CT Hsia

Hsia Chih-tsing or CT Hsia ( Chinese  夏志清 , Pinyin Xià Zhìqīng , W.-G. Hsia Chih-tsing , born February 18, 1921 in Pudong , Shanghai , Republic of China ; † December 29, 2013 in New York City ) a Chinese literary critic and scholar. His literary history works are still standard today.

biography

He was born in Pudong, Shanghai in 1921 and trained at the University of Shanghai . In September 1946 he followed his brother to Peking University , where he initially took up the position of teaching assistant. During this time he continued his studies of Western literature. An outstanding doctoral thesis on William Blake earned him a scholarship to Yale University . In 1947 he went to the USA , where he obtained a Ph.D. acquired. He taught at Huston-Tillotson College in Austin, Texas, 1956/57, at the State University of New York from 1957 to 1961 and at the University of Pittsburgh from 1961/62. He then took up a position at Columbia University , where he was Professor of Chinese Literature until his retirement in 1991.

In 2006 Hsia was appointed to the Academia Sinica . At the age of 85, he was the oldest person to ever receive this calling. According to him, it made him feel like a “new bride”.

Hsia died in New York in late December 2013. On January 18, 2014, a funeral service was held in his honor.

Works

A History of Modern Chinese Fiction

Hsia's groundbreaking first work, A History of Modern Chinese Fiction , Yale University Press, 1961, is valued for introducing the literary movement in China in the 1930s and 1940s. Due to the Cold War , there was little information about Chinese literature at the time . Therefore, Hsia is considered a pioneer in this regard and his book is one of the major works for the study of modern Chinese literature.

In A History Of Modern Chinese Fiction , he praised the works of a few lesser-known authors, including Qian Zhongshu , Eileen Chang, and Shen Congwen . It was only through his work that these authors became more widely known. Accordingly, his work also aroused some criticism. Some also refer to it as "unscientific".

The Classic Chinese Novel (1968)

The Classic Chinese Novel is an introduction for English-language readers to six novels from the Ming and Qing periods : The Tale of the Three Realms ; The robbers from Liang Shan Bog ; The trip to the west ; Jin Ping Mei ; The unofficial history of the forest of scholars ; and The Dream of the Red Chamber .

This work has led to the neologism of the Six Classic Novels , as Andrew H. Plaks notes.

Quirks of Hsia's literary criticism

Hsia's work is less theory-laden than comparable works on English-language works, but is controversial in China due to its anti-communist tendencies.

Works (selection)

• Literature by and about Hsia, Chi-tsing (1921–2013) in the bibliographic database WorldCat
• A History of Modern Chinese Fiction, 1917–1957 . Yale University Press, New Haven 1961, ISBN 0-300-01462-7 .
• The Classic Chinese Novel: A Critical Introduction (=  Companions to Asian Studies ). Columbia University Press, New York 1968 (reprinted 1980; 1996).
• CT Hsia on Chinese Literature (=  Masters of Chinese studies . Volume 1 ). Columbia University Press, New York 2004, ISBN 0-231-50347-4 ( books.google.com ).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Coral Lee: Academica Sinica Meeting Focuses on Academic Competitiveness . In: Taiwan Panorama , August 2006, p. 50. Retrieved on February 17, 2008.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) 
2. ↑ zh: 夏志清 ： 中国 文人 应酬 太多 (Chinese) . In: Xinhua News , January 17, 2007. Archived from the original on February 25, 2008 Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved February 17, 2008.  
3. ↑ Renowned literary critic Hsia Chih-tsing dies at 92 . January 1, 2014. Archived from the original on January 2, 2014. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved January 1, 2014. 
4. ↑ nytimes.com
5. ↑ ( page no longer available , search in web archives: worldjournal.com )
6. ↑ ( page no longer available , search in web archives: worldjournal.com )
7. ^ For example, the Czech sinologist Jaroslav Průšek in A History Of Modern Chinese Fiction . Hsia's answer to this was reprinted in CT Hsia on Chinese Literature (2004).
8. ↑ Andrew H. Plaks: The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel: Ssu Ta Ch'i-Shu (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), p 4 "A neologism of twentieth century scholarship, Seems to have come into common use under the influence of CT Hsia's Classic Chinese Novel , a view now reflected in a wide variety of critical writings. "
9. ^ "The introduction to the third edition of Hsia's A History of Modern Chinese Fiction by David Der-Wei Wang offers several suggestions for interpreting Hsia's approach to literary criticism. In the case of A History of Modern Chinese Fiction, Wang argues that this voluminous work remains relevant although it is much less theory-laden than its counterparts for Western literary texts. Wang observes that Hsia's literary history was controversial in Mainland China due to its perceived hostility to leftist literature. See: CT Hsia 1999, A History of Modern Chinese Fiction ; Third Edition: p. vii to xxxv; CT Hsia op. Cit., P.ix. Nevertheless, Hsia's work, according to Wang, avoids being 'reflectionist' or 'moralist.' ”(CT Hsia op. Cit., Xiv.)

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Hsia is the family name here, Chih-tsing is the first name.