Approaching Qian Zhongshu:a Modern Rhetoric Perspective

Qian Zhongshu is noted as the twentieth-century China’s outstanding student of comparative culture studies. Though scholars at home and abroad remember Qian as exemplary in being equally superbly grounded in the scholarship of East and West, thus far no efforts have ever been made to explore his close affinity with modern rhetoric in the West. This cross-cultural and synchronic comparative study, therefore, represents an attempt in this direction, in the hope of identifying both I. A. Richards and Nietzsche’ influence upon Qian’s scholarship and Kenneth Burke and Chaim Perelman’s unexpected correspondences with him.Richards’ antipathy toward the ever-disputing Western philosophic schools led Qian to his twin rhetorical moves for academic enterprise. Qian accepted and illuminated Richards’ rhetorical theory of communication initially, yet overtook Richards in his later works. Likewise, while Richards’ theory of context was handicapped by his in-built modernist leanings, Qian succeeded in coming up with a qualitatively-refined version as its replacement.There is a great deal of common ground between Qian and Burke on account of their mutual acceptance of Nietzsche’s rhetorical thought. They concur in matters such as relationships between human and language and between language and reality, while differing radically in the means to overcome the limitations imposed by any given terminology or terministic screen. They both practised Nietzsche’s rhetorical inventional technique imitation by reversing and either evolved a theory of metaphor under the influence of Nietzsche’s Perspectivism. Moreover, Qian’s explanatory account of the phenomena of identification serves to corroborate and enrich Burke’s theory of identification.Also, Qian and Perelman have a lot in common in their thoughts on rhetoric. Perelman’s argumentation theory stresses the importance of the contact of minds, and this is fully reflected in Qian’s enthusiastic oratory and argumentation practices. These practices, as the study shows, contribute enormously to the advancement of Qian’s scholarship. Toward the end of the study, I examined in detail Qian’s dissociative practices in the light of Perelman’s theory of dissociation. And my examination is the first ever that offered a comprehensive rhetorical criticism of Qian’s arguments with Zhou Zuoren and Guo Shaoyu.The goal of this study is twofold:to encourage students of Qian Zhongshu studies to approach Qian from the perspective of modern rhetoric in the West on the one hand; and to introduce these students to modern rhetoric on the other. Insofar as my present endeavor is a mere partial accomplishment of the goal at its best, unremitting efforts shall be made in my pursuit of it in studies that follow.