The possibility of a universal poetics of the “novel”? depends on close analysis of the origin and development of this narrative form in East and West. While the first Western novel might have been Don Quixote in the 16th century, The Tale of Genji, which meets many novelistic criteria, appeared in Japan in the 11th century. But while it is commonly assumed that the (Western) novel is grounded in epic poetry, the Far East lacks an epic tradition. However, China and Japan do have a strong tradition of what Frye calls epos, oral story-telling. The argument here is that the classic Chinese and Japanese novels originated from this oral tradition, which is perhaps the best way to explain a unique feature of these novels: the permeation of the narrative structure by verse, by lyric forms. The (Far Eastern, and perhaps also Western) novel is a large “narrative vessel” made by linking together smaller units. This—and/or the fact that the Japanese and Chinese novel traditionally has a lower status than the lyric poem—may be why the novel is called hsiao shuo, “small talk” in Chinese and Japanese.

The history never exists. There are only histories as texts o discourses. This paper attempts to display, through the analysis of the four works by Ch’en Ying-chen, Lan Po-chou, Yang Chao and Chang Ta-ch’un, how histories, by means of different writings of history, are either inherently ideologicalized and moralized as a rational progress or detotalized as indeterminate, heterogeneous fragments of psychotic experiences. In both cases, the historical truth has been tortured: either by the unattainable relax or by the disillusioned chaos. For Ch’en Ying-chen and Lan Po-chou, history, however cruel and barbaric it may be, still operates as the teleological function of its subject. Yang Chao and Chang Ta-ch’un, on the other hand, tend to reveal the irrational phenomena of history by tracing the contingent, ambiguous, paradoxical, and yet lethal elements of the past. Without turning into metanarratives that totalize the historical discourses, the metafictionality in Yang Chao and Chang Ta-ch’un’s stories questions the rationality of history and suggests the infinite difference of the language game in the writing of history. Thus the metahistorical form of fiction is a problematic, unauthentic one: it is established as ruins or debris.

In the politically oriented criticism of fantastic literature, the fantastic is situated in a negative relation to the dominant cultural frame of reference which constructs and legitimates what is real. Paying close attention to the negative relationality of Chinese fantastic texts vis-a-vis the symbolic order of Chinese culture under the Communist regime, the paper proposes that only by approaching the Chinese fantastic in subversive terms can we assess adequately its sharp political efficacy and avoid what is often called the “transcendentalist theory”, which regards the fantastic merely as a secondary, Utopian world of pure fantasy and desire. In this light the Chinese fantastic can be seen as an attempt to subvert the hypostasis of the prevailing epistemological and ideological frame of reference by which the totalitarian regime sustains its political and ideological hegemony. The paper will focus on the two fantastic texts written by Yu Hua, which puts under scrutiny two major notions about the real and history. The first text sets out to play on the conceptual limits of realism, and constitutes a textual and structural disruption of the textual apparatus of socialist realism. The second text aims at the officially sanctioned notion and collective forgetfullness about China’s past. By evoking the fantastic and surreal return of the brutal past in the person of a self-torturing madman, the text lays bare the arbitary and frail distinction drawn by the prevailing discourse between the past and the present.

Basing itself on Lévi-Strauss’ insight that the repetition of a myth across time and space can be attributed to the human unconscious, this study of the meaning and structure of the catabatic journey to the underworld in Virgil’s Aeneid and Lo Mou-teng’s Voyage to the Western Sea of the Chief Eunuch San-pao shows that each work can be interpreted diachronically and synchronically in relation to the other. Because a mythic pattern can explain, as Lévi-Strauss says, the present, past and future, for both authors the underworld motif has a developmental function: the experience of death and rebirth embodies the psychological remoulding of the heroes, the necessary prerequisite to the achievement of greater goals. Through their catabatic journeys both heroes, gaining self-knowledge, become more human.

Drawing on Roland Barthes’s theory of myth, this article argues that the Chinese dragon can be read as a mythical signification deeply entwined with Confucianism, the dominant ideology in traditional China. It is not fortuitous that the dragon, rather than the t’ao-t’ieh, became an enduring emblem of imperial power in feudal China. The Chinese dragon as a powerful, capricious, but basically beneficent divine creature lends itself to a perfect analogy with the ideal Confucian ruler who practiced jen (benevolence) and li (rites). The emperor, who was supposed to treat his subjects kindly while maintraining the existing sociopolitical hierarchy, and who combined favors and graces with power and authority, was equated with the dragon. Dragon worship is in essence a form of authority worship, which is responsible for many serious defects in the Chinese national character. This article also proposes that traditional Chinese society was also a privileged field of mythical signification, semiologically comparable to modem bourgeois society in the West, where bourgeois norms assume a “natural” and “rational” form. Both jen and li, according to Confucianism, may be traced to the “natural” human emotions that the individual experiences in the family. In addition, Confucianism also appeals to a pragmatic rationalism based on the individual’s intuitive judgments and experiential knowledge. The dragon is a complex sign in Chinese culture, susceptible to appropriation by various political and cultural forces in contemporary China. But so long as feudal practices still linger in Chinese society, one must not embrace this sign uncritically.

In translating English poetry into Chinese (or Chinese poetry into English) we must consider not only our choice of words and word order, but also an “equivalent” or “comparable” line length. This does not mean the English and Chinese lines need to be the same length—on the principle of character-for-syllable, syllable-for-character, character-for-syllable-segment or syllable-segment-for-character (where the “moun” of “mountain” is a syllable and the “m” and “n” of “moun” are syllable segments)——though they could be of equivalent length according to any of these standards of measure if it seems to fit the feeling and meaning in that particular case. However, there is no real need for a “regular” meter in the source language to be rendered into a regular meter in the target language. On the contrary, more natural rhythm and speech may well be achieved by an “irregular” meter in the target language—that is, by adding “padding words” or phrases. This also helps us to catch the sense of the “run-on lines” in English verse when we translate into Chinese, since formal Chinese poetry is felt to have end-stopped lines.

Conducted in June 1990 and revised extensively by the interviewee J. Hillis Miller himself, this interview (with its nineteen questions and answers) focuses on some issues of special interest to students of English and American literature as well as literary criticism and theory. Dialogic and interactive by nature, it remarks Miller's development first as a student of New Criticism and then as an eloquent proponent of Criticism of Consciousness (as proposed by Georges Poulet) and later of Deconstruction (as proposed by Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man). Also dealt with in the interview are his position in and relationship to the Yale Critics, his significance in the institutionalization of American literary theory, his discussion about New Historicism, Cultural Studies, etc., his observation about the so-called age of digital reproduction, and his interest in the ethics of reading, the performative and inaugural function of works of literature, as well as the translation of theory (especially Deconstruction) into other disciplines, languages, and cultures.