In Dionysus on the Other Shore, Letizia Fusini re-examines Gao Xingjian’s post-1987 theatre as a form of tragedy.

Offering the first systematic overview of modern and contemporary Chinese literature from a translation studies perspective, this handbook provides students, researchers and teachers with a context in which to read and appreciate the effects of linguistic and cultural transfer in Chinese literary works. Translation matters. It always has, of course, but more so when we want to reap the benefits of intercultural communication. In many universities Chinese literature in English translation is taught as if it had been written in English. As a result, students submit what they read to their own cultural expectations; they do not read in translation and do not attend to the protocols of knowing, engagements and contestations that bind literature and society to each other. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature in Translation squarely addresses this pedagogical lack. Organised in a tripartite structure around considerations of textual, social, and large-scale spatial and historical circumstances, its thirty plus essays each deal with a theme of translation studies, as emerged from the translation of one or more Chinese literary works. In doing so, it offers new tools for reading and appreciating modern and contemporary Chinese literature in the global context of its translation, offering in-depth studies about eminent Chinese authors and their literary masterpieces in translation. The first of its kind, this book is essential reading for anyone studying or researching Chinese literature in translation.

Nietzsche and the Dionysian argues that the Dionysian affect in Nietzsche’s early work can be linked to an originary interruption of self-consciousness articulated by the philosophical companion, who compels us to respond to the plurality of life they express by being ‘true to the earth’ and ‘becoming who we are’. Such an ethics, compelled by the Dionysian affect, grounds any future for humanity in the affirmation of the earth and life.

Modern Chinese literature has been flourishing for over a century, with varying degrees of intensity and energy at different junctures of history and points of locale. An integral part of world literature from the moment it was born, it has been in constant dialogue with its counterparts from the rest of the world. As it has been challenged and enriched by external influences, it has contributed to the wealth of literary culture of the entire world. In terms of themes and styles, modern Chinese literature is rich and varied; from the revolutionary to the pastoral, from romanticism to feminism, from modernism to post-modernism, critical realism, psychological realism, socialist realism, and magical realism. Indeed, it encompasses a full range of ideological and aesthetic concerns. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Modern Chinese Literature presents a broad perspective on the development and history of literature in modern China. It offers a chronology, introduction, bibliography, and over 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on authors, literary and historical developments, trends, genres, and concepts that played a central role in the evolution of modern Chinese literature.

Romeo and Juliet is the most produced, translated and re-mixed of all of Shakespeare's plays. This volume takes up the iconographic, linguistic and performance layers already at work within it and tracks the play's dispersal into neighbouring art forms – including ballet, opera, television and architecture – and geographical locations, including Italy, Ireland, France, India and Korea. Chapters trace Shakespeare's own acts of adaptation and appropriation of sources and the play's subsequent migrations into other media. Part One considers reworkings of Romeo and Juliet in Hector Berlioz's 1839 choral symphony and ballets choreographed by Sir Kenneth MacMillan and John Neumeier. Part Two explores the afterlives of Shakespeare's lovers in the narrative forms of fiction, film and serial television, including works by James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and HBO's series Westworld. Part Three examines dramatic adaptations of the play into other languages, dialects and cultural contexts. Authors consider Hindi translations and the complex and changing status of Shakespeare's work in India, as well as productions of the play in Korea set against its evolving history. The volume ends with a first-person account of staging Romeo and Juliet at an HBCU (historically Black college/university), documenting the tensions between the notion of Shakespeare as a universal author and the lived experiences of marginalized communities as they engage with his plays.

Gao Xingjian is the leading Chinese dramatist of our time. He is also one of the most moving and literary writers for the contemporary stage. His plays have been performed all around the world, including China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, the Ivory Coast, the United States, France, Germany and other European countries. Born and educated in China, Gao studied French literature at the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute between 1957-1962. After the Cultural Revolution, he became a resident playwright at the Beijing People's Art Theatre. His works, including Bus Stop, Absolute Signal, and Wilderness Man, were trend-setting and have created many controversies and a wave of experimental drama in China. In 1987 he settled in Paris, France and continued to write in Chinese and in French. He was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government in 1992. The present collection contains five of Gao Xingjian's most recent works: The Other Shore (1986), Between Life and Death (1991), Dialogue and Rebuttal (1992), Nocturnal Wanderer (1993), and Weekend Quartet (1995). One finds poetry, comedy as well as tragedy in the plays, which are graced by beautiful language and original imagery. Combining Zen philosophy and a modern worldview, they serve to illuminate the gritty realities of life, death, sex, loneliness, and exile, all essential concerns in Gao's understanding of the existence of modern man. The plays are also manifestations of the dramatist's idea of the tripartite actor, a process by which the actor neutralizes himself and achieves a disinterested observation of his self in performance.