The Way and Logos - Eastern and Western Literary Hermeneutics

Author: Zhang Longxi
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-05-01
Features: This book explores the nature of language and its complex connotations in literary creation and literary reading. The comparisons and contrasts presented in this book are not oriented historically, but rather aim to identify common ground through a critical lens, focusing on certain shared themes that appear at different times in both the East and the West. I have never believed in the uniqueness claims of any literary or cultural tradition—I do not subscribe to the view that the East and the West are so vastly different that their modes of thinking and expression cannot be understood by one another, thereby necessitating that one kind of knowledge must always remain separate from another. One of the things I have decided to do in this book is to dismantle the fences between various academic territories, these territories being referred to as fields and disciplines, which are enclosed within the of academies and departments. I prefer to challenge this division of knowledge and demonstrate certain fundamental, cross-cultural hermeneutic concerns and strategies. The issues discussed in this book were initially sketched out in rough form in an article published in 1983.