The Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation International Sinological Center in Prague organizes
The summer school aims to encourage interest in modern and contemporary Chinese poetry among graduate students of sinology/Chinese studies (Master’s and Ph.D.) as well as the broader interested academic public. It will cover topics essential to understanding the very concept of “modern poetry” (新詩) originally shaped in opposition to “old poetry” (舊詩), and its search for new language, form, and imagination through the 21st century. It will introduce the differences and interactions between traditional genres and modern poetry, as well as the diversity of poetic expressions by modern poets accumulated over time and space, including distinct poetic practices in China proper, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. The life of traditional genres in contemporary China also will be touched upon. Chinese poetry will be discussed through the work of selected poets and the summer school will consist of lectures and reading sessions, for which material will be provided in advance.
Speakers at the summer school will include (in alphabetic order) Kwok-kou Leonard Chan (Tsing-hua University, Hsin-chu), Maghiel van Crevel (Leiden University), Olga Lomová and Šárka Masárová (Charles University), Andrea Riemenschnitter (University of Zurich), Michelle Yeh (University of California, Davis), and Yang Zhiyi (Goethe University, Frankfurt).
The summer school is open to all interested students and scholars, upon submitting an online application including a letter of motivation and a short CV (up to 1 page). The tuition is free for all participants. Participants from Central and Eastern European institutions are eligible for a limited number of CCK-F travel and accommodation grants; to apply, specify the estimated ticket price in the online application.
The application deadline is June 15, 2024. Notice of acceptance by June 30, 2024.
Update: The registration and the accommodation booking are now closed. If you are a Charles University student wishing to participate, please contact katerina.gajdosova@ff.cuni.cz.
Michelle Yeh (奚密) (University of California, Davis, USA)
Leonard Kwok Kou Chan (陳國球) (National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu)
Yang Zhiyi (楊治宜) (JWG University Frankfurt am Main)
Maghiel van Crevel (Leiden University, Netherlands)
Andrea Riemenschnitter (University of Zurich, Switzeland)
Šárka Masárová (Charles University, Prague)
and Olga Lomová (Charles University, Prague)
Day 1: Monday, September 2
9.30–10.00: Olga Lomová – welcome, introduction to the summer school
10.00–11.30: Michelle Yeh – keynote lecture: What Is Modern About Modern Chinese Poetry?—Challenges and Innovations
Lunch
13.30–15.00: Michelle Yeh: What Is Modern About Modern Chinese Poetry?—Challenges and Innovations – reading session
Coffee break
15.30–17.00: Olga Lomová: Poetry in the Service of the Revolution – Yan‘an Talks and Folk Song
(Several samples will be discussed, no special reading session on this topic.)
!!19.00 Dinner reception at Kavárna Adria – Caffé Restaurant, Národní 40/36, Prague 1 (https://www.caffeadria.cz/)
Day 2: Tuesday, September 3
9.30–11.00: Leonard Kwok Kou Chan: Channelling the traditional into the modern: On Wu Xinghua’s (吳興華 1912-1966) poetry and poetics
Coffee break
11.30–13.00: Leonard Kwok Kou Chan: Channelling the traditional into the modern: On Wu Xinghua’s (吳興華 1912-1966) poetry and poetics – reading session
Lunch
14.30–16.00: Yang Zhiyi: Avant-garde classicism in the Sinophone Cyberspace
Coffee break
16.30–18.00: Yang Zhiyi: Avant-garde classicism in the Sinophone Cyberspace – reading session
Day 3: Wednesday, September 4
9.00–10.30: Michelle Yeh: Modern Poetry in Taiwan
Coffee break
11.00–12.30: Michelle Yeh: Modern Poetry in Taiwan – reading session
Lunch
14.30–16.00: Maghiel van Crevel: Inside, Outside, In Between: The Poetry Industry in Contemporary China
Coffee break
16.30–18.00 Maghiel van Crevel: Inside, Outside, In Between: The Poetry Industry in Contemporary China – reading session
Day 4: Thursday, September 5
9.30–11.00: Andrea Riemenschnitter: Postcolonial Affairs of Food and the Heart: Hong Kong Poet Leung Ping-kwan’s Lyrical Universe
Coffee break
11.30–13.00: Andrea Riemenschnitter: Sound, Verse, and More: Hong Kong Poetry – reading session
Lunch
Afternoon: Exhibition in the Museum of Czech Literature: Poetry and Performance: East European Perspective
(Venue: Museum of Czech Literature, Letohrádek Hvězda, Praha 6).
https://pamatniknarodnihopisemnictvi.cz/poezie-performance-vychodoevropska-perspektiva/
17:00–18:30 Dalibor Dobiáš: Poetry, including poetry translation in the “Czech national revival movement” (FF UK, P104)
Day 5: Friday, September 6
9.00–10.30 Šárka Masárová: Chinese Women Poets from the 1980s to the Turn of the New Millennium
Coffee break
11.00–12.30 Šárka Masárová: Chinese Women Poets from the 1980s to the Turn of the New Millennium – reading session
What Is Modern About Modern Chinese Poetry?—Challenges and Innovations
This lecture offers an overview of the century-long development of modern poetry in China. It begins with the structural changes as China transitioned from the Qing dynasty to the Republic. As a result of those changes, poetry lost its traditional roles and functions. Another major challenge facing modern poets was how to create a new poetry that differed from classical poetry not only in language and form but also, at a more fundamental level, in the aesthetic paradigm the latter represented. Drawing on newly available cultural resources and with great imagination, they have succeeded in establishing modern poetry as the major form of Chinese poetry in the twentieth century and beyond.
Modern Poetry in Taiwan
This lecture offers an overview of the historical development of modern poetry in Taiwan since the early twentieth century. In chronological order, the overview focuses on the major movements and styles, as well as the intricate relations between modern poetry and Taiwan’s political, social, and cultural changes.
Poetry in the Service of the Revolution – Yan‘an Talks and Folk Song
This talk will introduce Mao Zedong’s understanding of poetry (and literature in general) formulated in his famous 1942 Yan’an Talks on Literature and Art (在延安文藝座談會上的講話). Chairman Mao’s speeches, originally a tool for repressive campaign targeting Yan’an intellectuals, in the People’s Republic of China have set up the standard for social role of literature and art and charted the borders of artistic expression tolerated by the Communist party (and transgressed by poets). The lecture and examples to be read will pay particular attention to folk literature as a source of inspiration for new poetry “which the masses welcome” (为群众所欢迎) and experiments with folk songs in new revolutionary poetry.
Channelling the traditional into the modern: On Wu Xinghua’s (吳興華 1912-1966) poetry and poetics
Wu Xinghua was a gifted poet who was most productive in late 1930s and 1940s. He lived in the Japanese-occupied Beiping during the Sino-Japanese War, and then experienced the Chinese Civil War and other socio-political turmoils. He was then a victim of the “Cultural Revolution” and passed away in 1966. During his brief and shining life, he produced a significant amount of brilliant creative and scholarly works and translations, which were ignored and neglected by most literary histories. An examination of his early works of criticism reveals that he is precocious with a poetic consciousness of profundity. He also completed a graduation dissertation, entitled “An Application of Modern Methods of Criticism to the Study of Chinese Poetry,” and submitted to Yenching University in 1941. Appropriating E. M. W. Tillyard’s theory of “direct and oblique,” Wu Xinghua demonstrated a new way of text explication in his study of classical Chinese poetry. In parallel with his practical criticism, Wu developed his unique poetics which culminated and flourished in his later literary creation.
Avant-garde classicism in the Sinophone Cyberspace
Since the turn of the millennium, the rapid development of the Internet in China has given fresh impetus to revitalize the writing of poetry in classical genres. Long marginalized by the institutionalized discourse of literary modernity established since the New Culture Movement, this type of poetry never ceases to be written and read, even serving specific ideological agendas during the Maoist era and the post-Maoist cultural thaw. Cyberspace, however, has enabled the birth and growth of a kind of avant-garde movement in lyric classicism, a “bastard child” (used in the deliberately provocative sense) of classical traditions and literary modernism. In this session, we will closely read poems by representative poets from this avant-garde classicist circle, primarily Lizilizilizi (“Plum Chestnut Pear”), Xutang (“Hall of Ethereal Breath”), Dugu-shiroushou (“Lone Carnivore”), and Tianxuezhai (“Studio of Cascading Snow”), to explore the complicated interactive dynamics between the semiotic functioning of the digital media and the semantic memory of China’s lyric traditions.
Inside, Outside, In Between: The Poetry Industry in Contemporary China
The poetry scene in contemporary China is marked by diversity and an extraordinary dynamism, in which wildly divergent cultural practices are held together by the overarching power of poetry as a meme in Chinese cultural tradition. Outlining the contours of this “poetry industry,” this lecture will first touch on salient moments and movements in Chinese poetry since the Cultural Revolution, with due attention to the significance of unofficial (民间) publications. It will then home in on “battler poetry” (打工诗歌) written by precarious internal migrant workers, and consider this recent, highly visible trend in relation to the poetry industry as a whole.
Postcolonial Affairs of Food and the Heart: Hong Kong Poet Leung Ping-kwan’s Lyrical Universe
Poetry, together with calligraphy, has traditionally occupied a central position in Chinese culture, and this holds no less true for modern and contemporary Sinophone communities such as Hong Kong – despite, or perhaps even more so, on behalf of its multicultural legacy. Acting as host of one of the world’s most important poetry festivals since 2009, the biennial International Poetry Night, Hong Kong people enthusiastically welcome poets from all corners of the world. If Hong Kong poetry, unlike Hong Kong film, does not occupy a more visible position in world literature, it is the problem of a global literary market, where poetry is only a niche product. In Hong Kong’s own cultural landscape, poetry occupies a similarly elevated position as the other arts. Historically, it has been serving the community as a local identity marker, sociopolitical commentary, spiritual and lifestyle guide, psychological survival kit, and more. In this lecture, we will delve into the lyrical universe of Leung Ping-Kwan (1949-2013), who almost single-handedly, but always in multilayered dialogues with other artistic disciplines and cultures, developed Hong Kong’s unique poetic voice reflecting on its liminal position between empires as well as on its vibrant local culture and an oftentimes overlooked spirit of conviviality, thus connecting the city and the world in a profoundly perceptive, creative and open-minded way.
Chinese Women Poets from the 1980s to the Turn of the New Millennium
In the 1980s, the Chinese poetry scene saw the emergence of numerous women poets 女诗人, predominantly from larger cities, who had received higher education. The women poets established themselves as poets in a variety of contexts, including as individuals, as members of university poetry groups, or in unofficial 民间 poetry circles. Their poetry is highly diverse, encompassing a wide range of topics. The women poets of the 1980s challenged the conventional notion of a female poet, femininity, and love poetry. In the subsequent decade, the next generation of women poets further elaborated on these concepts.
The reading session will focus on selected works by four women poets: Zhai Yongming 翟永明, Xiao An 小安, Yin Lichuan 尹丽川, and Wu Ang 巫昂. In addition, a part of the reading session will be dedicated to a discussion of English translations of some of the selected poems.
Illustration:
Chen Chi-kwan 陳其寬(1921-2007): 潮, 1985 (Source: Chen Chi-kwan – A Retrospective of at Eighty. Taipei, 2000).
