The Early Oversea Spread Of Chinese Theories Of Literature, Calligraphy And Painting

The theories of Chinese literature, calligraphy and painting are symbols of graceful spirit of Chinese culture. The oversea spread of these theories composes an important part of the exchanges between Chinese and western cultures. This thesis investigates the spread of these theories in Europe and America in the 20th century, which is of great important significance for the current output of Chinese culture. The definite objects are Chinese Theories of literature by James Y. Liu, Chinese Calligraphy by Jiang Yi, the paintings and thoughts of Zau Wou-Ki are taken as specific objects.As the first person to spread the literary theories of China abroad systematically, James J.Y.Liu’s strategy has three patterns. Firstly, he had a good command of both English and Chinese, so he could overcome the language barrier and translate the essences of Chinese literary theories into English himself. Secondly, based on fully understanding of Chinese literary theories, he reconstructed the poetic systems of the ancient Chinese literary theories according to western poetic system of Meyer Howard Abrams. Thirdly, he compared the Chinese literature theories with the correlate western literary theories. In the wake of these strategies, he succeeded in the oversea spread of Chinese literary theories. Chinese Theories of literature enlightened following researches, and started a way in the oversea spread of Chinese literary theories.Chinese Calligraphy was the first calligraphy textbook published in English for western readers. In this thesis, I pay special attention to the following questions:Jiang Yi took spreading orthodox calligraphy as his own mission; his comments on the close relationship among Chinese calligraphy and Chinese painting, carving, architecture, and so on; the significance of Chinese Calligraphy in the oversea spread history of Chinese calligraphy.As for Zau Wou-Ki, I focused on how he became an international artist with a childhood influenced by traditional Chinese culture. His painting theory emphasized that we should learn from the classic paintings of China and western countries. And he also laid stress on orthodoxy-maintaining and innovation. He encouraged artists to become international artist...