This paper discusses the so-called “crisis” and “death” of comparative literature as a discipline, arguing that the congenital deficiency and internal illogicality are the root causes that make comparative literature lose the disciplinary consciousness in its growth. The theoretical turn, great emergence of cultural studies and the flooding of deconstructive torrent within the past thirty years are the external causes that lead the discipline into “crisis” and “death.” The paper asserts that despite its crises, comparative literature is not dying, but growing rapidly. The paper suggests that only by effectively constructing its disciplinary theory can Chinese comparative literature possibly strive to be the representative of the discipline in its third stage after French and American schools.

The great civilizations are created both in ancient China and India, but they differ considerably in the forms in which the culture achieves expression. This article puts in order the different forms from the aspects of language, linguistics, the philosophy of linguistics, the relation between language and literature, etc., which keep alive the cultural traditions of the two countries. The article explores the underlying causes and explains how the Indian Buddhism makes the direct connection with the ancient Chinese culture, and plays the complementary and supplementary role in the development of the ancient Chinese linguistics and literature.

This paper presents specific problems posed by the Chinese translation of Victor Segalen’s prose poetry collection Stèles, and reflects on the varied relationships between Western writers and the Chinese language. The author holds that the relationship between Segalen and Chinese is not only empirical, but imaginary. For him, as for other contemporary French poets such as Gérard Macé, the Chinese language has become metaphoric for poetic language.

Who is the translator of Xinxi xiantan, the first translated fiction in modern China? This has been a mystery for over one hundred years. Although some progress has been made since 1990s, there is still no compelling evidence or pronounced conclusion on this topic. Based on the research of the scholars at the time, this paper aims to make use of such initial data as newspapers, journals, collections of poems, diaries, draft reports to the throne, the unpublished manuscripts and files of the imperial examination at that time to discover the one-hundred-year mystery and provide a full certification, so that the problem can be solved in the true sense. In addition, this paper also tries to show the basic features of the translator’s life with detailed information.

The prosperity of utopian literature happened under the historical background that China was faced with “the greatest turbulence which had never occurred for the past three thousand years.” The significant changes took place in modern China were not merely a passive response to the outside threats, but an active pursuit of something greater. The utopian literature gave expression to Chinese people’s desire of stepping out of tradition to the new land of civilization. The aesthetic common sense created by the utopian novels filled the vacuum of faith after the decline of tradition and performed the social functions of uniting people and promoting reform. The popularity of utopian literature improved the cultural position of literature and accelerated its change from the traditional form to the modern form.

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland first translated into Chinese by Zhao Yuanren was published in 1922. As an advocator of the New Literature Movement, Zhao chose to translate the famous fantastic novel in vernacular Chinese, which was virtually a linguistic experiment for the New Literature. He fulfilled the seemingly impossible mission and his version has been most popular till now. While the taste of Nonsense Literature which Zhao favored in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, was ignored or changed in its two Chinese imitators: Shen Congwen’s Alice’s Adventures in China in 1928 and Chen Bochui’s Ms. Alice in 1931.

Gexing 歌行 is a historical and robust prosodic style that flourished (not originated) in the Tang dynasty. Since ancient times, the understanding of the prosody of gexing has remained in debate, which focuses on the relationship between gexing and yuefu 乐府 (collection of ballad songs of the music bureau). The points-of-view held by all sides can be summarized as a “grand gexing” perspective (defining gexing in a broad sense) and four major “small gexing” perspectives (defining gexing in a narrow sense). The former is namely what Hu Yinglin 胡应麟 from Ming dynasty said, “gexing is a general term for seven-character ancient poems.” The first “small gexing” perspective distinguishes gexing from guti yuefu 古体乐府 (tradition yuefu); the second distinguishes it from xinti yuefu 新体乐府 (new yuefu poems with non-conventional themes); the third takes “the lyric title” as the requisite condition of gexing; and the fourth perspective adopts the criterion of “metricality” in distinguishing gexing from ancient poems. The “grand gexing” perspective is the only one that is able to reveal the core prosodic features of gexing and give specification to the intension and extension of gexing as a prosodic style.