平特五不中

Paul Hsiang Lecture Series on Chinese Poetry
Everyday 鈥淟ines Intended for Public View鈥�:A Comparative Approach to Chinese and British Women鈥檚 Poetry (1650-1750)

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by Haihong Yang
Associate Professor of Chinese, University of Delaware

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Friday, Nov. 5th, 2021
4:30-6:00 p.m. ET
The lecture will be hosted on Zoom

This study proposes a comparative approach to lyric poems by Chinese and British women writers from the mid-17th century to the mid-18th century based on their everydayness. It aims to investigate what is said in their poems, how it is said and why. It is also devoted to examining how these poems interact with and reconstruct existing institutions and transform norms. It explores how new knowledge is generated when a text is read against its counterparts from a different social and cultural context by today鈥檚 readers with our stereotypes and biases.
The comparison based on everydayness neither implies an ontological historical realism nor aims to reinforce the boundaries of social and cultural narratives of the two geographical regions. Rather, it challenges ethnocentric readings of cultural products and strives to acknowledge how alterity in any seemingly homogeneous communities paradoxically reveals commonalities of human experiences and conditions. In the process, we hope to discover the unknown and question existing boundaries when we acknowledge everydayness as the core of humanity.

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