CHINESE UTOPIA: ITS EVOLUTION, POETIC ANCHORAGE AND MODERN TRANSFORMATION

• Authors: Meng Xiangchun , Zhang Lirong
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The major forms of Chinese utopia include “the Land of Bliss”, the Taoist “small country with few inhabitants”, the Confucian “Great Unity”, Tao Yuanming’s “Peach Blossom Spring”, Kang Youwei’s “World of Great Unity” and its modern variations. Chinese utopia has evolved from reactive poetic retreat to active political remoulding. It has developed from pastness to nowness in terms of temporal orientation, and from “nowhere” to “somewhere” and then to hereness in terms of spatial orientation. Chinese utopia has strong poetic anchorage, which is determined by the Heaven-Earth-man unity. Through the mechanism of experience shift, Chinese utopia in the modern context is often transformed into a usable cultural or spiritual icon, or national political vision, policies, blueprints and concrete social practice. A comprehensive insight into the Chinese utopian tradition helps to understand the utopian-poetic-political entanglement in China.

Keywords

EN

CHINESE UTOPIA; EVOLUTION; POETIC ANCHORAGE; TRANSFORMATION

• Publisher: Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: World Literature Studies
• Year: 2021
• Volume: 13
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 33 - 42

Contributors

author

Meng Xiangchun

• School of Foreign Languages, Soochow University, 1, Shizi Street, Suzhou 215006 Jiangsu, China

• https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0654-3781

author

Zhang Lirong

• https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7316-4415

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31577/WLS.2021.13.2.3