New Readings in College Chinese

Author: Xiao Ruifeng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-03-01
Features: The division into two parts (Upper and Lower) of the "New Reader" is essentially a division of literary history, but it is concise and clear, imbued with sound and unpedantic literary historical insight. A more ideal humanistic state in a society should be one with a broad reading public, who enhance their thoughts and aesthetic realms through reading, and come to understand how the human spirit has been striving around the center of "truth, goodness, and beauty" for millennia. This can further enable them to appreciate and recognize the value and necessity of the "useless use" of humanities, and to learn to respect their mother tongue culture and literature. Therefore, the book is organized into two parts. The Upper Part, "Chinese Language and Literary Tradition," selects texts ranging from ancient times to the Qing Dynasty, corresponding to a relatively closed and autonomous cultural process, narrating the long and continuous historical context. The Lower Part, "New Culture and World Literature," selects works from both China and the world since the May Fourth Movement, with a perspective of the growth of new culture and new literature. Compared to traditional literary studies, this may have a certain "otherness," but it cannot be ignored that in the past century, the collision and integration of Chinese and foreign cultures have pushed us into the same context of "World Literature." We considered that as a university Chinese reader, it is neither possible nor necessary to fully accommodate the context of Chinese and foreign literary history. Therefore, this book only provides the coordinates of "history" in the broader framework, and within each part, texts are organized by genre. There are also practical considerations in the arrangement, which also emphasizes the form of existence of the works. From an experiential perspective, the "newness" of this new reader is also a result of multi-directional reference and innovation. We agree with the idea of using literature as the basic carrier for university Chinese, but public courses naturally have the requirement of broadening knowledge horizons, which reminds us to avoid narrow specialization.