Michael A. FullerAssociate Professor, East Asian Languages & Literature |
|
|
Research Interests |
Classical Chinese poetry and poetics, the cultural and intellectual contexts for poetry, aesthetic theory, linguistic issues in classical Chinese | |
| URL | www.humanities.uci.edu/eastasian/people/mfuller.html | |
|
Research Abstract |
While I was completing a B.A. in English literature at Yale University, I became interested in the question of the cultural and philosophical forces that shape literary history and began studying Chinese to gain a comparative perspective. This same question informed my doctoral thesis on the development of the poetry of the Northern Song dynasty literatus, Su Shi. Since then, I have turned my attention to both earlier and later periods, to both the beginnings of the Chinese literati cultural traditions and to the culture of the Southern Song, which marks the beginning of late imperial Chinese culture. Because, in my opinion, the most basic questions of literary history have not been well answered for the Chinese poetic tradition, I have tended to let the issues of contemporary critical theory inform my approach, but I rarely bring them to the foreground. I also believe that cultural theories are not the only compelling mode of analysis for aesthetic phenomena: connectionist theory in cognitive psychology will soon play an important role in our understanding of language and all other semiological systems. When that field develops more, I will see what it offers the study of literature as a branch of human experience. I also teach the introductory classes in classical Chinese and have become interested in problems of the linguistic analysis of wenyan, ranging from phonology to syntax, discourse analysis and semantics, though I readily confess to a lack of formal training in these fields. | |
| Publications | An Introduction to Literary Chinese. Harvard University Press (1999) | |
| The Road to East Slope: The Development of Su Shi's Poetic Voice. Stanford: Stanford University Press (1990) | ||
| “Aesthetics and Meaning in Experience: A Theoretical Perspective on Zhu Xi’s Revision of Song Dynasty Views of Poetry,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies Vol. 65, No. 2 (Dec. 2005), pp. 311-55. | ||
| 中國詩歌經驗的理論闡釋: 對宋詩史的反思緒言“Theorizing Chinese Poetic Experience: a Prolegomenon to Rethinking the History of Song Dynasty Poetry.” Xin Song xue [New Song Studies] 1(2001):167-181. (Translated by Chen Lin) | ||
| "Pursuing the Complete Bamboo in the Breast: Reflections on a Classical Chinese Image for Immediacy," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (June, 1993). | ||
| Link to this profile | http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=2794 | |
| Last updated | 04/28/2006 | |