Introduction to the Special Issue on Modern Chinese Lyric Classicism

• Published in: Frontiers of literary studies in China Vol. 9; no. 4; pp. 510 - 514
• Main Author: Zhiyi, YANG
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: The Netherlands BRILL 2015; Higher Education Press
• Subjects: 中国; 古典主义; 古典风格; 坐标轴; 文学; 时间轴; 词源学; 诗歌
• ISSN: 1673-7318; 1673-7423
• DOI: 10.3868/s010-004-015-0029-6

It is an honor to guest-edit this FLSC special issue on Modem Chinese Lyric Classicism. In terms of subject matter, the contributions to this issue span the twentieth century, on the temporal axis, and China to the USA, on the geographical axis. All, however, deal with a topic of particular importance, namely, the continuous writing of verse that follows or at least was inspired by classical-style literary conventions. This topic is long overdue for ＂mainstream＂ academic attention. We propose to refer to this type of poetry as ＂classicist poetry＂ to etymologically demonstrate that it is part of China＇s literary modernity, as the suffix ＂-ism,＂ or zhuyi ~ in Chinese, suggests it to be a modem academic parlance. It is a strong term referring to the author＇s deliberate choice among various available genres, a choice that is further related to the author＇s conscious or unconscious understanding of the purpose of his or her literary practice.