Online Lecture: Contemporary Greater China Series: Feng Menglong and Ming Short Stories: A comparative approach

The Centre for Greater China Studies (CGCS) and the English Department cordially invites you to join the following online lecture supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No.:UGC/IDS14/17):

Date: 24 May 2021 (Monday)
Time: 4:30 – 5:45pm
Venue: Space4ALL, G/F Library
Registration: https://bit.ly/3nTQOOh
(Meeting link will be sent to successful registrants one day before the public lecture.)

HSUHK students who join the talk will be accorded 1 ECA hour/1 iGPS Unit.

Topic:
Feng Menglong and Ming Short Stories: A comparative approach

Abstract:
Feng Menglong wrote and compiled some 120 short stories near the end of the Ming dynasty – stories which are contemporary with the rise of the European novel, and which compare with the medieval French fabliau and the romance, and which deserve to be as well known as the great masterworks of Chinese literature such as the Hongloumeng (紅樓夢). They present a China in change, between the traditional and the modern, which is shown in their developments in writing; they show a society questioning itself and its values, asserting these and self-criticising them sometimes from the most unexpected quarters. This paper tries to give an advanced introduction to these stories from a comparative position, aligning them with the Shakespeare which they are parallel. It attempts to read the strengths of Chinese culture and its discontents from them.

Speaker:
Prof Jeremy Tambling,
Professor of SWPS University,
Former Professor of University of Hong Kong and University of Manchester,
Author of several monographs:
Madmen and Other Survivors: Reading Lu Xun’s Fiction (2007);
The Poetry of Dante’s Paradiso (2021)

For enquiries, please feel free to contact us at eng@hsu.edu.hk or 3963 5411.