[Mother and daughter as allegory of mother-daughter relationship? (Singapore 2016). Foto Rb]
Just some short and extremely limited notes on the
problem of Chinese allegory on which I am presently gathering a group of references.
Allegory is used in the Chinese language in ways
similar to its usage in western languages as some examples show from the Speak Chinese language course.
According to Jerome Silbergeld, as quoted by Gina
Marchetti [1],
China also has a long tradition of literary and visual allegory. Despite the
denial of some critics, Silbergeld underlines the importance of allegory in
Chinese culture, especially in his book China
into Film.
Andrew
H. Plaks is one of the authoritative sources for Chinese literary allegory,
understood as an intentional disguise of what one means under a different set
of words and phrases. In particular Plaks interprets some Chinese literature as
Confucian allegory [2].
Madeline Kay Spring, studied animal allegory in
traditional T’ang China [3].
According to Anne Weller-Wellesbord, “political
allegorical reading controlled by the Communist Pary” has been used in relation
to Chinese authors such as Lu Xun [4].
Weller Wellesbord advocates that the concept of allegory can be positively applied
to the study of modern Chinese literature in its Western post-Benjamin sense.
Sabina Knight uses the word “allegory” quite openly,
for instance in her interpretation of the political and social significance of Gao
Xingjian’s play The Bus Stop [5].
Haun Saussy problematizes the idea of allegory in
the interaction between Chinese and Western cultures, wondering to what extent
the interpretations of Oriental texts based on Western methodologies can be
compatible and in what ways they interact with each other. In particular she
discusses the Chinese
Book of Odes [6].
Ling Hon Lam considers traditional Chinese allegory
as synecdoche, or a part for the whole, in Journey
to the West interpreted as Confucian. The allegory for Confucianism is understood
in this essay as a synecdoche of a wider range of Confucian/Daoist/Buddhist
concepts, or even as “allegory of allegory” [7].
Still on Journey
to the West, the concept of allegory in relation to violence is adopted by Frederick
Brandauer [8].
[Roberto Bertoni]
[1] Marchetti, G., From Tian’anmen to Times Square: Transnational China and the Chinese Diaspora on the Global
Screens, 1989-1997, Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 2006, p. 33.
[2] See
his authored study of Archetype and
Allegory in The Dream of the Red Chamber, Princeton Legacy Library, 2015; and
Chinese
narrative: critical and theoretical essays, ed. Plaks, A.H., Princeton Legacy Library, 2014.
[3]
Spring, M.K., Animal Allegories in T’ang China, American Oriental Society, Ann Arbour, University of Michigan, 1993.
[4] Pp. 72-91 of Wedell Wedesborg, A., “Self-Identity and Allegory in the Fiction of Yu Hua”, in Identity in
Asian Literature, ed. Littrupp, L., London and New
York, Routledge Curzon, 2005, p. 73.
