms for object narratology research. Thirdly, he has pioneered the study of the essence of narrative. He deeply discusses the essential characteristics of human narrative behavior from four aspects: the origin of narrative, social function, construction logic and dynamic mechanism. He expands the research object of narratology from specific narrative texts to abstract narrative philosophy, which opens up a broad space for the future development of narratology.

Fu Xiuyan’s academic career began in the late 1970s with his research on John Keats. His interests gradually shifted toward narratology, while he also embraced the mission of studying Jiangxi’s local culture, persistently and diligently dedicating himself to the exploration of “Ganpo Culture.” Possessing a global vision and comparative perspective, Fu Xiuyan sought to transcend traditional research subjects and academic paradigms in his work. He bridged Chinese and Western scholarship, integrated ancient and modern insights, and extensively employed theories from anthropology, religious studies, linguistics, semiotics, folklore, sociology, and other disciplines. He pioneered the concept of auditory narrative and established its initial theoretical framework, offering new perspectives and more coherent theoretical explanations for narratological studies. While navigating diverse research fields, Fu Xiuyan consistently adhered to a principle of keeping Chinese context central while adopting global perspectives. He endeavored to break disciplinary boundaries and remained deeply engaged in exploring diverse scholarly possibilities. Whether through his early translation and analysis of Keats’ letters, his enduring commitment to Ganpo Culture, or his decades-long comparative studies of Chinese and Western narratives, Fu Xiuyan has steadfastly maintained a local standpoint. His research consistently reflects a distinctly Chinese perspective and a strong commitment to practical concerns.

It is true that a posthuman era has already arrived. In the past, the status of humanity as the “primate of everything” and the “elite of the universe” was severely challenged and resisted by various postmodern trends. Especially the deconstruction of anthropocentrism by ecocriticism, the challenge posed by animal studies to the power and role of human domination, and the attacks launched by various viruses on humans have threatened human survival and evolution. The application and popularization of artificial intelligence or AI have further marginalized humans and even made a large number of people have lost their jobs. In the field of humanities, humanism has also evolved into a sort of “posthumanism,” which challenges and deconstructs the myth of overemphasizing human status and role, causing humans to be pulled back to their original state: a species of all things on the earth. Post-humanist criticism is a literary critical trend that contradicts the development of humanist criticism to the extreme. In terms of time, it has come after humanist criticism, and in terms of content, it challenges the anthropocentric consciousness of humanist criticism on one hand, and on the other hand, it can hardly separate itself from it, maintaining continuity with it to a certain extent. The rise of Post-humanist criticism has a new direction to literary and cultural criticism in the post-theoretical era.

Amid the AI-driven transformation of education, “unreadability” is shifting from a reading barrier to a catalyst for interpretive innovation. However, its multilayered implications have yet to be fully and systematically developed in college-level foreign language literature teaching. Students often fall into a dual predicament: an excessive pursuit of interpretive certainty on one hand, and a fear of misreading on the other-largely due to their inability to accurately distinguish between different layers of unreadability. These layers can be categorized into four dimensions-linguistic, textual, cultural, and philosophical-with the latter three forming the core challenges of literary interpretation. Textual unreadability arises from anti-traditional forms that disrupt linear reading logic; cultural unreadability stems from narrative blanks that imply intercultural estrangement and hinder the generation of meaning; philosophical unreadability involves the perpetual slippage of signifiers, which points to infinite interpretive possibilities beyond contextual confines. Using The Waste Land as a paradigmatic example, this study explores how AI empowers literature teaching through technological pathways such as semantic visualization, allusion mapping, digital continuation, meaning expansion, and simulated philosophical dialogue. These strategies guide students in constructing cognitive frameworks to navigate unreadability and engage more deeply with the complexity and openness of literary texts. Such AI-augmented pedagogy reconceptualizes unreadability as a collaborative thinking arena between humans and machines, promoting the integrated development of critical thinking and creativity.