Volume 9, No. 4

This paper systematically examines Liu Jianjun’s theoretical construction and academic significance regarding the “sinicization of foreign literature.” Liu Jianjun’s theoretical framework is built on three pillars: first, by distinguishing between “foreign literature in its original form” and “foreign literature in China,” he identifies a dynamically evolving local cultural phenomenon that truly exists in the Chinese cultural context as an independent research object, thereby fundamentally establishing the subjectivity and legitimacy of Chinese scholars in their research. Second, he pioneered the dynamic connection between the century-long history of foreign literature reception and China’s grand narrative of the “three-step” modernization drive—from “standing up” and “growing rich” to “becoming strong”—endowing the disciplinary history with a profound historical materialist dimension and a national orientation. Third, he takes the theory of sinicization of Marxism as the top-level guiding ideology, reinterpreting and expounding foreign literature from the perspective of contemporary Chinese Marxist stance and discourse to better serve cultural construction in the new era. Liu Jianjun’s academic contributions offer important insights into understanding the theoretical consciousness of contemporary Chinese literary research and provide a significant disciplinary example for constructing a discourse system of philosophy and social sciences with Chinese characteristics.

Prof. Liu Jianjun has profound academic interest in the relationship between Christian culture and Western literature. His academic interest on Christian culture viz. Western literature is the fait accompli. With forty years’ academic endeavour, Prof. Liu has numerous works on this issue.The most renowned are Christian Culture & Western Literary Tradition and The Dependence of the Holy & the Common. Historical originality, literary criticism and theoretical analysis are the criteria of his research methodology. His study has formed a unique category with broad perspectives on Western civilization. Either from his macro-analysis of Christian Culture and Western Literary Tradition or to the micro-analysis of the case studies on The Dependence of the Holy & the Common, his analytical ingenuity pertains his research philosophy.

As one of the pioneering scholars in the study of European medieval literature in China, Liu Jianjun has made systematic and innovative contributions to research methodologies, academic paradigms, and scholarly discourse in the field. Grounded in a dialectical critical consciousness and sustained theoretical reflection, Liu challenges long-standing assumptions such as theories of cultural rupture, ruins-based interpretations, and Western Eurocentrism. He emphasizes the intrinsic unity between the social function and aesthetic autonomy of medieval literature, and advances a dynamic model of literary development centered on the concept of “cultural integration.” From five interrelated dimensions, namely methodology, cultural critique, historical perspective, aesthetic value, and knowledge production, Liu reconstructs the knowledge framework and value genealogy of medieval literary studies, thereby opening up new avenues for academic inquiry. His scholarship offers important theoretical insights and serves as a valuable reference for contemporary research in foreign literature.

In his work On the Structural Models of Western Novels (1994), Liu Jianjun summarizes the artistic evolution of Western novels into three fundamental structural models: the “picaresque novel,” the “Balzacian novel,” and the “stream-of-consciousness novel.” From the perspectives of evolutionary theory, compositional theory, and mechanistic theory, he provides a comprehensive and indepth analysis of these three structural models, offering innovative narrative theory and effective critical methods for the study and creation of long-form narrative works. Grounded in the actualities of literary works and centered around these three structural models, Professor Liu’s theory integrates knowledge systems such as literary forms, narrative techniques, creative methods, literary theory, social structures, thought patterns, cognitive psychology, experiential inheritance, and cultural orientations. This approach highlights a holistic and comprehensive critical philosophy, thereby renewing the methodology for novel research.

Amid globalization and the rise of an intelligent society, Liu Jianjun advocates an education system centered on “China’s Foreign Literature,” which provides a crucial theoretical framework and practical guidance for the autonomous development of the discipline of foreign literature studies in China. His research explores the ways to break away from the long-standing dominance of Western paradigms and meanwhile to construct a new disciplinary model for foreign literature studies with distinctive Chinese perspective and discourse. By reinforcing cultural self-confidence and disciplinary self-awareness, he promotes a transformation from passive knowledge acquisition to active subjectivity construction, distinguishing between “original foreign literature” and “China’s Foreign Literature”—the latter being shaped through translation and interpretation within China. This theory also highlights the key role of translation in the process of cross-cultural transmission. With an emphasis on training by way of a question-oriented approach, it aims to
enhance students’ capacity to discover and formulate critical questions. In teaching practices, it integrates close reading of texts with contextualized literary history, and
systematically reconstructs literary studies with new initiatives in the humanities to avoid cognitive fragmentation induced by technological amalgamation, ultimately
achieving a transition from professional competence to life wisdom. Through detailed analysis on both theoretical and practical levels, this paper reveals that Liu’s theory of “China’s Foreign Literature” offers an enlightening and comprehensive solution for the autonomous development and modern transformation of foreign literature education in China during the new era.

Prof. Liu Jianjun’s research fields are extremely broad, covering various areas such as novel theory, medieval literature, Byzantine literature, Christian culture and the Western literary tradition, as well as teaching concepts and methods. He has achieved fruitful results in each of these fields. In his research across numerous fields, Prof. Liu summarizes that in his research across numerous fields, he has always focused on a central point, namely, the mode of thinking and its changing patterns. Prof. Liu believes that the comparative study of Chinese and foreign literature, in the final analysis, is the study of the thinking patterns of different nations. In research, researchers must organically combine Western and Chinese modes of thinking, as well as humanistic rationality and technological rationality. At the end of the interview, Prof. Liu points out that under the influence of new cognitive methods, the binary opposition between subject and object and simple causal theories will be superseded, paving the way for the gradual formation of a new intellectual framework.

This conversation with Derek Attridge examines the ontological reconfiguration of literature under digital disruption. Focusing on AI’s challenge to authoredness—Attridge’s conceptual framework for textual intentionality—the conversation explores how algorithmic text generation destabilizes traditional author-reader dynamics. Attridge argues that such technological mediation necessitates redefining literary responsibility: even machine-produced texts demand ethical reader-response as they channel collective human experience. While acknowledging AI’s potential to generate inventiveness, he maintains that singularity, the transformative power of literature, remains contingent on the human reader’s open, embodied engagement (“the act-event”). The conversation further contends that emerging forms, such as digital and interactive literature, extend rather than diminish literary theory’s relevance, urging adaptive critical frameworks. Ultimately, Attridge posits technology as a catalyst for literature’s evolution, affirming the irreplaceability of human creativity in sustaining the vitality of the humanities.

Han Kang, Nobel Prize winning author and a pivotal voice in contemporary Korean literature, has long transfigured personal traumas and social violence into works of ethical meditation. Her novel Greek Lessons extends this thread with profound impact, tracing the parallel stories of a woman rendered mute and a Greek instructor gradually losing his sight. Their intertwined stories, articulated through the interplay of third-and first-person narration, dramatize the fragility of human existence and seek new forms of attunement that emerge through the quietude of silence and the uncertainties of darkness. Critics have lauded the novel’s delicate evocation of grief and its nuanced portrayal of the collapse of language, observing how Han gives form to suffering rather than leaving it at the level of description. When analyzed through the framework of ethical literary criticism, the woman’s aphasia and the man’s blindness emerge as ethical lines that reveal the incompleteness and vulnerability inherent in human life. Their deficiencies call forth responsibility toward the Other, requiring a response that transcends sympathy. Within the framework of Nie Zhenzhao’s theory of ethical literary criticism, GreekLessons illustrates how vulnerability itself constitutes the very foundation of ethical relation. By transforming loss and deprivation into a site of ethical encounter, Han Kang underscores literature’s capacity to compel reflection on suffering and to elicit a moral response. In doing so, Greek Lessons exemplifies the literature’s enduring ethical force and reaffirms Han’s distinctive literary vision within both Korean and world literature.

This paper aims to reassess the unique value and significance of English Romantic poetry, using the new theoretical concept of “eco-ethics” in ethical literary criticism. The paper argues that the English Romantic poets of the 19th century were keen on nature, and they did not simply depict the natural scenery, but were permeated with profound thoughts about man and nature. Whether it was Blake as a pioneer, Wordsworth as a Lake Poet, or Shelley, who was famous for his nature lyric poems, all of them had a typical sense of ecological ethics. Even Byron defined human existence as the interpenetration of culture and nature. His socio-ecological outlook is also full of ecological ethical consciousness. Romantic poets tried to get rid of the loneliness after “natural selection,” to think and explore with natural imagery, or to find the connection between man and nature through them, to build a “community of destiny” in the real sense of man and nature, and to pursue the idea of man’s compatibility with nature. The concept is characterized by its complex and profound eco-ethical thoughts.