Author：Martin Powers

Abstract: Within the vast body of scholarship on the Enlightenment, only a small portion addresses the role of China in the debates of that period. Among those, scarcely any concerns the relationship between China and Rousseau's thought. Yet the connections are many, and deep. This essay surveys a body of Chinese political theory available to Rousseau, then compares Rousseau's understanding of sovereignty, the "people," popular will, public opinion, and the authority of office, with comparable terms present in the Chinese theory available to him. The aim of this exercise is not so much to establish influence, though that can be difficult to deny. Primarily, the essay attempts to show that Rousseau's system generates contradictions in part because he attempts to combine parliamentary procedure with the conception of sovereignty and the popular will found in his Chinese sources.

Vol. 6 No. 1 June 2022      Time：2022-06-20 View Citation

Author：Zhang Longxi

Abstract: The writing of history has encountered many challenges in twenty-century theoretical discussions, and postmodernism and deconstruction in particular have made literary history all but impossible in the West. Because world literature today remains the canonical works of Western literature, while much of the non-Western literatures and even “minor” European literatures remain unknown and untranslated, a world history of literature is absolutely necessary to introduce the yet-unknown world literature to a global readership beyond the original linguistic and cultural milieux of those unknown literary works. Translating those yet-unknown works into English for a wider circulation is the first step to make world literature go beyond Eurocentrism, and writing a world history of literature will help us know the basic situation of the world’s literary traditions from a truly global perspective.

Vol. 6 No. 1 June 2022      Time：2022-06-20 View Citation

Author：

Abstract: Vol.6 No.1 2022 Notes on Contributors

Vol. 6 No. 1 June 2022      Time：2022-06-20 View Citation