12 years on and off in China (and I'm a Green Card holder there), I may know a thing or two. Lets put it simply; most of what you know about China is false, in the wrong (or undesirable way). Make of...
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12 years on and off in China (and I'm a Green Card holder there), I may know a thing or two. Lets put it simply; most of what you know about China is false, in the wrong (or undesirable way). Make of...
Victorian England was plagued by moralism, in a similar sense to how the 21st century is obsessed with moral purification. Matthew Arnold etc. were champions of this sort of approach. In the end, the...
Many regard Wagner's Ring Cycle as having high literary value. That being said, I like to think of opera as something that should be seen and heard, rather than read. That being said, I am also of...
Most 19th century books and earlier were illustrated. Many Medieval manuscripts were illuminated. In the history of the book, no illustrations, figures and visual aesthetics is the exception, not the...
He was no real poet. This feels like a political post more than anything. That being said, Litnet is mostly inaccessible from China (the ad banners confuse the censorship and don't let the website...
It's actually a very complicated book from a textual perspective, with one of the most difficult bibliographies in the Chinese canon. My general feelings about it are it was meant as a war manual,...
Virgil and Tennyson come to mind for flowery language most above all.
Ge Hong's work, or Tao Huangjing's work, both ancient Chinese masters of esoteric. Though be warned, their stuff is weird.
Don Quixote probably -- the humor is consistent anyway, except for the godawful poetry.
Meh, not necessarily democratic. Try Haoran, The Golden Road, which was the propaganda novel of the Cultural Revolution. That's a bit naive.
Generally its easy to create allegories for reality...
In simplistic terms, the American Pastoral landscape is Martha's Vineyard (especially now that the plantation is out of the question as an innocent space), the British Pastoral Landscape is Avallon....
Prior to Zola, in general readers were buying volumes of books (meaning one novel devided into 3-5parts) at an impossible amount of money. Therefore instead of buying books, people would subscribe to...
The Betrothed is an essential text, that and Dante's works, particularly the Comedia are the essence of Italian literary education.
The English poetic idiom in general, however, is more contemplative than lyrical. Iambic pentameter as a meter is much slower, and offers enough room to make sustained arguments with reflection...
Basically the traditional methods of scholarship are two fold; historical understanding (biography, context, historical trends), and textual (concerned with interpreting passages based on definition...
French relies heavily on form, which is almost totally lost on English readers. Coleridge had disparaging remarks for French literature as well; this is not a new phenomenon. Generally it's because...
When I was still reading novels (I'm now reading history and poetry, and very, very little fiction) I used to really need a good puff of Marijuana to get the real irony of the novels. Memory plus...
As someone who has digested a large chunk of the Western and a so called East-Asian Canon, I can say that the list is good for 1994. The list is written in regard to a cultural war, with the direct...
When you do specialist research on ancient manuscripts you acquire dictionaries very, very quickly. The only reason I don't have more is because most are published digitally now.
I literally have 50 different Chinese dictionaries on my shelf (each classic and major author has their own specific dictionary, plus several large comprehensive ones). As for English, the OED on CD...
In all honesty, that they work their workers like they should be worked to me seems like a boon not a detraction. I am happy to say that Amazon not only maintains a staff where many people want to...
To add to this, Canadian modernist art is a mix of Impressionism and Japanese artworks, and impressionism and much of European art toward the beginning of the 20th century was fairly "Asian" in the...
Firstly, the results were messed up because it took an ideal of the Chinese system - not the actual Chinese system which is underfunded, poorly staffed and semi-educated as found in the majority of...
duplicate, please disregard.
Fascination with Japan is already nearing 200 years actually. Japanese things have always been popular and accepted/desired, even when the country was in shambles in the 40s. The truth is the...