Visual Subjectivity in Chinese and American Thought and Literature

by Guozhong Duan, Ming Dong Gu

Overview

.Providing the reader with a systematic study of visual subjectivity in comparative thought and literature, this book analyses the role that vision and visuality, especially interpersonal visuality, plays in the constitution of subject and subjectivity in Chinese and American traditions.

Examining the formation of visual subjectivity in the philosophical works by major Chinese and Western thinkers, this book provides a comparative study of four masterworks of Chinese and American fiction, focusing on The Plum in the Golden Vase, The Story of the Stone, Moby Dick, and The Scarlet Letter. It demonstrates that there are both psychologically universal and culturally specific factors and features in the visual constitution and representation of self, identity, subject, and subjectivity.

Offering fresh insights for cross-cultural studies of intellectual thought, literature, ideology, and culture through the visual lens, this book will appeal to students and scholars engaged in comparative studies of Chinese and American thought, literature, and narrative theory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781041028123
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/11/2025
Series:	Routledge Research on Asian Literature
Pages:	268
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Guozhong Duan received his PhD in literary studies from the University of Texas at Dallas and is currently an associate professor of foreign studies in Yangzhou University, China.  He has published numerous Chinese and English articles in journals and volumes including Journal of Qinghua University, Journal of Zhejiang University, Journal of Dr. Sun Yat-sen University, and Social Sciences Abroad, and Routledge Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature.

Ming Dong Gu is the Ketherine R. Cecil Professor in the Bass School of Arts, Humanities, Technology at the University of Texas at Dallas.   He has authored 5 English monographs and edited three English volumes. His recent publications include: The Nature and Rationale of Zen/Chan and Enlightenment (2024); Fusion of Critical Horizons in Chinese and Western Language, Poetics, and Aesthetics (2021), and Routledge Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature (2019). In addition, he has published more than 160 articles in English and Chinese journals.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Visual Subjectivity in Chinese and American Traditions  1. Self and Visuality in Chinese Thought 2. Theories of Visual Subjectivity in Western Thought 3. Intellectual Context for Visual Representation of Subjectivity in Chinese and American Fiction 4. Visual Politics and Narcissistic Imagining:  The Sin of Seeing in the Plum in the Golden Vase 5. Hall of Mirrors and Self Identity: Tragic Vision in the Story of the Stone 6. Visual Trap: Transcendentalist Vision and Subjectivity in Moby Dick 7. Dualistic Vision and Disciplinary Gaze: Ethics of Visuality in Hawthorne’s Fiction Conclusion: A Transcultural View of Visual Subjectivity

Editorial Reviews

"How can one compare what is incomparable? Visual Subjectivity in Chinese and American Thought and Literature dispels the traditional worry of “comparative literature” by focusing on four masterpieces and other works of American and Chinese literature from the perspective of intellectual thought on vision, visuality, and subjectivity, showing that in order to read them adequately one must compare ways of seeing that reveal a whole subjectivity. Combining thought-provoking theory and crisp close readings, this masterful book exemplifies world-literature criticism at its best."

Jean-Michel Rabaté, University of Pennsylvania, Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences

"This book proposes a wholly original and probing approach, grounded in Chinese and Western concepts of vision, visuality, and visual subjectivity, to some of the most celebrated masterpieces of Chinese and American literature. Its incisive analyses of The Plum in the Golden Vase, The Story of the Stone, Moby Dick, and The Scarlet Letter are historically and contextually meticulously informed. In addition, the volume is rich in fascinating asides on many other works of the Eastern and Western literary traditions, showing great potential for yielding fresh insights into world literature. It is a must for all scholars seriously interested in comparative and world literature as well as literary theory."

Theo D'haen, author of A History of World Literature and Member of the Academia Europaea

"Scholars of visual culture have explored in great depth the relation between the “I” and the “eye” in the formation of human subjectivity. But the application of the ocularcentric model of the subject to the representation of characters in literary fiction is something rather new. This comparative study of “visual subjectivity” in classical Chinese and American novels clarifies the way seen and seeing characters in narrative reflect deep cultural traditions such as Transcendentalism, Daoism, and Confucianism. This book is a valuable contribution, both to comparative literature, and to the study of human vision as a cultural construction."

W. J. T. Mitchell, Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor, English and Art History, The University of Chicago

From the Publisher