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ASIA-PACIFIC AND LITERATURE IN ENGLISH
Asian English
Histories, Texts, Institutions
Edited by
Myles Chilton
Steve Clark
Yukari Yoshihara
Asia-Pacific and Literature in English
Series Editors
Shun-liang Chao, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan
Steve Clark, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Tristanne Connolly, St. Jerome’s University, Waterloo, ON, Canada
Alex Watson, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan
Laurence Williams, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan
The Palgrave Asia-Pacific and Literature in English series presents exciting
and innovative academic research on Asia-Pacific interactions with Anglo-
phone literary tradition. Focusing on works from the voyages of Captain
Cook to the early twentieth century, it also considers previous encoun-
ters in the early modern period, as well as reception history continuing
to the present day. Encompassing China, Japan, Southeast Asia, India,
and Australasia, monographs and essay collections in this series display
the complexity, richness and global influence of Asia-Pacific responses
to English literature, focusing on works in English but also considering
those from other linguistic traditions. The series addresses the imperial
and colonial origins of English language and literature in the region, and
highlights other forms of reciprocal encounter, circulation, and mutual
transformation, as part of an interdependent global history.
More information about this series at

https://link.springer.com/bookseries/16211
Myles Chilton · Steve Clark · Yukari Yoshihara
Editors
Asian English
Histories, Texts, Institutions
Editors
Myles Chilton Steve Clark
Nihon University University of Tokyo
Tokyo, Japan Tokyo, Japan
Yukari Yoshihara
University of Tsukuba
Tsukuba, Japan
ISSN 2524-7638 ISSN 2524-7646 (electronic)

Asia-Pacific and Literature in English
ISBN 978-981-16-3512-0 ISBN 978-981-16-3513-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3513-7
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: Contributor: RubberBall/Alamy Stock Photo
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Singapore Pte Ltd.
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore
189721, Singapore
Acknowledgments
This collection of essays started as an extended conversation which then

took on a more organized form in a series of panels at the International
Academic Forum’s Asian Conference on Arts & Humanities conference
held from 30 March to 1 April 2018 in Kobe, Japan. As the book was
taking shape, we convened another panel for the Liberlit conference on 1
June 2019 at Seikei University in Tokyo, Japan. The editors wish to thank
the conference organizers for giving us space to nurture our project, and
the conference participants for their valuable feedback. We would also like
to express our gratitude to Sara Crowley Vigneau, Leana Li, and Connie
Li at Palgrave Macmillan for allowing us to proceed to book form.
The preparation of any edited volume is always a labor of love. All such
projects experience hiccups and roadblocks: we had our share, and while
many were joyous—babies born, promotions earned, academic achieve-
ments recognized—there have also been setbacks, not the least of which
is the still-spreading Covid pandemic. We three editors of Asian English
would like to thank our contributors for not only the excellence of their
work, but also their immense patience as we made our way through the
process of assembling this book.
v
Contents
1 Introduction: Redefining English in Asia

for the Twenty-First Century 1
Myles Chilton, Steve Clark, and Yukari Yoshihara
2 British Romanticism in China: Received, Revised,
and Resurrected 17
Ou Li
3 Teaching and Learning English Language During
the Early British Rule in India 43
Parimala V. Rao
4 The Crisis and the Challenge: South Korean English
Studies in the Age of Digital Transformation 69
Jihee Han
5 Seminar in the Ruins: The Salzburg Seminar and Its
Significance in Cold War Cultural Diplomacy in East
Asia 85
Hiromi Ochi
6 Cultural Diplomacy, Literature(s) in English
and Creative Writing in Cold War Asia 107
Yukari Yoshihara
vii
viii CONTENTS
7 Stephen Spender and Japanese Atomic Bomb Poetry

in the 1950s 127
Hajime Saito
8 Unfree Association: On Philippine Creative Writing
and US Cultural Diplomacy 145
Conchitina Cruz
9 The Crisis in the Humanities: A Perspective
from the Middle East 165
James Hodapp
10 De-, and Re-Centering: Teaching Dystopian Texts
to Emirati Students 185
Firas A. J. Al-Jubouri
11 The Canon Zoomed Out: Big Data and the Literary
Canon 209
L. Ashley Squires
12 A New “Westernism” in the Intercultural Humanities 235
Michael O’Sullivan
13 Global English’s Centers of Consecration 253
Myles Chilton
14 Asian English in Arnold, Mill and Newman 271
Steve Clark
15 Literature and the Humanities in the Age
of Technological Disruption 297
John W. P. Phillips
Index 321
Notes on Contributors
Firas A. J. Al-Jubouri is an assistant professor of English and communi-

cation in the department of General Education at the University of Doha
for Science and Technology, author of Milestones on the Road to Dystopia
(2014) and several journal articles, including “The end was contained
in the beginning”: “Orwell’s Kyauktada and Oceania” (2016) in George
Orwell Studies. He has taught English literature, language, IELTS and
academic writing at several academic institutions in the Gulf region and
in the UK. His areas of research and teaching interests are dystopian
fiction, the twentieth-century English novels and comparative literature,
namely the modern Arabic novel. He has a Ph.D. in English Literature
from Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
Myles Chilton received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and
is a professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at
Nihon University. He is the author of English Studies Beyond the ‘Center’:
Teaching Literature and the Future of Global English (Routledge 2016);
and co-author of The Future of English in Asia: Perspectives on Language
and Literature (Routledge 2015), Deterritorializing Practices in Literary
Studies (Contornos 2014), and World Literature and the Politics of the
Minority (Rawat 2013). He has also written about relationships between
contemporary world literature and global cities in Literary Cartographies:
Spatiality, Representation, and Narrative (Palgrave 2014), and in such
journals as Comparative Critical Studies, The Journal of Narrative Theory,
and Studies in the Literary Imagination.
ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Steve Clark is a professor in the Graduate School of Humanities and

Sociology, and in the Department of English Language and Literature,
the University of Tokyo. Clark received both a B.A. and Ph.D. from
Cambridge University, then was a British Academy post-doc and fellow of
the School of Advanced Studies at the University of London. His many
publications include Paul Ricoeur (Routledge 1990), Travel-Writing and
Empire (ZED 1999), Reception of Blake in the Orient (Continuum 2006),
and Asian Crossings: Travel-Writing on China, Japan and South-East Asia
(Hong Kong UP 2008). His most recent book, co-edited with Tristanne
Connolly, is British Romanticism in a European Perspective (Palgrave
2015).
Conchitina Cruz is a professor in the Department of English and
Comparative Literature at the University of the Philippines Diliman,
where she teaches literature and creative writing. She has a Ph.D. in
English from State University of New York (SUNY) Albany. Her books
of poetry include Dark Hours (which won the National Book Award for
Poetry in the Philippines), elsewhere held and lingered, and There Is No
Emergency.
Jihee Han is a professor of English at Gyeongsang National University,
where she has been teaching modern English poetry. Her research inter-
ests are modern English poetry, comparative world literature, Korean
literature and culture, feminism, translation, and cultural technology
and industry. She has published a number of journal articles on high
modernism in arts and published such monographs as A Companion to
Ten Modern Korean Poets, Korean Pop-culture and the Cult of True Girl-
hood, Sonyeo, Harlem Renaissance: The Birth of the New Negro, and Now
Is the Time to Read English Poetry. She edited and contributed an essay
to The World Literature and the Politics of the Minority and translated
Adrienne Rich’s The Fact of a Doorframe. Currently, she is conducting an
international joint research project on global humanities studies.
James Hodapp is an assistant professor of English at Northwestern
University in Qatar in the Liberal Arts Program. Previously he was an
assistant professor in the Department of English at the American Univer-
sity of Beirut. Most recently, he edited the collection Afropolitan Liter-
ature as World Literature (Bloomsbury). He has also published widely
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xi
in numerous journals including ARIEL, Journal of Commonwealth Liter-

ature, The Journal of Postcolonial Writing, African Literature Today,
Research in African Literatures, English in Africa, and Critical Arts.
Ou Li is an associate professor in the Department of English at the
Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is the author of Keats and
Negative Capability (Continuum 2009), “Keats’s Afterlife in Twentieth-
Century China” (in English Romanticism in East Asia: A Romantic
Circles PRAXIS Volume), “Romantic, Rebel, and Reactionary: The Meta-
morphosis of Byron in Twentieth-Century China” (in British Roman-
ticism in Asia, Palgrave, 2019), and “Two Chinese Wordsworths: The
Reception of Wordsworth in Twentieth-Century China” (in Romantic
Legacies: Transnational and Transdisciplinary Contexts, Routledge,
2019). Her research interests include Romantic poetry and Sino-British
cultural/literary relations.
Michael O’Sullivan is a professor in the Department of English at the
Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has worked in universities in
Ireland, the UK, America, Japan and Hong Kong. He has published
widely in the humanities and in the fields of literature, philosophy and
education studies. His publications include The Humanities and the Irish
University: Anomalies and Opportunities (Manchester UP 2014); The
Humanities in Contemporary Chinese Contexts (Springer 2016; with E.
Chan); The Future of English in Asia (Routledge 2014; with C. Lee and
D. Huddart); Academic Barbarism, Universities and Inequality (Palgrave
2016); and Irish Expatriatism, Language and Literature: The Problem of
English (Palgrave 2018).
Hiromi Ochi a Ph.D. in American literature, is a professor at Senshu
University. Her interest is in the intellectual trajectory of Southern Agrar-
ians/New Critics and Cold War cultural diplomacy. Her publications
include: Southern Moment of Modernism: Southern Poets and the Cold War
(Kenkyusha 2012 [in Japanese]); Truman Capote: His Life and Liter-
ature (Bensei Shuppan 2005 [in Japanese]); “The Reception of Amer-
ican Literature in Japan during the Occupation” in the Oxford Research
Encyclopedia of Literature (Oxford UP 2017); and “Democratic Book-
shelf: American Libraries in Occupied Japan” in Pressing the Fight: Print,
Propaganda, and the Cold War, eds. G. Barnhisel and C. Turner (U of
Massachusetts P 2010).
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
John W. P. Phillips teaches in the Department of English Language and

Literature at the National University of Singapore. He has published on
aesthetics, critical theory, deconstruction, linguistics, literature, military
technology, philosophy, postcolonialism, psychoanalysis, and urbanism.
He is author of Contested Knowledge: A Guide to Critical Theory, co-
author of Modernist Avant-Garde Aesthetics and Contemporary Mili-
tary Technology: Technicities of Perception. He is co-editor of several
volumes, including Postcolonial Urbanism: Southeast Asian Cities and
Global Processes; Beyond Description: Space, Historicity, Singapore; and The
New Encyclopaedia Project, Volume I, Problematizing Global Knowledge
(2006), and Volume II, Megacities (2011). Among recent activities, he is
editor of Derrida Now (Edinburgh UP 2015).
Parimala V. Rao teaches the history of education at the Zakir Husain
Centre for Educational Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She is the
founding member and coordinator of Research Interest Group: History of
Education of The Comparative Education Society of India. Twice she was
a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Education, London. She is the author
of Foundations of Tilak’s Nationalism: Discrimination, Education, and
Hindutva (Orient Black Swan 2010), and Beyond Macaulay: Education
in India 1780–1860 (Routledge 2020). She has edited New Perspectives
in the History of Indian Education (Orient Black Swan 2014), and is one
of the editors of the Encyclopaedia of Asian Educators (Routledge 2021).
Hajime Saito is an associate professor in the Faculty of Humanities
and Social Sciences at University of Tsukuba. He has been reading
Joseph Conrad novels and also studying why many Japanese readers loved
reading English literature when Japan was an empire. Now he focuses on
the politics of English and American literary studies in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. His publications include Teikoku Nihon no Eibungaku (English
Literary Studies in Imperial Japan) (Jimbun Shoin 2006 [in Japanese]);
and “Embracing Hiroshima”, Journal of East-West Thought (September
2016).
L. Ashley Squires received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at
Austin in 2012, and is now an assistant professor of Humanities at the
New Economic School in Moscow. Her prior research covers the intersec-
tions of American literary and religious history and the medical human-
ities, with a particular focus on the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. Her current work brings the digital humanities to bear on the
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xiii
reception of American literature outside of the United States and on the

reception of naturalist authors in the former Soviet Union. She is the
author of Healing the Nation: Literature, Progress, and Christian Science
(Indiana UP 2017), and articles appearing in Book History, Studies in the
Novel, and American Literary Realism.
Yukari Yoshihara is an associate professor in the Faculty of Humanities
and Social Sciences at University of Tsukuba and a board member of the
Asian Shakespeare Association. Her publications include “Toward Recip-
rocal Legitimation between Shakespeare’s Works and Manga” (2020),
“Tacky Shakespeare in Japan” (2013), “The First Japanese Adaptation
of Othello (1903) and Japanese Colonialism” (2012), and the “Intro-
duction” to English Studies in Asia (2007). Her current projects are on
Anglophone literature in Cold War Asia and Shakespeare and/in Japanese
popular culture.
List of Tables
Table 11.1 Countries represented in the sample 215

Table 11.2 Top 25 “Worldly” Authors and Texts by Number
of Regions Originating Searches 217
Table 11.3 Top 25 “Worldly” Authors and Texts by the Sum
of the Scores for the Top 5 Regions 218
Table 11.4 Top 25 “Worldly” Authors and Texts by Combined
Z-score 220
Table 11.5 “Migratory” British Texts with High Searchership in Asia 222
Table 11.6 “Migratory” American Texts with High Searchership
in Asia 227
xv
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Redefining English in Asia

for the Twenty-First Century
Myles Chilton, Steve Clark, and Yukari Yoshihara
Anglophone literary studies have a long though not at all straightforward

history in Asia. A well-established post-colonial critique holds that English
literary study was introduced first in India and then throughout the
British Empire as a form of indirect control, and at times open coercion,
with the ultimate aim of producing a collaborationist elite who identified
with the imperial regime. In her contribution to this volume, Parimala
Rao tempers this view, observing that in the colonial period, many Indians
didn’t need to be coerced because learning “English” promised both
M. Chilton (B)
Nihon University, Tokyo, Japan
e-mail: chilton.myles.kent@nihon-u.ac.jp
S. Clark
University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Y. Yoshihara
University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan
e-mail: yoshihara.yukari.fp@u.tsukuba.ac.jp
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
M. Chilton et al. (eds.), Asian English,
Asia-Pacific and Literature in English,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3513-7_1
2 M. CHILTON ET AL.
language study and an education in science and mathematics. In Japan

during the Meiji period, reformers realized that learning not just English
but other subjects in English would be key to resisting British and Amer-
ican colonial pressures. Thus it was that the foundation of Cambridge
English Tripos was predated by study of the English at the University
of Tokyo by forty years.1 Rui Yang observes that after over 150 years
of absorption, “Western-styled modern higher education systems have
become well established throughout East Asia,”2 indicating how a similar
pattern played out in several Asian sites, with English language, literature,
and the humanities as a collective discipline spreading and establishing
themselves in modernizing colonial and post-colonial nation states. The
imposition of English in Asia brought with it Euro-American versions of
humanistic learning that have developed into a multivalent discourse of
institutional formation and identity.
All of which is to say that the idea that the discipline is simply a
recent foreign import in Asia can be contested. Our choice of title—Asian
English rather than “English in Asia,” or a phrase like “the spread of
English into and throughout Asia”—is meant to provoke (1) acceptance
of English as an Asian language, (2) recognition that English literary study
currently enjoys a relatively healthy presence in Asian universities, and (3)
acknowledgment that English serves in many Asian university systems as
a partner to or even lynchpin of the humanities. We also seek to call the
attention of the Anglo-American “center” of the discipline to the fact of
Asian English, to give weight to James F. English’s recent observation
that the “future expansion of English studies will mostly occur outside
the discipline’s traditional Anglophone and European base,” therefore
“it is time for those of us at the presumptive center of things to begin
paying more attention to the forms our discipline is taking at these sites of
rapid expansion.”3 Amid Anglo-American academics’ fears for the health
of the discipline there is a perplexingly persistent blind spot covering a
vast expanse of the planet. Taking the trouble to peer into this neglected
immensity one sees not only the well-known truth that the numbers of
English language and literature learners in the traditional Anglophone
regions (Britain, the US, Canada, Australia, and so on) have already
become a minority, but also that the global economic and demographic
balance is undeniably tilting toward Asia, not least because approximately
half the population of India are English-speakers, while the estimated
figure of 100 million Chinese speakers of English will rise exponentially
over coming decades.
1 INTRODUCTION: REDEFINING ENGLISH IN ASIA … 3
In our subtitle Histories, Texts, Institutions the middle term holds

the first and third in a balance: texts represent time and are present
in time; the institutions of English consecrate its history as a discipline
and regulate which texts best represent it. This book in part takes a cue
from Jeffrey J. Williams’s edited volume The Institution of Literature in
focusing on what people do in English literature departments, and on
their self-defining strategies. We also assume that the institution “gen-
erates what we call literature, or more modestly, that the question of
literature is inseparable from our institutional practices and locations.”4
We also take a cue from Sarah Brouillette’s analysis of the history of
UNESCO’s support for literature. By focusing on specific institutions, she
argues, critical discourse can be grounded in the political economies of
nation states, meaning it can account for the “the foundational structures
of our societies” beyond the Bourdieusian field of cultural production
and “the relations internal to a restricted literary field.”5 The focus on
institutions thus allows us to consider the main audience for Anglophone
literature: students, and their teachers, and their often competing inter-
ests and motivations in pursuit of education in response to layered and
mingled socio-economic pressures. To take an example, particular Asian
localities may not share the dissenting, progressive counter-cultural views
that tend to be prized in Anglo-American English departments. This
presents faculty educated in the Anglosphere with a challenge, as Firas Al-
Jubouri’s chapter shows. How then, to teach it? What may appear radical
in a Western context can appear irresponsible in a local Asian context. The
history of English in Asia is in many ways a history of adjustments made
in the classroom and at the departmental level.
From this perspective, each chapter contributes to a common frame-
work of debate, ranging from the genealogies of textual critique and
institutionalized forms of teaching of English language and literature in
Asia from the nineteenth century to the present, to examinations of how
its present options and possible future directions relate to these histor-
ical contexts. Rather than assume that Asian English and Anglo-American
English are stand-alone conceptual entities, we conceive of both as disci-
plinary formations that could, and perhaps should be pluralized. And yet,
we also want to shift the Anglo-American gaze—in the material and affec-
tive senses, as they manifest themselves in any region of the world—to
Asia, to see the discipline of Anglophone literary studies from an alter-
native Asian point of view, while remaining conscious of the extent to
which Anglo-American disciplinary histories subtend the globalization of
4 M. CHILTON ET AL.
English studies. Assuming a unitary Asian perspective is indeed prob-

lematic, as along with flattening and totalizing the continent’s limitless
variety, it runs the Orientalizing risk of casting “the Asian perspective” as
that of a receiver, an accepter of flows from outside. Alas, the latter has
become something of a truism. Many accept that the core of English as
an academic discipline lies in certain prominent Anglo-American universi-
ties. Rui Yang notes how “The Western models of the university and the
accompanying Eurocentric knowledge development have long been only
in one direction as far as East Asia is concerned, that is, from the West to
the East. Indigenous knowledge... has been largely absent in East Asia’s
higher education curriculum.”6 Accepting this situation means adopting
a kind of cultural amnesia with regard to certain stubborn historical
facts, including—to take but two examples—that the Confucian tradition
is the world’s oldest humanities tradition, and that India’s educational
institutions long predate those of Europe or America. As Steve Clark’s
chapter points out, Nalanda’s foundation in the fifth century comes at
least 500 years before that of Oxford. A more productive approach is
to trouble the West–East flow by following cross-currents and sudden
disruptive change. Yang argues that policies based on this “antiquated”
divide of knowledge “are doomed to be ineffective, even misleading,”7 an
argument Michael O’Sullivan takes up in his chapter in this volume. Such
anachronistic divisions prevent us from seeing that globalization presents
liberal arts educational projects in both East Asia and the West with similar
challenges; as Insung Jung argues, these include “lack of understanding of
the concepts of liberal arts education on the part of policy-makers, parents
and students, the long-standing preference for specialized vocational and
professional education, a perceived mismatch between the aims of liberal
education and the expectations of graduates by employers, and, as a
consequence of these, a lack of coherence in policy-making and limited
funding and political support.”8 It is encouraging to note, however, that
despite these negative assumptions, liberal arts programs are still being
established in Asia.
This volume’s central argument is that the establishment of Anglo-
phone literature in Asia did not simply “happen”: there were extra-literary
and-academic forces at work, inserting and domesticating in Asian univer-
sities both the English language and Anglo-American literature, and their
attendant cultural and political values. Examining the various kinds of
political intervention—US government agencies, funding bodies, univer-
sity administrations, for instance—which have influenced the Asian spread
of Anglophone literature has heretofore been relatively untouched schol-

arly territory, in contrast to the extensive scholarship on the institutional
development of the discipline in British and American universities, or on
the activities of the Congress for Cultural Freedom in Europe.
In many ways, Asian English takes its inspiration and direction from
English Studies in Asia, edited by Masazumi Araki, Chee Seng Lim,
Ryuta Minami, and Yukari Yoshihara (and to which Hajime Saito also
contributed a chapter). As Yoshihara observes in her introduction, English
Studies in Asia is perhaps the first volume to attempt to understand the
varied histories of the discipline in the region. That book itself an exten-
sion of and response to Araki’s project of the same name which focused on
the institutional marginalization of English literary studies in Japan in the
face of pressures to teach more “practical” English. This pedagogical turn
revealed to Araki a need to open up dialogues with other Asian English
literature scholars. What he found was salutary: a keen interest in “re-
examining the meaning and future possible directions of English studies in
its relation to our own positionality and situatedness... [because] English
literature studies as an institutionalized discipline of higher education has
not been established in all Asian countries in the same way.’”9 Yoshi-
hara, for instance, argues for analysis of Japan “alongside the colonial and
perhaps neo-colonial contexts of other Asian countries,”10 rather than
comparing the Japanese situation with that of the Anglophone countries.
This inter-Asian perspective allows for dialogues between monolingual
and multilingual Asian sites, as well as considerations of the differing
colonial legacies and contemporary statuses of English. This perspective
is shared both by Asian nations with a history of direct colonial rule and
others that have experienced modes of neo-colonial influence (such as
Japan’s post-WWII occupation by the US). India would obviously be
an example of the former, and as Svati Joshi writes in the introduction
to Rethinking English, pedagogical activity in Indian English depart-
ments assumes for English literature a set of liberal universalisms and
a reflexive normativity, while its critical methods become an orthodoxy
denying “any possibility of connecting the English text with our material
world.”11 Thus, rather than formulating an account of English studies
in India, Joshi argues for the need to “understand and analyze the role
of English in our history and cultural formation, for we believe it that
it has an importance not only for our academic activity but also for an
understanding of the present moment.”12
6 M. CHILTON ET AL.
In the decade and a half since the publication of English Studies in

Asia, the intensified globalization of English studies forces a reckoning
with a broader geo-historical context, necessitating the recalibration of
the Anglo-American tradition, along with consideration of the increasing
commodification and “branding” of higher education. In other words,
the prestige of US and UK universities, rather than waning in a wider
field of educational opportunity, has only become stronger (increasingly
dependent though they are on income from foreign students). As Michael
O’Sullivan, David Huddart, and Carmen Lee observe in their introduc-
tion to The Future of English in Asia, economic globalization strengthens
the association of the English language with “power, prestige and the
perpetuation of elitism in Asian contexts.”13 O’Sullivan, Huddart, and
Lee seek to “examine the deeper cultural, psychological and emotional
effects of the newly styled globalized English in the various multilingual
Asian contexts,” in the recognition of the geographical distance of Asia
from the ‘home’ of English.”14 This is echoed by Mukul Saxena and
Tope Omoniyi, who note that along with asymmetrical relations of capital
in globalization, various kinds of prestige remain attached to various
languages, with World or Global Englishes centered in the US. While
America’s economic dominance may be waning, global English continues
in its trek across frontiers to evoke its Anglo-American origins.15 The
same could be said for the choice of which Anglophone literature to teach,
and how to teach it.
But while Saxena and Omoniyi believe that the spread of World
or Global Englishes may never completely escape some sort of devel-
opmental relationship with British or American Englishes, O’Sullivan,
Huddart, and Lee assert—in echo of James English—“whatever future
English has will inevitably be shaped by its fate in Asia.”16 The indige-
nization of several strains of English in Asia (in India, Singapore, and the
Philippines, for instance) indicates to them that “the future of English in
Asia seems likely to break free of its past.”17 Guiding this future, they
believe, is the growing power of China, a factor which surely must be
taken into account now and into the future.
While Asian English follows a rough chronology, the structure is other-
wise purposely loose. As we focus on Asian reception and interplay with
the circulation of Anglo-American outflows, we make no attempt to
“cover” all of Asia, or to notions of geographical or historical “complete-
ness” or to constituting a unified “Asian” perspective. In fact, one of our
underlying positions is to treat any such project with suspicion—just as it

is to think of a unified Western or Anglo-American or national perspective.
In “British Romanticism in China: Received, Revised, and Resur-
rected,” Ou Li’s focus on twentieth-century China’s dynamic assimilation
of British Romanticism illustrates the complexities of Asian reception
of English texts and aesthetic movements. By examining several key
aspects of British Romanticism, namely, radicalism, self-expressiveness,
and naturalism, Li then explores how each had been treated with drasti-
cally contradictory stances in China, along with the conflicting ideologies
that took turns dominating the Chinese stage. Li’s chapter also discusses
the significance of the intermediary of Japanese, German, and Soviet
sources in the Chinese reception of British Romanticism, and how being
twice removed from the original might have contributed to the emphasis
on what is without instead of what is within British Romantic poetry.
Despite the instrumentalist approach China took to British Romanticism,
Li’s chapter concludes with a discussion of the profound legacy British
Romanticism has left in China.
As mentioned earlier, the introduction of English education into Asia is
taken to be a tool of British imperial coercion, or as Gauri Viswanathan’s
Masks of Conquest suggests (in the Indian context), as a way to mask
economic and social exploitation. Viswanathan’s view (along with similar
claims by Edward Said) has been criticized for overlooking the role
Indians played in both resisting and demanding English education;
indeed, as Ania Loomba points out, reformers and nationalists opposed to
the Raj nevertheless supported English education for Indians.18 Parimala
Rao’s essay, “Teaching and Learning English Language during the Early
British Rule in India,” takes up this challenge to the assertion that British
colonial rule imposed English language and literature upon Indians as
a means of controlling the subject population as well as to demonstrate
its superiority as a ruling class. Also, as mentioned earlier, in the Indian
context the term “English education” meant a curriculum comprised of
English literature along with sciences, social sciences and mathematics,
through English as a medium of instruction. Even when these modern
subjects were taught through the medium of Indian vernaculars, along
with English as a second language, it was referred to as “English educa-
tion.” Rao’s chapter offers an intimate and thorough historical tracing
of India’s “English education” from its informal origins at the hands of
British officers and colonial administrators to the more politically, socially,
8 M. CHILTON ET AL.
and culturally complex developments occasioned by its establishment in

more formal, institutionalized settings.
In “The Crisis and the Challenge: South Korean English Studies in the
Age of Digital Transformation,” Jihee Han addresses the changes South
Korean English literature faculty face inside and outside academia. Amid
government pressures to teach practical English and a student body made
up of digital nomads reluctant to read “difficult” literary texts—namely,
those of T. S. Eliot—Han wonders if the changes heralded by these devel-
opments can be construed as potentially positive rather than negative.
Through tracing the rise and fall of T. S. Eliot’s literary status as part of
a survey of the history of South Korean English studies as a story of the
decline of Anglocentric aesthetic values, then watching the subsequent
rise of Global English and distinctively Korean perspectives in an age of
digital technology, Han offers the “transmutable imagination” of “the
nomadic minority” as a strategy for reinventing Asian English.
The next four chapters reposition the analytical lens to trace the
expansion of English texts and English studies from the US to Asia,
demonstrating that Anglophone texts did not simply drift around the
globe to be picked up by chance by interested Asian readers. These essays
can be read as case studies of how cultural patronage, particularly that
bestowed by the US State Department, was deployed in the establish-
ment of American literary studies in Asia at the beginning of the Cold
War. So rapid and effective was this effort that it obscures the relative
newness of the discipline of American studies.
In “Seminar in the Ruins: The Salzburg Seminar and its Significance
in Cold War Cultural Diplomacy in East Asia,” Hiromi Ochi, contextu-
alizing the role of American studies in the larger scheme of Cold War
cultural diplomacy of the US State Department, sets the scene by tracing
the effects of the inaugural School for American Studies in Salzburg,
Austria, in 1947. Crucial to the US strategy of disseminating American
culture and values abroad was the formation of American studies as a
legitimate academic subject. The first Seminar in 1947 was a model for
this dissemination, inspiring seminars and lectures first in Japan, then
similar projects in South Korea and Taiwan. Ochi’s chapter focuses on
how American studies circulated in areas devastated by World War II,
how it was expected to contribute to the intellectual redevelopment of
post-war Japan and other East Asian countries, and how it played a part
in constituting the “Cold War consensus.”
In “Cultural Diplomacy, Literature(s) in English and Creative Writing

in Cold War Asia,” Yukari Yoshihara, while analyzing how Anglophone
literature and Creative Writing programs were weapons of the cultural
Cold War in Asia, demonstrates that they also created and produced dissi-
dent voices directed against American cultural hegemony. Charles Burton
Fahs (1908–1980), the Rockefeller Foundation director of Humani-
ties Division (1946–1961), was one of the central figures involved
in Stanford-Tokyo University American Studies Seminars (discussed in
Ochi’s chapter) and Creative Writing programs in Asia. The latter,
launched with Wallace Stegner’s lecture tour to Asia (1950–51) during
the Korean War, was part of a larger project aimed at containing anti-
Americanism. Yoshihara examines N.V.M. Gonzalez, a main aide of
Stegner’s lecture tour in South East Asia, and founder of the Creative
Writing Program at the University of the Philippines, as a case of the
fissured response to the hegemony of American English in Cold War Asia,
particularly the increasing dominance of English in world literature.
In “Stephen Spender and Japanese Atomic Bomb Poetry in the
1950s,” Hajime Saito focuses on English poet Stephen Spender’s writ-
ings on the Hiroshima atomic bombing and his interactions with Japanese
poets’ opposition to nuclear weapons. Spender (1909–1995), once better
known for his poems engaged with social injustice and class struggle in
the 1930s, is now remembered primarily as an anti-communist cultural
agent during the Cold War, and for his commitment to a literary maga-
zine, Encounter (1953–1991), subsidized by the Congress for Cultural
Freedom, a front organization of the CIA. However, his responses to
Japanese atomic bomb literature have received minimal scrutiny. Also
unacknowledged are reactions to his views from Japanese poets and
Japanese scholars of English literature. This chapter investigates the ways
in which Spender attempts to de-politicize issues surrounding nuclear
weapons when he asks Japanese poets to “withhold utterance” against
nuclear weapon experimentation—such as the Bikini Incident—and to
“care about” things “poetically,” to engage with the “social disease”
through “a renewal of creativeness.”
In “Unfree Association: On Philippine Creative Writing and US
Cultural Diplomacy,” Conchitina Cruz, in order to address the ques-
tion “Does cultural diplomacy work?”, examines the International Writing
Program (IWP) based in the University of Iowa as a site where US cultural
diplomacy and Philippine Creative Writing converge. Cruz studies the
IWP in relation to the oldest writers’ workshop in the Philippines, the
10 M. CHILTON ET AL.
Silliman University Writers Workshop (SUNWW), which was patterned

by its founders after the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (IWW). Demonstrating
how SUNNW’s institutional history, particularly its ties to the IWP and
IWW, tends to be written in the language of cultural diplomacy and apart
from the history of the Philippines under US colonization, this chapter
draws connections between this decontextualized view of US-Philippine
literary relations and the de-historicized creative writing pedagogy under-
girded by American New Criticism that the SUNWW is known for. The
impact of the IWP on Philippine creative writing shows how a program
of cultural diplomacy aids in cultivating cultural climates predisposed
to advancing geopolitical relations favorable to the US, especially when
cultural diplomacy is regarded as an extended project whose outcomes
manifest over time.
The programmatic creation of American literary studies in Asia also
manifested itself in the creation of regional universities based upon the
American model. Whether in such institutions as American University
in Beirut or Northwestern University’s Qatar campus, the expansion of
English is explicitly tied to the broader project of US expansionism—
with many of its problems intact. In “The Crisis in the Humanities: A
Perspective from the Middle East,” James Hodapp notes that the widely
acknowledged “crisis” in the humanities extends beyond the US to many
understudied, and arguably misunderstood, regions. Hodapp relates his
first-hand experience at the two aforementioned Anglophone universities,
buttressed with curricular analyses, enrollment figures, faculty hiring, and
extant data on the region’s humanities programs, to provide a glimpse
of US influence and local conditions in the Middle East. Mediated by
the ever-present specter of colonial history, recent Western military and
economic projects in the region, and the implications of English’s role
in globalization, Hodapp argues that in many ways the crisis now being
reckoned with in the West has been a reality in the Middle East for
decades, yet is also deflected by newer and wealthier humanities programs
in English (and other languages) tailored to meet the local education
market.
In “De-, and Re-Centering: Teaching Dystopian Texts to Emirati
Students,” Firas A. J. Al-Jubouri examines the tensions inherent in
teaching dystopian texts (in this case, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We and George
Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four) while considering the significance of
tradition and culture in the Arab world. English literature teachers in the
Gulf Cooperation Council often feel pressured to follow curricula set by
the Ministry of Education, avoiding the potential for controversy in favor

of canonical stability. Others, however, seek to provoke, or in Al-Jubouri’s
formulation, de- and/or re-center certain ideas, themes, plots, or mean-
ings to address the cultural politics to meet the learner’s needs in the
non-Anglophone setting. Al-Jubouri’s larger point is that English litera-
ture can be received in ways that “distort” or “destabilize” Anglocentric
ideas, a thorny and pressing endeavor that necessitates striding worlds and
bridging cultural divides for both students and teachers.
In another take on Anglophone textual reception, L. Ashley Squires’s
“The Canon Zoomed Out: Big Data and the Literary Canon,” addresses
the role digital analysis can play in understanding the circulation and
reception of world literature, particularly in the Asian context, where a
sizable Asian Anglophone readership offers a potential audience for world
literature as a pedagogical framework in Asian institutions. Squires argues
that reconfiguring our understanding of a literary canon around patterns
and histories of reception, rather than production, runs almost imme-
diately into immense problems of scale and specificity. Scholars around
the world may understand how the canon is understood and taught in
their particular locale, but academic gestures toward a shared global canon
are necessarily speculative and provisional. Squires’s chapter demonstrates
how big data analytics can help with this problem. Using Google Trends,
Squires look at patterns of searchership for texts represented in major
Anglophone literature anthologies, enabling comparisons of the way the
Anglophone canon is represented elsewhere around the world. While
many canonical Anglophone works can be truly considered “worldly,” the
data also reveals “migratory texts” whose readership seems to have moved
from its original site of production to another location. But because
this data cannot tell us why the readership for these texts has moved,
such cases stand as provocative calls for further research. Squires’s ulti-
mate argument is that while big data produces what Franco Moretti calls
“Distant Reading” or Matthew Jockers calls “Macroanalysis,” it must be
supplemented by more traditional methods.
In “The New ‘Westernism’ in the Intercultural Humanities,” Michael
O’Sullivan asks how we are to understand the humanities—a field that
more than any other must be mindful of differences—within global
university strategies and systems of evaluation that rank universities
according to criteria that lead to ever greater homogeneity. The process
requires an openness to the difference of Asian humanities, a field that for
Leo Ou-Fan Lee must have “Asian humanistic scholars” and “all human-
istic scholars interested in Asia” re-examining and redefining Western
philosophical theory (2010). Jana S. Rošker (2016) argues that inter-
cultural research that includes Chinese philosophy must involve the
“intercultural relativization of the contents based on specific requirements
of research in the Chinese philosophical tradition.” With these arguments
in mind, O’Sullivan’s chapter argues that non-Asian scholars educated in
“Western” pedagogic systems can help re-center the conceptual frames
of the intercultural humanities through exploring such notions as weak-
ness, individualism, and loneliness. The increasing economic and political
power of China has not been matched by redefinition of Asian academic
institutions and practices in terms of the intellectual and pedagogic
traditions of the historically dominant culture of the region.
In “Global English’s Centers of Consecration,” Myles Chilton draws
on Pierre Bourdieu’s The Field of Cultural Production (1993) to address
how the global spread of Anglophone literary studies compels an
accounting for who consecrates what and why. Bourdieu’s model of
consecration involves the reciprocal validation of intellectual elites and
aesthetic canons, a model which has been adopted in such recent influ-
ential works as Pascale Casanova’s The Republic of Letters (2004) and
Brouillette’s UNESCO and the Fate of the Literary (mentioned earlier).
Asian institutions, even as they turn their critical gaze inward, continue
to seek validation from Anglo-center conferences, journals and publishers.
While the discipline’s roots cannot be ripped out, and a discipline needs
consecratory institutions to referee, control, approve, and set standards,
it is important to account for the consecratory tensions that arise in re-
orienting the discipline toward Asia. Chilton’s chapter considers whether
the consecratory power of Asian English centers can avoid merely repro-
ducing Anglocentric colonial, post-colonial, or neo-colonial hierarchies of
aesthetic value, canonical durability, and institutional practice.
Steve Clark’s “Asian English in Arnold, Mill and Newman” opens
by considering the project to renovate the ancient Indian university of
Nalanda, as a case-study in the difficulty of returning to a purely indige-
nous “longer heritage.” The institution and its practices in its modern
form are necessarily reliant on models imported from Britain, Germany
and the US. Clark re-examines the Victorian genealogy offered by the
writings of Matthew Arnold, John Stuart Mill, and John Henry Newman.
Their justifications of culture as disinterested self-development would
appear to invite post-colonial critique, if not indictment, for complicity
with the class, nationalist and racial ideologies within which they are
necessarily embedded. However, it is argued that they may also possess
a prospective and utopian dimension which may be restored by the appli-
cation of symptomatic reading, on the model of Louis Althusser. Such
analysis can reveal Asia as already present, if elided and displaced, at the
margins of the founding texts of the discipline. It will finally be suggested
that in the twenty-first century, not only Asian English but also of the
humanities themselves, should be regarded as a continuously renegoti-
ated heritage, not as the burden of an increasingly redundant past, but as
open to future applications and expanded possibilities.
Moving from nineteenth-century genealogies to the post-Covid chal-
lenges of the twenty-first century, John Phillips addresses current options
for the Asian university in “Literature and the Humanities in the Age of
Technological Disruption.” If the recent shift to online teaching at the
National University of Singapore (and elsewhere in Asia) was executed
rapidly and without resistance, then the establishment of the integrated
virtual learning environment [IVLE] earlier in the millennium, after the
SARS epidemic of 2003, helps to account for it. Online teaching and
virtual learning were in principle and in practice already in place. If the
crisis eventually subsides then the new conditions under which the univer-
sity currently operates are likely to continue in many respects. Phillips
identifies two connected trends: defensive strategies against the threat of
future technical disruption; and relocation of funding from the humani-
ties. He argues that in Asia the latter, rather than enduring continual crisis,
been renewed by the idea of lifelong learning, as future preparedness for
the rapidly changing job-market, and the introduction of liberal arts-based
programs. Beyond the primarily archival capacity of the so-called digital
humanities, a critical media theory marked by historical understanding of
languages and algorithms can take up the challenge typically assigned to
the university, especially when called upon to re-center itself in an Asian
context. Phillips closes by reading Arthur Yap’s “Paraphrase” as exempli-
fying not just the complexly syncretic heritage of Singapore itself but also
future directions for the Asian university.
The question remains of what form Asian English might take in a
post-Covid age uniquely dominated by potentially authoritarian technolo-
gies and unsettling economic exigencies. Certainly it seems probable that
dependence on imported Western models may be substantially reduced.
Initiatives already taken even in their early stages suggest removing the
existing spatiotemporal boundaries from the idea of a university degree:
the campus is no longer a place. Many of the traditional structures of

higher education are likely to be eroded or even disappear, including
autonomous departments, to be replaced by continually updating inter-
disciplinary modules. It is an open question whether what will emerge
will be a distinctively Asian institution. It is noteworthy, however, that
Singapore, often portrayed as a hyper-conservative government control-
ling an acquiescent population, has proven itself capable of implementing
policies of radical destruction (evident from its continual architectural
self-renovation) where deemed necessary for national prosperity.
It remains to be seen if the initially ineffectual Anglo-American
response to the pandemic, in contrast to the more collectivist approach
generally adopted by Asian nations, will result in a more general loss of
cultural prestige. Additionally, the neoliberal orthodoxies promoted by
the economics department of major Anglo-American universities could be
seen as particularly culpable for preaching abstention from the forms of
state intervention that have proved most effective in dealing with Covid.
This argument can be extended to the humanities, where a comparable
de-centering may occur simply as a consequence of changes to interna-
tional mobility through visa and quarantine restrictions. The high casualty
rates in Britain and the US may make them less attractive education desti-
nations; reductions in overseas students have already had near-disastrous
financial consequences for all but the wealthiest and most elite insti-
tutions. It remains to be seen how this might redefine Asian English,
perhaps producing enhanced cooperation among regional universities,
the ideal aspired to if unfulfilled in Nalanda; but one might confidently
predict less reflex deference to the “centers of consecration” of Western
academia.
Notes
1. The Cambridge English Tripos dates from 1917. The English department
at the University of Tokyo was established in 1877.
2. Yang, Rui. “The East–West Axis? Liberal Arts Education in East Asian
Universities.” Liberal Arts Education and Colleges in East Asia: Possibilities
and Challenges in the Global Age. Insung Jung, Mikiko Nishimura, and
Toshiaki Sasao (Eds.). Singapore: Springer, 2016. 30.
3. English, James F. The Global Future of English Studies. Malden, MA:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. 191.
4. Williams, Jeffrey J. “Introduction: Institutionally Speaking.” The Institu-

tion of Literature. Jeffery J. Williams (Ed.). Albany: State University of
New York Press, 2002. 1.
5. Brouilette, Sarah. UNESCO and the Fate of the Literary. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2019. 2.
6. Yang, 27.
7. Ibid., 27.
8. Jung, Insung. “Introduction.” Liberal Arts Education and Colleges in East
Asia: Possibilities and Challenges in the Global Age. Insung Jung, Mikiko
Nishimura, and Toshiaki Sasao (Eds.). Singapore: Springer, 2016. 5.
9. Araki, quoted in Yukari Yoshihara. “The Past, the Present and the
Future of the Project, ‘English Studies in Asia.’” English Studies in Asia.
Masazumi Araki, Chee Seng Lim, Ryuta Minami, and Yukari Yoshihara
(Eds.). Kuala Lumpur: Silverfish, 2007. 17–18.
10. Yoshihara, 18.
11. Joshi, Svati. “Rethinking English: An Introduction.” Rethinking English:
Essays in Literature, Language, History. Svati Joshi (Ed.). Bombay: Oxford
University Press, 1994. 1.
12. Ibid., 1.
13. O’Sullivan, Michael, David Huddart and Carmen Lee. “General Intro-
duction.” The Future of English in Asia: Perspectives on Language and
Literature. Michael O’Sullivan, David Huddart and Carmen Lee (Eds.).
Abingdon: Routledge, 2015. xvi.
14. Ibid., xvii.
15. Tope, Omoniyi and Mukul Saxena. “Introduction.” Contending with
Globalization in World Englishes. Mukul Saxena and Tope Omoniyi (Eds.).
Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 2010. 11.
16. O’Sullivan, Michael, David Huddart and Carmen Lee, xviii.
17. Ibid., xviii.
18. Loomba, Ania. Colonialism/Postcolonialism. London: Routledge, 2015.
96.
References
Brouilette, Sarah. 2019. UNESCO and the Fate of the Literary. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.
English, James F. 2012. The Global Future of English Studies. Malden MA: Wiley-
Blackwell.
Joshi, Svati. 1994. Rethinking English: An Introduction. In Rethinking English:
Essays in Literature, Language, History, ed. Svati Joshi, 1–31. Bombay:
Oxford University Press.
Jung, Insung. 2016. Introduction. In Liberal Arts Education and Colleges in East
Asia: Possibilities and Challenges in the Global Age, eds. Insung Jung, Mikiko
Nishimura, and Toshiaki Sasao, 1–12. Singapore: Springer.
Loomba, Ania. 2015. Colonialism/Postcolonialism. London: Routledge.
O’Sullivan, Michael, David Huddart and Carmen Lee. 2015. General Introduc-
tion. In The Future of English in Asia: Perspectives on Language and Liter-
ature, eds. Michael O’Sullivan, David Huddart and Carmen Lee, xv–xxviii.
Abingdon: Routledge.
Rošker, Jana S. 2016. The Rebirth of the Moral Self: The Second Generation of
Modern Confucians and Their Modernization Discourses. Hong Kong: Chinese
University of Hong Kong Press.
Tope, Omoniyi and Mukul Saxena. 2010. Introduction. In Contending with
Globalization in World Englishes, eds. Mukul Saxena and Tope Omoniyi,
1–22. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Williams, Jeffrey J. 2002. Introduction: Institutionally Speaking. In The Institu-
tion of Literature, ed. Jeffery J. Williams, 1–18. Albany: State University of
New York Press.
Yang, Rui. 2016. The East-West Axis? Liberal Arts Education in East Asian
Universities. In Liberal Arts Education and Colleges in East Asia: Possibili-
ties and Challenges in the Global Age, eds. Insung Jung, Mikiko Nishimura,
and Toshiaki Sasao, 27–38. Singapore: Springer.
Yoshihara, Yukari. 2007. The Past, the Present and the Future of the Project,
“English Studies in Asia.” In English Studies in Asia, eds. Masazumi Araki,
Chee Seng Lim, Ryuta Minami, and Yukari Yoshihara, 9–23. Kuala Lumpur:
Silverfish.
CHAPTER 2
British Romanticism in China: Received,

Revised, and Resurrected
Ou Li
The reception history of British Romanticism in twentieth-century China

unfolds as a drama of vicissitude, corresponding to the tumultuous
course of Chinese national history and violently shifting literary poli-
tics. While all foreign literary texts or trends are reconfigured by their
interaction with the national tradition, the afterlife of British Roman-
ticism in China is distinguished by the radically divided and polarized
responses it received in the past century. This chapter first looks at the
etymology and definition of the term “Romanticism”1 in English and
Chinese, respectively, and draws attention to their considerable disparity.
Originally published as “British Romanticism in China: Revised in Reception,”

IAFOR Journal of Literature & Librarianship, 7:1 (2018): 5–28, https://doi.
org/10.22492/ijl.7.1.01.
O. Li (B)
Department of English, Chinese University of Hong Kong,
Ma Liu Shu, Hong Kong
e-mail: liou@cuhk.edu.hk
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 17

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
M. Chilton et al. (eds.), Asian English,
Asia-Pacific and Literature in English,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3513-7_2
18 O. LI
It then traces the reception of British Romantic literature in the course of

the twentieth century, highlighting in particular the late-Qing introduc-
tion, New Culturist proliferation, Communist China’s suppression, and
post-1976 resurrection. With this trajectory of the afterlife of Romanti-
cism, this chapter unveils at the same time the peculiar transformation
the concept of “Romanticism” underwent in twentieth-century China.
Focusing on several of the key aspects of the term, namely, radicalism,
self-expressiveness, and nature-ism, I shall make the case that Romanti-
cism, as both a concept and a body of literature, had been treated with
drastically divergent or even contradictory stances in China along with
the conflicting ideologies taking turns dominating the Chinese cultural
discourse. The opposing attitudes toward the same authors or texts may
suggest the oxymoronic qualities of British Romanticism itself, but they
also demonstrate the preponderant influence of the national ideology over
the aesthetic values of foreign literature in the reception process. Such an
overwhelming ideological predominance reveals the essentially utilitarian
approach China had taken to foreign literature, and British Romanticism
in particular. This chapter therefore contributes to the broader discus-
sion of the re-centering of Western literature in Asia by looking into
the process in which British Romanticism was substantially revised while
being received and resurrected in China.
“Romanticism” and Langman

Zhuyi: Translation and Revision
The substantial revision can be seen by a comparison of the Chinese
term langman zhuyi (浪漫主義) with the English original, “Romanti-
cism.” The English term is of course notoriously amorphous and has
led to numerous debates among literary historians and Romanticists who,
nevertheless, agree on at least certain core aspects of Romanticism. Many
note the etymology of the word “Romanticism” in the prefix roman-
and discuss the close association of Romanticism with romance: “the
Romantic is the sole period that is named after a literary form.”2 The
genre of romance indicates a fascination with the fantastic realm and an
escapist impulse to “fade far away”3 from reality. However, the evocation
of the enchanting world of romance was inspired by contemporary polit-
ical happenings, which encouraged a bold vision of infinite possibilities of
the actual world. The fascination with romance paradoxically suggests an
active engagement with reality. Revolutionary France, for example, was
2 BRITISH ROMANTICISM IN CHINA … 19
“a country in romance”4 for Wordsworth. The origin of the word refers

not just to the genre of romance, but the Romance languages as well.
These vernacular languages emerged as a reaction against the authoritative
and authoritarian Latin. The very word “Romanticism,” rooted in both
the genre and the language group, signifies a radical political stance. The
periodization of Romanticism reveals its political weight as well. Scholars
have contended till this day as to where to locate the starting and finishing
points of the Romantic era, and almost all the different dates they have
suggested are of momentous political significance. The beginning of the
era, often identified as 1776, 1783, or 1789, and the conclusion, be
it 1832 or 1848, bookend the historical period of Romanticism with
revolution and reform.5
The political energy of Romanticism informs the quintessen-
tially Romantic self-expressive mode. Hazlitt in his famous essay on
Wordsworth describes his poetry as “a pure emanation of the Spirit of
the Age,” which “partakes of, and is carried along with, the revolu-
tionary movement of our age.”6 The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms
identifies the “chief emphasis” of Romanticism as “upon freedom of indi-
vidual self-expression” and describes it as a “literary rebellion” against
neo-Classicism.7 Abrams’ Glossary of Literary Terms makes the revolu-
tionary nature of Romanticism against Neoclassicism more evident by
putting them together in one entry as “neoclassic and romantic,” because
Romanticism is what Neoclassicism is not.
Another signature quality of Romanticism is the prominence of nature
as its poetic subject. However, Abrams reminds us, “[i]t is a mistake …
to describe the romantic poets as simply ‘nature Poets,’” because external
nature is only “a stimulus” for the Romantic poet to turn to his/her
internal world.8 Romantic nature-ism, therefore, paradoxically suggests
transcendentalism, which places emphasis on the power of the human
mind. As Wordsworth famously puts it, “the mind / Is lord and master.”9
These core elements, political radicalism, self-expressiveness, and the
prominence of nature, are among the most salient features of Roman-
ticism. As with the English term, “Romanticism” in Chinese can also
be approached from its origins. The now-standard Chinese translation
of “Romanticism”, langman zhuyi, started to appear together with its
several other renderings, such as luoman zhuyi (羅曼主義), chuanqi zhuyi
(傳奇主義), and huangdan zhuyi (荒誕主義),10 around the late 1910s
in China.11 The version that finally prevailed, langman zhuyi, was most
likely borrowed not directly from English, but Japanese.12 Many leading
20 O. LI
Chinese intellectual and cultural figures spent an important stage of their

lives in Japan at the dawn of the twentieth century, when the Romantic
wave in Japanese literature began to subside. Their first encounter with
Romanticism almost certainly took place in Japan and in the medium of
Japanese.
Some of the earliest references to “Romanticism” in Chinese seem to
corroborate this speculation on the source of the Chinese term. Tian Han
(1898–1968), a founding member of the Creation Society (Chuangzao
she) who was then studying in Japan, discusses the problem with trans-
lating the term “Romanticism” into Chinese in his long article from
1919, “The Poet and the Issue of Labor.” He first provides its Japanese
translations both in kanji, as 浪漫主義, and in katakana, as ロマンチシ
ズム. The latter phonetic translation, he points out, is more commonly
adopted in Japan. He therefore favors luoman zhuyi, the phonetic transla-
tion in Chinese, which, he indicates, “is disapproved of by many in today’s
Chinese literary circles”.13 He, however, disapproves of other current
versions in China such as chuanqi zhuyi and huangdan zhuyi because they
“fail to represent what the term ‘Romanticism’ involves” and easily incur
misunderstanding.14
Tian was not alone among the Japanese-educated Chinese writers
and intellectuals in using the term “Romantic/ism” around the time,
although not all of them preferred luoman zhuyi as Tian did. In several
essays written in 1921, Zhou Zuoren (1885–1967), Lu Xun’s brother,
who had also studied in Japan, describes himself and his ideas as
“Romantic,” in both cases using langman.15 In another essay, he puts
langman zhuyi in parentheses after chuanqi zhuyi, indicating the two
are equivalent.16 Liang Qichao (1873–1929), who became an exile in
Japan for more than a decade (1898–1912) after the failure of the 1898
Hundred Days’ Reform, calls an ancient Chinese poem by Qu Yuan
(340–278 BC) langman in a 1922 essay.17
From “A Discussion on the Translation of Literary Terms,” a column
in a 1923 issue of Fiction Monthly (Xiaoshuo yuebao) edited by Xi Di
(Zheng Zhenduo, 1898–1958), one can assume that the diversity of the
Chinese terms for “Romanticism” had by then become confusing. One
of the contributors, Shen Yanbing (1896–1981), uses various Chinese
versions of “Romanticism” to make the point that specialized literary
terms should have uniform translations.18 Yu Zhi (Hu Yuzhi, 1896–
1986), another contributor, proposes a dictionary of literary terms, where
different translations of the same term can be provided in the order of
their appropriateness. His example is “Romanticism” as well: the dictio-

nary entry should include its three translations, luoman zhuyi, langman
zhuyi, chuanqi zhuyi, and in this order.19 He did not seem to be aware
that two months before their discussion came to press, such a dictionary
had been published. In this Encyclopedic Dictionary of New Culture,20
the entry “Romanticism” is translated as langman zhuyi.21 The title of
the dictionary, echoing its contemporary New Culture Movement, seems
to suggest itself to be the dictionary of the age and thereby gives a
sense of authority to langman zhuyi, which would indeed replace other
translations by the end of the 1920s.
The survival of langman zhuyi over other Chinese versions of “Roman-
ticism” might very well be attributed to its hybrid source as a loanword
that is nevertheless rendered in an original Chinese phrase. As a loanword
of the Japanese kanji 浪漫主義, which are themselves a translation from
English, the Chinese term is twice removed from the original. It is,
however, also “the return of the native” with the adoption of the same
Chinese characters, albeit with an altered meaning. The latter half of
the four-character Chinese term, 主義 (zhuyi), is the Japanese phonetic
translation of “ism” in English during the Meiji era. The kanji characters
suggest a loose connection with the original Chinese term, which, in clas-
sical Chinese texts, means “moral principle.” The first half of the term, 浪
漫 (langman), is returned to Chinese with its original meaning adapted.
Shi (1997) cites Natsume Sōseki (夏目漱石) and Kuriyagawa Hakuson
(厨川白村) as the originators of the Japanese kanji 浪漫 rōman, found in
their respective works, Theory of Literature (1906)22 and Ten Lectures on
Modern Literature (1912).23 According to McDougall (1971), “[a]mong
the Japanese writers on romanticism … Kuriyagawa Hakuson had perhaps
the largest following in China”24 (p. 108), Tian Han included. After
a lapse of around a decade, the Japanese term was borrowed back into
Chinese from its circulation among the Chinese students in Japan.25
The original Chinese phrase 浪漫 can be traced back to a poem
written by Su Shi (1037–1101), a leading Song poet, titled “Visiting a
Changzhou Monastery with Meng Zhen” (與孟震同遊常州僧舍): “Of
late I have gradually felt that this life is but an illusion/and have again
wandered in Sanwu area, unbridled and aimless ” [my emphasis] (年
來轉覺此生浮, 又作三吳浪漫遊).26 Here langman means unrestrained,
following one’s instinct, an attitude affinitive to the Daoist belief in the
natural state of things. In modern Chinese, langman, similar to the lower-
case “romantic,” means: (1) fanciful and idealistic, removed from reality
22 O. LI
and (2) unrestrained and unconventional, especially in sexual relation-

ships. Both meanings, rather than descending from classical Chinese, were
more likely formed after Western Romanticism was introduced to China.
With these elements put together, langman zhuyi is a double-layered
loanword that at the same time taps into classical Chinese sources, hence
sounding both exotic and native. The loan from the Japanese transla-
tion of the original English term suggests a progressive cultural stance
that nevertheless has to be conveyed with echoes with traditional Chinese
values.
Just as the formation of the term resulted from the interaction of
neologism with classical Chinese language, which changed the meaning
of both, so the definition of the Chinese term reveals the revision of
the imported concept in its encounter with Chinese literary politics.
Looking at three rather representative definitions of the term in the
1920s, 1960s, and 1990s, one will find not just their increasing depar-
ture from the original, but the drastic shift among themselves within the
national context.
The above-mentioned Encyclopedic Dictionary of New Culture provides
one of the earliest definitions of the term. It defines Romanticism as rising
from the clash with Classicism and, while noting its diversity across Euro-
pean nations, distils its central features into “subjectivism,” “liberalism,”
and “emotionalism.”27 The overall definition is followed by three sections
on the British, German, and French Romantic movements, respectively,
and two sections on “Romanticism in philosophy” and “Romanticism in
ethics and actual life.”28 In comparison with the English concept, one
notes that neither the primacy of nature nor the political energy is high-
lighted. Instead, the focus is put on the emancipation of the individual
and recovery of the inherent, independent human spirit from the fettering
traditions and classics, a focus that resonates with the tenor of the New
Culture Movement.
In the highly influential 1963 History of Western Aesthetics, which
remains a chief source of citation still today, Zhu Guangqian (1897–
1986), a leading Chinese scholar on aesthetics, identifies Romanticism
as having three common characteristics: subjectivity, Medievalism, and
“return to nature”.29 If the New Culturist Dictionary puts more stress
on the intellectual and cultural aspects of Romanticism, then this one
reviews Romanticism in a more political and ideological light. Absent
in the former dictionary is a Marxist historiographical perspective from
which these Romantic characteristics are seen as products of their socio-

political circumstances. Subjectivity demonstrates “the individualism of
the rising capitalist class.” Medievalism reveals contemporary nationalist
awareness and demands for democracy. Nature-ism was a reaction against
the capitalist urbanization and industrialization.30
The 1990 Dictionary of Foreign Literature suggests that such an ideo-
logical approach persisted to at least the end of the century. It gives two
meanings for langman zhuyi: “1. the creative mode that is opposed to
realism, characterized by its passionate language, extravagant imagina-
tion, and hyperbolic style, which has existed in literatures of all nations
from ancient times; 2. the literary movement at the turn of the nineteenth
century in the West.”31 With the first meaning, the term can be loosely
adopted to refer to the romantic elements in classical Chinese literature.
This broadened meaning, however, uproots Romanticism from its histor-
ical specificity, which, as discussed above, very much defines its essence
and thereby tones down its political and poetic radicalism. The second
meaning in its elaboration evidently takes after the Marxist turn already
found in the 1960s definition of Romanticism:
it is the consequence of the bankruptcy of the kingdom of Reason

promised by the Enlightenment thinkers and the manifestation of the disil-
lusionment with the social and political order established by the French
Bourgeois Revolution. The intellectual sources of Romanticism are the
detestation of the bourgeois way of life and the resistance to the capi-
talist mundane reality, spiritual barrenness, and egotism, the pursuit of
emancipation of individuality, and the longing for a world in harmony.32
The Marxist vocabulary such as “the French Bourgeois Revolution”

and the values engendered by “capitalism” bespeak the Chinese revi-
sion of the English term. In a more recent monograph, the definition
remains unchanged in its Marxist historiographical view: Romanticism is
“a literary trend that developed from the rise of the bourgeois revolution
and nationalist liberation movement at the beginning of the nineteenth
century.”33 In these post-1949 definitions, all the core elements of
the original term, political radicalism, self-expressiveness, and nature-
ism, are there. Yet, in being subordinated to the historical context that
is conceived in Marxist terms, they are essentially reduced to passive,
subservient products of class struggle. This distinctively Marxist bent in
24 O. LI
the Chinese term langman zhuyi has to be traced back to the recep-
tion history of Romantic literature in China, in the process of which
the key components of the concept “Romanticism” were reframed and
reinterpreted.
Introduction of Romanticism:
Late-Qing Appropriation
Romantic literature entered China at the beginning of the twentieth
century, when late-Qing intellectuals and Reformists were looking at
Western learning for ways to rescue the collapsing Qing empire from
its domestic unrest and threats from imperialist powers. Liang Qichao,
a leading late-Qing Reformist, was the first figure who introduced
Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley to China. In his essay published in The
China Discussion (Qing yi bao), the journal he established in Yokohama,
Japan during his exile, Liang makes a reference to Wordsworth.34 Byron’s
and Shelley’s portraits first appeared in another journal Liang founded in
Yokohama, New Fiction (Xin xiaoshuo), in the second (1903) and four-
teenth issue (1906), respectively. In the third issue of the same journal
is the translation of excerpts from The Giaour and “The Isles of Greece”
in Don Juan, excerpts that Liang includes in his own political fantasy,
The Future of New China (Xin zhongguo weilai ji).35 In 1905, Scott’s
Ivanhoe (Sakexun jiehou yingxiong lüe) was published, translated by Lin
Shu (1852–1924), the immensely popular late-Qing translator of many
Western novels. Keats made his first entrance into China in 1907 in an
important early essay by Lu Xun (1881–1936), “On the Power of Mara
Poetry” (Moluo shili shuo), but he is only mentioned in passing. The essay
was first published in Henan, a radical journal established by overseas
Chinese students in Japan.
These three figures’ divergent, if not opposed, political and literary
stances give one a glimpse of the multi-facetedness of Romanticism, which
lends itself to its Chinese readers’ active appropriation that developed in
diverse directions. Lu Xun, a leading figure in the following decade’s
New Culture Movement and the author of the first vernacular Chinese
fiction, had a very different take on Romanticism from both Liang and
Lin. Lin, the monolingual translator who rendered his bilingual assis-
tants’ oral account of the novel in classical Chinese, would be regarded
as a major conservative for his adamant defense of traditional language
and culture against the New Culturist sweeping tide. Even though Liang
and Lin were both key late-Qing disseminators of Western literature,

Liang’s chief advocation of political literature contrasts with Lin’s choice
of popular, sentimental Western novels. On the other hand, however,
Liang’s “highly politicized campaign for new fiction opens the space
for Lin Shu’s translation by supplying a kind of Dao: national salvation
becomes the contemporary Dao.”36
These rather sporadic early appearances of Romantic authors and texts
suggest a lack of overall grasp of Romanticism as both a body of literature
and a literary concept in the late-Qing era. If Liang noted Wordsworth’s
worship of nature, he put it into the traditional Chinese cultural frame-
work of Daoism. Both Liang and Lin found in the Romantic literature to
which they were exposed a vehement expression of the national identity,
not the self. Among the three key components of Romanticism, political
energy was their major interest, which, however, was reinterpreted as a
means of national preservation. Both Byron’s poetic passages and Scott’s
novel center on the tension between one’s national identity and the
foreign conquering and ruling power, a tension that parallels the antag-
onism of the Han Chinese toward the Manchu conquerors and rulers of
the Qing Dynasty, and at the same time evokes the similar national crisis
incurred by imperialist forces in China.
In Liang’s political novel where he alludes to Byron’s lines that lament
the decline of Greece from its past glory to its present subjugation,
he demonstrates an essentially utilitarian view of literature which was
shared by many of his contemporaries, even though their emphasis on the
socio-political dimension of literature is not incompatible with Romantic
radicalism. For Liang, Byron and his texts served an exigent political func-
tion, namely, to awaken in the Chinese readers a sense of humiliation of
living as the colonized people and the realization of the imminent need to
reform the empire. The immense popularity of “The Isles of Greece” in
China reveals the same instrumentality of the Chinese reading of Roman-
ticism. The four Chinese translators of the song, Liang Qichao, Ma Junwu
(1881–1940), Su Manshu (1884–1918), and Hu Shi (1891–1962)—all
leading intellectuals and poets of their time—unexceptionally embraced it
for its sublime lamentation over the decline of a once-glorious civilization
and its rebellious energy in inspiring the oppressed nationalities. None of
them, however, gave any heed to or showed interest in the satirical quality
of this ballad or the complexity of the overall Don Juan.37
Lin’s rendition of the title Ivanhoe in Chinese as “A Heroic Tale after
the Saxon Crisis” betrays a similar concern about China’s plight. As Lin
26 O. LI
writes in the preface to his translation, one of the key interests of Scott’s
tale is how the Saxon hero kindles his people’s grief and indignation over
the demise of their old kingdom at the hands of the Normans.38 Lin does
not need to spell out that his own ancient, dying country was caught in a
similar precarious situation and in desperate need of heroic inspiration as
well. This theme fits in hand in glove with the medium of classical Chinese
Lin chose, with which he could rewrite the original text into his context.
As Hu Ying observes, Lin “treats the source language text as open-ended,
and the act of translation enters into this open space, establishing linkage
between the text and contemporary politics.”39
Even without systematic knowledge about Romanticism, the late-Qing
literati recognized its political energy, which, however, was reframed
into their own cultural tradition of Confucian loyalty to the country.
In their urge to preserve the country by seeking an immediate remedy
for its crisis, the literariness of Romanticism would probably seem far-
fetched and excessive. This instrumentalist approach they had taken to
Romantic or Western literature in general was in essence an extension
of the Self-Strengthening Movement (1860s–90s), which insisted on the
preservation of Chinese learning as “the fundamental structure,” whereas
Western learning would merely be borrowed for its “practical function.”
The Proliferation of Romanticism: The

New Culturist Enthusiasm and Division
The desperate attempt to salvage the Qing empire from its ruins while
keeping the traditional Chinese culture intact soon gave way to more
radical political and cultural reforming efforts that ended up in the 1911
Revolution and the New Culture Movement (1915–1920s). The atti-
tude toward Western learning experienced a similar shift, from a cautious,
partial borrowing to an enthusiastic, wholesale embrace. This tendency
can already be detected in the above-mentioned essay written by Lu
Xun (1996), a leading New Culturist, which focuses on the Satanic
Romantics such as Byron and Shelley.40 His essay distinguishes itself from
other late-Qing introductions to Romanticism in its celebration not of
these Romantics’ heroic devotion to the glorious nationalist cause that
Liang and Lin emphasized, but of their anti-heroic and often misan-
thropic iconoclasm. Its subversive power anticipated the anti-traditionalist
New Culture Movement that took place in the ensuing decade, during
which the importation of Romantic literature flourished. One of the
most important New Culturist manifestos, Hu Shi’s (1891–1962) 1917

article, “Some Modest Proposals for the Reform of Literature,” is obvi-
ously indebted to the manifesto of Romanticism, Wordsworth’s Preface
to Lyrical Ballads, although Hu does not refer to Wordsworth until
later. The centennial anniversaries of the Romantics in the 1920s and
1930s encouraged further popularization of Romanticism, when intro-
ductions, translations, and commemorations of Keats, Shelley, Byron,
Blake, Scott, Coleridge, and Lamb were published between 1921 and
1934 in some leading Republican journals such as Fiction Monthly, The
Eastern Miscellany (Dongfang zazhi), Poetry (Shi kan), Morning Post
Supplementary (Chenbao fukan), and Literature and Arts Monthly (Wenyi
yuekan). Among them, the special commemorative issue on Shelley of The
Creation Quarterly (1:4, 1923), established by the Creation Society, and
that on Byron of Fiction Monthly (15:4, 1924), edited by the Literary
Research Association (Wenxue yanjiuhui), are the most elaborate and
enthusiastic.
The flourishing Romantic literature was buttressed with a strong sense
of affinity many New Culturists found in some central ideas encapsu-
lated in Romanticism as an intellectual trend, in particular, the unleashed
self and revolutionary energy, both literary and political. With a similar
Romantic spirit, the New Culturists proposed a clean break with the
traditional Confucian values and a thorough Westernization, promoting
the emancipation of the individual, including the liberation of women,
from the oppressive Confucian ethics. Fully conscious that this revolution
in the traditional culture could not have taken place without a revolu-
tion in language, they simultaneously launched the vernacular movement
to replace classical Chinese. The radicalness of this cultural and literary
revolution makes it not improper to regard it as a Chinese Romantic
movement. Lee, for example, labels some Chinese writers of the New
Culture era “the Romantic generation,” because both the Chinese and
the European movements
represented a reaction against the classic tradition of order, reason, schema-

tization, ritualization, and structuring of life. Both ushered in a new
emphasis on sincerity, spontaneity, passion, imagination, and the release of
individual energies—in short, the primacy of subjective human sentiments
and energies.41
28 O. LI
A closer look at this Romantic generation’s diverse programs of the

literary revolution and the literary polemics in this era, however, reveals a
more complex picture. The New Culturists’ “campaign against cultural
backwardness was presented first of all instrumentally,” because they
believed that this cultural revolution would “exercise a determinative
influence upon political change.”42 In this sense, they were no different
from their late-Qing Reformist predecessors. As Denton points out,
“although they uniformly denounced the didactic concept of ‘literature
conveys the Dao,’ May Fourth literary theorists proposed to use literature
in much the same way.”43 Their “instrumentalist” approach is manifest
in their treatment of Romanticism as a particularly powerful means to
achieve the end of an ideological revolution.
With this predominant ideological concern, two aspects of Romanti-
cism that the New Culturists particularly championed, political radicalism
and self-expressiveness, developed into almost mutually exclusive qual-
ities, appropriated respectively, by individuals and literary groups with
opposing values and tenets. This can be clearly seen in the case of
Byron and Shelley, the most popular Romantics in this era. While Byron
remained the most idolized Western Romantic in China since the late-
Qing era, his Satanic, “destructive” egotism celebrated by Lu Xun was
carefully distinguished by his brother Zhou Zuoren from Shelley’s “con-
structive” idealism for the good of all.44 Even Shelley himself received
divided treatments despite many New Culturists’ common admiration
of him. For the leftist Literary Research Association, which espoused
realism, as famously expressed by their slogan of “art for life’s sake,”
Shelley was chiefly a fiery idealist and political activist. However, for the
Creation Society—which claimed itself Romantic before its later Marxist
turn, their slogan being “art for art’s sake”—Shelley was primarily an
acclaimed self-expressive lyricist. On Shelley’s centenary, Zhou Zuoren,
a founding figure of the Association, chose to translate “A Song: Men
of England”45 from Shelley’s explicitly political “popular songs,” and the
same poem was translated in the same year by Zheng Zhenduo, another
leading Associationist, who published it on the eleventh anniversary of
the 1911 Revolution, 10 October.46 In the special issue of The Creation
Quarterly, Guo Moruo (1892–1978), a leading Creationist, selects eight
less openly provocative lyrics instead, including “To a Skylark,” “Ode
to the West Wind,” “Mutability,” and “Stanzas Written in Dejection”47
(1923, 19–39). Although the Associationists and Creationists presented
a different Shelley, they both appropriated Shelley to promote their own

aesthetic and ideological vision.
In comparison with radicalism and self-expressiveness, the other key
component of Romanticism, nature-ism, seemed almost effaced in these
ideological contentions. Instead, it was reshaped by both proponents and
opponents of the New Culture Movement to be incorporated into their
conflicting literary discourses. Wordsworth, the passionate worshipper of
nature, was embraced by the New Culturists not so much for being
a nature poet as the prefacer of revolutionary poetics, whose celebra-
tion of nature was subsumed into his expression of “the spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings”48 of the poet’s self. On the other hand,
the more conservative Critical Review Group (Xueheng pai) criticized
Wordsworth’s Romantic manifesto but promoted his apparently more
traditionalist poetry of nature, with which they evoked the classical
Chinese tianyuan poetry49 and at the same time challenged their rivals’
thorough Westernization and rejection of traditional Chinese culture.50
This group, however, was not composed of old-fashioned tradition-
alists as one might expect. Anglo-American educated, they mocked
their radical counterparts’ shallow and crude understanding of Western
culture. Wu Mi (1894–1978), a leading member of the group, studied
under Irving Babbitt, whose anti-Romanticism must have influenced him.
Same as the Critical Review Group, Liang Shiqiu (1903–1987), another
belligerent anti-Romantic figure and a loyal disciple of Babbitt’s as well,
has penned perhaps the most militant attack on the Romantic excessive-
ness in China. Liang ridicules those who introduced Western literature
to China as mere dilettantes: according to him, “the New Literary
Movement, as a whole, was a Romantic chaos”.51 These anti-New Cultur-
ists, it seems, brought contemporary Anglo-American modernist reaction
against Romanticism52 back to China, where the Romantic afterlife had
just started thriving, an irony that is a consequence of the asynchronous
nature of reception.
To further complicate the situation, even within the same literary
group, tensions and contradictions can be found in its members’ complex
stances toward Romanticism. The anti-Romantic Liang was a member
of the Crescent Moon Society (Xinyue she), a prominent literary group
during the era which had made remarkable contributions to the forma-
tion of the modern Chinese literary tradition, especially in the realm of
New Poetry (poetry written in vernacular Chinese). With many of its
members returning from Britain and America, Romantic poetry was a
30 O. LI
major shaping force for their creation of the new genre in Chinese. Hu
Shi, the first experimenter of New Poetry, was inspired by Wordsworth’s
radical poetics and tried his hand at a translation of “The Isles of Greece.”
Xu Zhimo (1897–1931), who discovered Romantic poetry at Cambridge,
translated and wrote extensively on Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley and
Keats. His own poetry is profuse with images that are so recogniz-
ably Romantic that in hindsight they look almost derivative. At the
time, however, his importation of the English meter as well as Romantic
imagery into New Poetry was bold and (paradoxically) original. He was
inspired by Romanticism not just as a poet but as a man, fashioning for
himself such a romantic life53 that in his case, being “Romantic” and
“romantic” become almost indistinguishable. Wen Yiduo (1899–1946),
another member of the Crescent Moon Society, alludes to Wordsworth
in one of his most famous poems, “Dead Water,” and dedicates a poem to
Keats, paying tribute to him as “The Loyal Minister of Art.”54 Zhu Xiang
(1904–1933) was labeled “the Chinese Keats” for his frequent references
to the English poet on top of being a major translator of Keats and other
Romantics.55
Despite the unquestionable influence of Romantic poetry on these
Crescent Moon poets, however, they did not necessarily share all the
ideological concerns and aesthetic values of Romanticism. As with Liang
Shiqiu, both Wen and Xu reacted against the extravagant, formless free
verse ushered in by the radical vernacular movement. In place of the
self-proclaimed Romantic Creationists’ effusive, egotistically sublime new
poems, they called for formalism and introduced metrical and stan-
zaic disciplines into New Poetry. Their poetic experiments and stylistic
concerns, however, were attacked as being disengaged from social reality
by the Creation Society and, later, by Lu Xun as well, in the late 1920s
fierce debate on the relationship between revolution and literature. The
Crescent Moon Society’s ambiguous stance toward Romanticism, there-
fore, puts into sharp focus the complexities and tensions of both the
original Romanticism and the New Culture Movement, this Chinese
Romantic Movement.
The New Culturist Romantic fervor started to subside from the
late 1920s onward, when the nation was plunged into a deep crisis
with the falling-out between the Nationalist and Communist Party and
the Japanese invasion. The celebration of radical iconoclasm and self-
expressiveness was overtaken by the cause of national salvation and an
increasing concern with the masses. Literary revolution, as the Associ-

ationist Cheng Fangwu famously phrases it, gave way to revolutionary
literature.56
Revolutionized Romanticism: Communist

China’s Suppression and Revision
Drastic changes in the reception of Romanticism took place after
Communist China was founded in 1949 and forged a totalitarian literary
and cultural policy that demanded all literature and art be an instrument
of the party. Several violent shifts can be observed in the post-1949 atti-
tudes toward Romantic authors and texts. Byron and Shelley were still
the most discussed and translated Romantics, but Shelley won the party’s
favor over Byron; the evaluation of Byron became warily dualistic. While
being celebrated as a relentless rebel against the ruling classes and a
champion of the downtrodden people, Byron was also critiqued for his
aristocratic stand on class and bourgeois, egotistic heroism. Two older
Romantics, Blake and Burns, enjoyed a particularly warm reception in
post-1949 China, occasioned by their bicentennial anniversaries in 1957
and 1959. On the other hand, together with Byron, some Romantics fell
into disfavor: Keats was degraded to a lesser Romantic, while Wordsworth
and Coleridge were labeled as reactionary or passive Romantics.57
These shifts took place along with numerous political campaigns
launched by the Communist Party, which had a rigid control over all
literary and artistic activities in China. Before the Sino–Soviet split, the
party’s official stance toward Romantic authors and texts basically derived
from the Soviet practice of dividing them into revolutionary or active ones
and reactionary or passive ones, which was based on its theory of “rev-
olutionary Romanticism”. The Soviet theory was established at the First
Congress of Soviet Writers (1934), where Maxim Gorky (1868–1936),
President of the Union of Soviet Writers, and Andrey Zhdanov (1896–
1948), the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee Secretary,
both affirmed “revolutionary Romanticism” as the standard in evaluating
Western literature. Revolutionary Romanticism, which glorifies reality and
thus serves the cause of the party, was subsequently accepted as the official
doctrine of literary creation and criticism in the Soviet Union,58 a guide-
line that China later faithfully abided by. By this standard, Byron and
Shelley were approved as revolutionary Romantics, whereas Wordsworth
and Coleridge were condemned as turncoat reactionary Romantics. Keats,
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fresca, y sustituía su traje de calle con un chupetín y unos
pantalones de transparente nipis; y si esta precaución contra el calor
no le bastaba, se quedaba en calzoncillos y en mangas de camisa.
De un modo ó de otro, se pasaba el día contemplando sus queridos
pececillos.
Porque es de advertir que el señor marqués tenía la pasión de los
peces de colores, y hasta seis redomas de cristal llenas de ellos.
Cambiarles el agua, desmigar pan sobre ella á horas determinadas,
y estudiar en un tratado especial la manera de conservarlos y
reproducirlos, eran sus únicas ocupaciones de recreo.
Posteriormente, dos viajes á Aranjuez en ferrocarril le demostraron
que podía meterse un hombre en estos rápidos vehículos, sin el
riesgo infalible de romperse las costillas ó el bautismo; por lo cual,
hasta se atrevió á prometerse á sí propio que tan pronto como
hubiera una línea abierta hasta un puerto de mar, la aprovecharía
para admirar los grandes peces en su propio y natural elemento.
—«Porque desengañémonos—se decía,—no puede asegurar que
conoce la merluza ni el besugo, quien solamente ha visto sus
cadáveres embanastados en la plazuela del Carmen».
Y cumpliendo su promesa, tan pronto como la línea del Norte
empalmó en Alar del Rey con la nuestra, armóse de valor y de
dinero, y se plantó de un tirón en el famoso puerto del mar cántabro.
Si ha encontrado aquí lo que se prometían sus ilusiones, dígalo la
puntualidad con que, desde entonces, viene cada verano á
Santander.
Cansados estarán ustedes de conocerle. Es de corta estatura, muy
derecho, enjuto de carnes, redondito de cara, risueño y corto de
vista; son rubios los pocos pelos de su cabeza, y casi blancos los
del recortado bigote. Gasta, en público, levita, corbata y pantalón
negros, y chaleco blanco, sombrero de copa alta y anteojos con
armadura de oro.
Tal es, repito, en público, su arreo, ó, mejor dicho, en tierra, y con él
le habrá visto el lector, no en las alamedas, ni en el Sardinero, ni en
la sociedad, sino en los embarcaderos de todos los muelles, desde
Maliaño hasta Puerto-Chico, ó en camino de alguno de ellos, en los
cuales no faltan nunca pescadores de caña ó de aparejo.
Tras ellos está siempre, estando en tierra, con las manos á la
espalda, el bastón entre las manos, el cuerpo inclinado hacia
adelante, y la vista inmóvil, fija en el corcho flotante ó en la sereña
tendida.
—¡Quieto, quieto!—exclama á lo mejor, si nota que el corcho se
mueve y el pescador se apresura á tirar.—Ésa es picada falsa...
Ahora, ahora muerde... ¡Fuera con él!
Y si el pescado sale coleando en el anzuelo, lanza un ¡bravo!; y si el
pez no es pancho, bate además sus manezuelas; y de todos modos,
sean panchos ó lobinas lo que se pesque, él lo destraba,
confundiéndose entonces, en un solo ovillo, el pez, las manos, las
gafas y el anzuelo.
Semejantes intrusiones y familiaridades no dejaron de costarle al
principio algún disgusto, pues no son siempre los pescadores de
caña tan pacientes como la fama supone; pero, poco á poco, fueron
éstos acostumbrándose á las cosas del señor marqués (que, por
otra parte, no peca de roñoso con los del oficio), y hoy todos le
toleran y hasta le encuentran devertido y celebre.
Mas no son éstas sus ocupaciones de carácter; quiero decir, que no
viene para sólo eso el señor marqués á Santander.
Cuando llega, ya le está esperando una barquía perfectamente
limpia y carenada, con los necesarios útiles de pesca, incluso la
guadañeta para maganos.—Prefiere la barquía, porque teniendo
todas las condiciones de seguridad de la lancha y todas las de
ligereza del bote, es bastante más grande que el uno y de más fácil
manejo que la otra.—Dos marineros, condueños de la barquía,
están, como ella, á su disposición; y según que el marqués prefiera
las porredanas ó las llubinas, le conducen á la boca del puerto, ó á
las puntas de arena de la bahía, todos los días, infaliblemente, si el
tiempo no está tempestuoso; pues por chubasco más ó menos, no
deja él de embarcarse para estar en el sitio conveniente al apuntar
la marea.
Ancho pajero y desaliñado y viejo vestido de lanilla, lleva para el sol;
y por si llueve, amplísimo impermeable y enorme paraguas de
mahón. Por supuesto, no falta el acopio de vino y de fiambres para
él y los marineros, el día en que la marea tercia de modo que no
puedan volver á comer á casa á la hora conveniente.
Durante la pesca, transige con que los marineros le ceben los
anzuelos ó le reemplacen con otra nueva una tanza rota, ó le
desengarmen el aparejo, cuando éste se le enreda entre peñas ó en
la caloca; pero se guardarán muy bien de tocar el pez que él saque
preso en el hierrecillo traidor.
Un día quiso lanzarse á correr aventuras fuera del puerto, seducido
por las pinturas que sus marineros le hacían del tamaño y
abundancia del pescado en aquellas honduras: y salió, en efecto;
mas apenas comenzó la barquía á mecerse en pleno mar, y á
columpiarse desde «el lomo altivo al seno proceloso de las ondas»
(como acontece allí, aun en las ocasiones en que se dice de la mar
que está como un plato), pensó que la costa bailaba el fandango,
cambió la peseta, y tuvieron los dos marineros que llevarle á puerto
seguro, antes que se les quedara entre las manos.
Esta lección le sirvió para no intentar siquiera «el estudio del besugo
y de la merluza en su propio y natural elemento», contentándose,
hasta mejor ocasión, con el anfiteatro de la Pescadería, donde los
veía tan cadáveres como en la plazuela del Carmen, aunque un
poco más frescos.
Por lo demás, entregándose, como se entrega, con verdadera
embriaguez, al placer de la pesca menor, y poseyendo el arte como
cree él poseerle, es, durante la temporada, casi completamente
feliz. Y digo casi, porque no ha podido adiestrarse mayormente en el
manejo especialísimo de la guadañeta.
—Aquí hay algún misterio que yo no penetro todavía—dice con
desconsuelo á sus remeros é instructores, cada vez que éstos,
predicando con el ejemplo, van sacando maganos.—Esta pesca es
al vuelo, digámoslo así: hay que robar más bien que pescar; y
necesito yo estudiar, ante todo, la marcha y la estrategia de la
banda.
Y estudia, en efecto; y cuando ya se le rinde la muñeca de tanto
menearla, la caridad, sin duda, medio le traba un magano que, al
salir al aire libre, le lanza á la cara toda la tinta, dejándosela más
negra que la del negro Domingo, sin que falte su abundante rociada
para la camisa y cuanto blanquea sobre su cuerpo. Pero como esta
tinta es la sangre de aquellas batallas, lejos de creerse afrentado
con el tizne, lúcele orgulloso al desembarco, y toma las risas de la
gente por muestras de admiración á sus proezas.
Tal es el verdadero punto negro de su felicidad; y eso que,
generalmente, pesca poco, ó no pesca nada, si no se le cuentan
como pesca tal cual dolor de cabeza, ó romadizo, que de esto no le
falta, gracias á Dios, durante la temporada.
No hay para qué decir que es uno de sus grandes placeres
obsequiar á las personas de su mayor aprecio con el producto de
sus bregas de pescador. Que cuando no pesca habla de lo que ha
pescado y de lo que piensa pescar, y que miente en la mitad de lo
que habla entonces, también por sabido se calla. La afición
desmedida á ésos y otros parecidos entretenimientos, lleva consigo
esa pequeña debilidad. Que lo digan los cazadores, y no se ofendan
por ello.
La temporada de este tipo concluye cuando los noroestes se hacen
crónicos, y la bahía, incitada por ellos, dice que no tolera más
bromas en sus aguas. Entonces, curtida su cara por las brisas y el
sol, apestando su equipaje á brea y á parrocha, gratifica
generosamente á sus dos camaradas de campaña, después de
pagarles el alquiler de la barquía, y sale para Madrid con el temor de
que han de parecerle siglos los meses del invierno, aunque lleno de
satisfacción por haber cumplido ampliamente el propósito que le
trajo á Santander.
Un dato muy expresivo, que se me olvidaba:
Le vi en una ocasión pararse delante de una tienda donde yo estaba
sentado. Plantóse á la puerta; dió en las losas dos golpecitos con la
contera de su bastón, en el que apoyó en seguida su diestra mano;
oprimió suavemente con la otra sus gafas contra el entrecejo;
carraspeó tres veces; levantó mucho sus cejas y los
correspondientes párpados, como si se maravillara de algo, y
exclamó, por todo saludo, encarándose con mi amigo, y también de
ustedes probablemente, el dueño de la tienda:
—Señor don Juan: pic... pic... pic... pic... pic... pic... pic... (y marcaba
cada uno de estos sonidos con la mano izquierda, unidos índice y
pulgar). Siete veces picó, y yo quieto... quieto... quieto... Picadas
falsas... Tú te clavarás... En efecto: un poco después, ¡zas!... ¡zas!...
(y aquí frunció el ceño el buen señor, y marcó los golpes á puño
cerrado)... Ahora muerdes, dije yo; y ¡rissch! tiro en firme... ¡Dos
libras y media pesó! ¡Una porredana como un bonito!... Ayer tarde, á
dos brazas de la Horadada... Esta noche tendemos el esparavel...
Ya diré á usted la carnicería que resulte... Adiós, señor don Juan.
Y se fué.
Así conocí yo al inofensivo, al dulce, al apacible, al venturoso
marqués de la Mansedumbre.
UN JOVEN DISTINGUIDO
(VISTO DESDE SUS PENSAMIENTOS)
EN UN CUARTO DE UNA FONDA

No me digan á mí (enfrente del espejo y en ropas menores) que
aquellos hombres de anchas espaldas y robusto pecho, que
gastaban gabanes de acero y pantalones de hierro colado, eran el
tipo de la belleza varonil... Serían, todo lo más, forzudos; pero
¿elegantes?... ¡bah!... Hay que desengañarse: es mucho más
hermosa la juventud de ahora... ¿Qué hay que pedir á esta pierna
larga y delgada, como un mimbre? ¿á este brazo descarnado y
suelto, como si no tuviera coyunturas? ¿y á este talle que se
cimbrea? ¿y á este pescuezo de cisne?... ¡Si no fuera por esta
pícara nuez! Pero se me ha corregido mucho, y á la hora menos
pensada desaparece por completo. De todas maneras, la cubriré
con la barba... cuando la tenga... Y en verdad que sentiré tenerla,
porque con ella perderá el cutis su frescura: ¡cuidado si es fresco y
sonrosado mi cutis! ¡Si estuviera la cara un poco más llena de
carnes y fueran los dientes algo más blancos y menudos!... porque
con estos ojos rasgados, este bigotillo de seda y este pelo negro
echado hacia atrás... ¡Qué hermosa frente tengo!... Y eso que no es
muy ancha... Bien. Ahora el traje amelí de negligé. ¡Qué bien cae el
pantalón sobre los pies! Me gustan estas campanas tan anchas,
porque tapan los juanetes. ¡Pícaros juanetes! ¿Por qué he de tener
yo juanetes como un hombre vulgar?... No sé si me ponga el
sombrero de paja á la marinera, ó el de fieltro. Como es por la
tarde... Me decido por el de paja. No viste tanto, pero me va muy
bien... Ahora los guantes de piel de Suecia, el bastón de espino
ruso... y á la calle... Vaya antes una mirada general... ¡Intachable!...
¡Cómo se nos conoce en el aire á los chicos distinguidos!... ¡Por
cierto que estos provincianos de Santander tienen un afán de
arrimarse á uno!... y luego serán capaces de quejarse si se les da
un desaire... Pues no me hace gracia esta corbata: no juega bien
con el traje. La cambiaré... Afortunadamente tengo en qué escoger.
Papá se propuso sin duda que en esta primera salida mía á
provincias dejara yo el pabellón bien puesto, y nada me ha
escaseado. Corresponderé, papaíto, á tus propósitos, y la fama te
dirá luego quién es tu hijo. Así están más en armonía los colores; y
hasta las puntas sueltas dicen mejor á este traje que el nudo
armado... Probablemente me estarán esperando en el Sardinero
Casa-Vieja, Monteoscuro, Pradoverde y Manolo Cascajares... y hoy
me hacen suma falta para que me ayuden á averiguar quién es
aquella hechicera y distinguida rubia que paseaba ayer tarde con las
de Potosí. Cuando quise acercarme á ellas para saberlo, se
metieron en un carruaje, y perdí la pista... Tres veces me miró, ¡tres!
pero ¡con qué intención!... Lo raro es que yo no la conocía hasta
entonces... Acaso ella me haya visto antes en alguna parte: esto es
lo más probable... En lo que no cabe duda es en que las de Potosí
la habrán dicho quién es papá: por consiguiente, tengo andada la
mayor parte del camino, y mis relaciones con ella son seguras... Lo
siento por el desengaño que van á llevarse mis dos conquistas del
Muelle. ¡Pobres chicas! Pero ellas se lo han querido. Á la tercera
vez que pasé bajo sus balcones, ya me devoraban con los ojos... Y
el caso es que son muy bonitas... Si se conformaran con el segundo
puesto que les corresponde en mi corazón. ¡Corazón! Pero ¿le
tienes tú, acaso, joven voluble?... ¡Y ellas que aspiran á conquistar
el primero! Tendría que oir lo que se dijera de mí en Madrid este
invierno, si me presentara en el gran mundo con la historia de dos
conquistas provincianas por botín de mi campaña veraniega. ¡Yo
que soy uno de los chicos de moda y de más porvenir!... En fin, por
de pronto martiricémoslas un poco, y enseñemos á estos cursis
montañeses algo de lo que vale y puede un joven de la buena
sociedad madrileña.
II
EN LA CALLE
Antes de acometer el asunto principal de mi empresa de hoy,
hagamos un poco de prólogo por el interior de la ciudad. Éntrome
por la calle de San Francisco... ¡Vulgo, vulgo todo! Modistillas,
horteras, traficantes que van y vienen, y algunas señoras cursis...
Aquellos tres chicos con humos de elegantes van á querer arrimarse
á mí... Haré que no los veo, poniéndome á mirar esta vidriera... Ya
pasaron... Me carga esta gente por lo pegajosa que es... No sé por
qué se les figura que el darle á uno billete para el Círculo, ó para los
bailes de campo, les autoriza para tomarse ciertas libertades...
Todos los que pasan á mi lado me miran. Dirán para sus adentros:
«¡Qué chico tan elegante y tan distinguido! Ése es de Madrid...».
porque se nos conoce á la legua... Se me figura que por más allá de
San Francisco viene algo que no es vulgo... ¡Oh, fortuna! son las de
Cascajares. Bien decía yo que ese aire no era de por acá. Voy á
saludarlas...—Á los pies de ustedes...—Perfectamente, gracias...—
Pues por aquí matando el aburrimiento...—Lo comprendo sin que
ustedes me lo digan...—Ni tampoco sociedad...—Qué quieren
ustedes, les falta chic...—También yo, en cuanto se marchen las
amigas del Sardinero...—Creo que van primero á Ontaneda...—Y
Pilar erisipela...—¡Qué maliciosas son ustedes!...—Y Manolo,
¿dónde anda?...—Entonces le veré en el Sardinero...—Á los pies de
ustedes.
¡Qué amables, qué discretas y qué distinguidas! Pues tampoco yo
he sido rana... ¡Aquello de la erisipela lo dije con una travesura y un
retintín!... Á estos gomosos provincianos quisiera yo ver
tiroteándose con las señoras del gran mundo. ¿Qué idea tendrán de
él aquí? ¡Pobre gente!
Pues, señor, esta región ya está explorada. Ahora al Muelle. Allí
lanzaré un par de flechazos á mis dos montañesitas, y en seguida
tomo el tranvía para el Sardinero. De más tono sería un carruaje
abierto, en que fuera yo recostado con esa indolencia voluptuosa
que tan bien me va; pero no hay que hablar de eso en este pueblo
atrasadísimo... Echo por los atajos para llegar primero.
¡Oh, qué brisa tan oportuna corre por aquí!... ¡Cómo juguetea con
mis cabellos y con las puntas sueltas de mi corbata!... ¡Debo de
estar hermosísimo en este instante!... Andaré un poco más de prisa,
no se figure algún mentecato indígena que la Ribera ni las que en
ella viven son capaces de llamar mi atención... ¡Voy de paso, sí,
señores, nada más que de paso!... aunque demasiado conocerá la
gente que, á estas horas, no puede venir por aquí con otro objeto un
chico distinguido de Madrid.
Me parece que aquel mirador es el de una de ellas. Justamente...
¡como que está esperándome en él!... Pero no está sola... ¡Anda!
pues es la otra quien la acompaña. Serán amigas... Tanto mejor: así
despacho de un solo viaje. ¡Hermosa carambola voy á hacer con
cada mirada!... ¿qué digo carambola? la discordia es lo que van á
producir mis miradas, como la manzana del otro... ¡Suerte más
provocativa!... Vayan, ante todo, un par de estirones de puño,
haciendo, de paso, como que el sombrero me sofoca, para meter los
dedos entre el pelo... Á esos dos provincianillos que vienen por la
otra acera, les haré un saludo desdeñoso; y dirán las chicas: «¡con
qué desdén tan distinguido los trata! ¡cómo los domina!...». ¡Agur!...
¡Qué fachas van!... Las del mirador me han visto... Pues allá va la
mirada... Ya la pescaron... Me miran de reojo y se sonríen y
cuchichean. ¡Cómo disimulan la una con la otra! Luego será ella,
cuando tratéis de ver quién se le lleva. Para vosotras estaba,
inocentes... La verdad es que son monísimas... ¡Válgame Dios, qué
estragos podía yo hacer en este pueblo si me lo propusiera! No miro
á una que no me corresponda... Otro golpe de brisa. Todo me
favorece hoy. ¡Es que estoy graciosísimo con estas arremetidas del
aire!... Antes de perder de vista el mirador, voy á volver la cara...
¿No lo dije? Devorándome están con los ojos... Y para disimular
más, se meten corriendo en casa, haciendo que ríen á carcajadas...
¡De cuánto fingimiento es capaz la mujer! Pues, señor, este fruto
está ya sazonado; y aunque sea para entreplato, se aprovechará.
El Suizo. Con la disculpa de buscar á alguien, voy á darme un par
de golpes de espejo... Perfectamente. ¡Qué hermoso estoy esta
tarde!... Es que nunca ha sido mi cutis más blanco, ni han tenido mis
ojos más hechicera languidez. ¡No me extraña que las del mirador
hayan quedado fascinadas!... ¡Es mucho ese Madrid para chicos
distinguidos!
Ahora, á tomar el tranvía y buscar á mi gente al Sardinero... ¡Ah,
rubia! te compadezco...
Me cargan á mí estos tranvías de provincia, por la morralla que va
en ellos... Por supuesto que, como de costumbre, tendré que ir de
pie en la imperial, porque en el interior es un poco pesado llevar
tanto tiempo el ceño fruncido y la cara de asco... Y de otro modo no
puede ir un chico distinguido como yo. Arriba, con la disculpa de
mirar al mar, puede uno siquiera volver la espalda á todo el mundo
sin violencia y sin que choque... Debería haber departamentos
especiales en estos carruajes.
III
EN EL SARDINERO
Esto ya es otra cosa... aquí puedo decir que estoy en mi casa. ¡Qué
toaletas; qué negligés tan chic!... ¡Cómo se destacan las
madrileñas!... y ¡cómo me destaco yo! Empecemos por buscar á los
amigos; después á la rubia. La compañía le hace á uno más osado y
hasta más elocuente... No los veo por ninguna parte... Pero en
cambio veo á las de Potosí, que están aquí paseando. ¡Canastos!
vienen solas... ¿Y la rubia?... Lo más acertado será preguntar
discretamente por ella...—Señoritas...—Muy bueno, gracias...—Sí:
la tarde está hermosa para eso...—Ayer estaban ustedes más
acompañadas...—Palabra de honor: jamás había visto á esa
señorita... Hermosa es, en efecto; pero ¿y qué?...—Ni tarde ni
temprano...—¡Que se ha marchado ya?...—¡Oh! no me admiro por
lo que ustedes creen, sino por lo poco que ha estado aquí...—De
modo que veinticuatro horas escasas...—Pues no vi yo á su papá...
—¡Barrizales! ¿Luego ella es Lola Barrizales, la que estaba en un
colegio de Alemania? Y ¿qué va á hacer ahora en Madrid?...—¡Que
va á casarse en cuanto llegue?...—Nada hay de raro, en efecto, sino
que... en fin, que sea enhorabuena. Y hablando de otra cosa, ¿han
visto ustedes á Casa-Vieja y demás amigos por aquí?...—Lo siento,
porque andaba buscándolos para un asunto... Veré si en la galería...
Á los pies de ustedes.
¡Horror y maldición! Conque era Lola Barrizales, y Barrizales es
íntimo de papá, y ella supo quién era yo: luego aquellas miradas
eran lo que yo me figuraba; y tal vez la sacrifican y ella quería
decírmelo, y yo pude haberlo impedido con una sola entrevista...
¡Maldito coche en que se metieron ayer! ¡Lola Barrizales! ¡bella, rica
y distinguida!... ¡Qué ocasión para mí! ¡qué ocasión perdida, dioses
inmortales! Pero ¿tiene remedio ya este bárbaro contratiempo? Eso
es lo que tengo que consultar con mis amigos, y voy á buscarlos
ahora mismo á la galería... Entraré en ella muy pensativo y hasta
cabizbajo, como quien lleva herido el corazón: esta actitud me irá
muy bien. Entremos. ¡Cuánta gente elegante!... No están ellos aquí
tampoco... En aquel extremo hay una silla desocupada... La ocupo...
Dos chicas muy guapas se han fijado en mí. Buena ocasión para
herirlas... Apoyo el codo en la barandilla, la cabeza sobre la palma
de la mano, y me pongo muy triste y melancólico. Siguen
mirándome... Y dirán ellas:—«Ese joven debe de tener una gran
pesadumbre: ¡qué hermoso es!» y me compadecerán... Ahora miro
al suelo, apoyando la frente en mi mano; y como si quisiera ocultar
alguna lágrima que enturbiara mis ojos, doy golpecitos en el pie con
el bastón. Pero la angustia va en aumento, el disimulo no alcanza y
vuelvo la cara hacia la ermita. Para expresarlo mejor, muerdo el
pañuelo... Estoy así un ratito, como sollozando. ¡Qué hermoso debo
de estar!... Ahora, después de sonarme y guardar el pañuelo, debo
levantarme y salir de prisa, ocultando la cara, como si mi dolor se
aumentase entre la gente. Allá voy... Siguen mirándome las dos
chicas, y creo que algunas más. No importa: yo no puedo, no debo,
en esta situación, fijarme en nadie; á papá mismo negaría el
saludo... ¡Magnífica salida he hecho! ¡Qué interesante he estado!...
Me parece que he causado gran efecto. Á la noche indagaré si se
habló algo de mí después que salí de la galería.
Aquí afuera hay demasiada gente también, y no debo permanecer
entre ella estando tan triste como estoy. Me voy del Sardinero á
buscar la soledad que me corresponde.—«Estuvo aquí un instante
(debe decir la gente mañana) muy afectado, y se retiró en seguida
sin saludar á nadie...». Y habrá hasta quien crea que fui á los
Pinares á levantarme la tapa de los sesos. ¡Magnífico! Esto me
pondrá de moda.
Me vuelvo á la ciudad, á pie, por la Magdalena, y me ayudarán á
conllevar las fatigas del camino mis tristezas. En marcha, pues.
IV
OTRA VEZ EN SU CUARTO

Resumen de mis meditaciones del camino: continuaré en Madrid la
empresa malograda aquí. El destino me la arrebató soltera; yo haré
que el diablo me la devuelva casada. (Desnudándose enfrente del
espejo). ¡Qué interesante me han puesto la pena y el cansancio!...
Un amor contrariado con los correspondientes azares y escándalos,
debe ser la ambición de todo hombre de mundo. La suerte quiere,
por lo visto, que yo empiece por donde tantos calaveras han
concluido. ¡Cúmplase mi destino, y adelante! Pero entre tanto, yo
padezco y necesito distraerme. Me distraeré... abusando un poquito
de mis ventajas... Esta noche al teatro; mañana al baile de campo
con todos los recursos de mi hermosura, de mi distinción y de mi
ropero. No me contentaré ya con la mirada y con la sonrisa; usaré
también el billete perfumado, y luego el soborno, y después el
escalamiento, y, por último, hasta el rapto, y, si es preciso, la
estocada... Comencemos por vestirme de serio... ¡Juro á Dios que
no me detendrán en mi carrera ni lágrimas ni amenazas! Yo no he
traído esta contrariedad fatal; yo no me he colocado por mi gusto en
esta actitud que ha de dejar memoria eterna en Santander. No se
me pregunte luego por qué dejo víctimas detrás de mí:
«Soy el león... perseguido

Que sacude la melena».
Y pues al cielo plugo hacerme sentir el fuego de una pasión, y

arrebatarme el objeto que me la inspirara, de las cenizas que deje á
mi paso esta llama abrasadora,
«responda el cielo, yo no».

LAS DEL AÑO PASADO
Conoce el lector á las de doña Calixta? En un libro que anda por ahí
con el rótulo de Tipos y Paisajes, se habla de ellas y de otras
muchas cosas más. Si no las conoce, compre el libro. Si las conoce,
con decirle que no se separan de ellas en todo el verano las
aludidas en el título de este croquis, debe hallarlas en su memoria á
poco que la registre.
Á mayor abundamiento, le daré algunas señas particulares. Son
dos, madre é hija. La madre es achaparrada, con el pescuezo más
bien embutido que colocado entre los hombros, y la cabeza
ensartada en el pescuezo, como una calabaza en la punta de una
estaca; tiene ancha y risueña la boca, fruncido el entrecejo, grises
los ojos, poca frente, mucho pelo, mala dentadura y peor el cutis de
la cara. La hija, por uno de esos inconcebibles caprichos de la
naturaleza, es todo lo contrario de su madre: de bizarras líneas, de
hermosas y correctísimas proporciones; modelo del arte clásico,
mármol griego, y, como de tal substancia, fría é inanimada. Se llama
Ofelia. Su madre no responde más que al nombre de Carmelita,
aunque otra cosa se le grite al oído.
Los que lo entienden, dicen que Ofelia podría ser irresistible por la
sola fuerza de su propia hermosura, con expresión en la fisonomía,
flexibilidad en el talle y gusto en el vestir; pues además de rígida é
inanimada, parece que es sumamente cursi. En cuanto á Carmelita,
basta verla en la calle una vez para que el menos autorizado en la
materia pueda decidir de plano que es un espanta-pájaros.
Táchase en las dos, como resabio de su mal gusto, un afán
inmoderado de hacer ver á todo el mundo que siempre llevan
zapatos nuevos, de los más relumbrantes ó de los más historiados.
Cómo empezaron sus relaciones con las de doña Calixta, no lo sé
yo: acaso hubo entre unas y otras esa atracción misteriosa que se
explica en latín con aquello tan sabido de similis, similem querit;
pero es indudable que desde que por primera vez llegaron á
Santander á veranear, intimaron con la «coronela» y sus tres hijas,
como dos gotas de agua con otras cuatro. Á sus reuniones van, á
sus amigas visitan; con ellas recorren de día y de noche calles y
paseos; por ellas pagan sorbetes en el café, coches al Sardinero y
lunetas en el teatro; y en su exclusiva compañía asisten á los bailes
campestres, á las serenatas, á las procesiones y á las solemnidades
públicas.
Desde la primera vez que se la vió en este pueblo, llamó la atención
la hermosura de Ofelia; pero ni los hombres la codiciaron, ni las
mujeres la temieron: sus ya enumerados defectos, y el contrapeso
estrafalario que le hacía su madre constantemente, entibiaban hasta
el frío el entusiasmo de los unos, y tranquilizaban hasta el desdén á
las otras. Nadie, pues, supo su nombre, ni quiso cansarse en
preguntar por él. El primer año, si se la citaba en una conversación,
se decía únicamente: ésa que anda con las de doña Calixta. Desde
el verano siguiente ya se las llamó, á ella y á su madre, las del año
pasado; especie de mote que revela cierto cansancio de verlas y
pocos méritos para murmurar de ellas más de una vez.
Las de doña Calixta están locas por Ofelia. En su presencia, la
ensalzan hasta la adulación; ausente, aburren al lucero del alba
hablando de su hermosura, de su elegancia, de su brillante posición,
de sus relaciones entonadas en Madrid, de las magníficas
proposiciones que desecha, de sus deseos de llevarlas á pasar el
invierno á su lado, de las cartas que se escriben desde que se va de
aquí, y de los encargos que se hacen mutuamente.
—Pero ¿quiénes son ellas?—se ha preguntado muchas veces á las
de doña Calixta.—¿Qué pito tocan en Madrid, cuál es su verdadera
posición social?
Á las cuales preguntas jamás han dado las interrogadas una
respuesta satisfactoria; porque á decir verdad, no están ellas mucho
más enteradas en el asunto que los preguntantes. Y bien sabe Dios
que hacen todo lo posible por ajustar á sus amigas las cuentas al
menudeo; pero sea porque el asunto es harto sencillo y no necesita
explicaciones y está á la vista, ó porque realmente hay malicia para
disfrazarle, es lo cierto que las de Madrid no acuden al interrogatorio
con la claridad que desean las de Guerrilla.
—¡Dichosa de ti—dicen éstas á Ofelia en sus frecuentes
confidencias con ella;—dichosa de ti que puedes vivir en la corte
con todas las ventajas que te dan tu posición y tu figura!
—No tanto como creéis,—contesta Ofelia entre desdeñosa y
presumida.
—¡Ay! no me digas eso... Di que Dios da nueces... ¡Aquí te quisiera
yo ver todo el año!
—De modo que, mejor que aquí, desde luego os confieso que se
pasa allí el tiempo; pero de esto á lo que vosotras pensáis...
—¡Madrid! con aquellos paseos, con aquellos teatros, con aquella
tropa y aquellas músicas... Todo el día estarás oyéndola, ¿verdad?
—Psé... Como no sea alguna vez que voy á la parada con mamá...
—¡Á Palacio!... ¡qué hermosura!... estará la plaza llena de
generales.
—Ni se arrepara en ellos, chicas... La última vez que fuimos se
empeñó el coronel entrante en que tomáramos asiento en el
pabellón...
—Y tú, con esa sequedad condenada, no querrías.
—Claro está que no.
—¡Uf, qué rara, hija!... ¡Me da coraje ese genio! No me extraña que
te sucedan ciertas cosas.
—¿Qué cosas?
—Por de pronto, aburrir á tus proporciones y hacerlas creer que las
desprecias, que es lo mismo que si las tiraras por la ventana... Ya
ves cómo lo creyó aquél de quien nos hablabas ayer...
—¡Mira qué ganga!... Un simple catredático.
—Ya se ve, ¡como tienes otros adoradores de alto copete!
—No lo dirás por el comendante que me echó la carta por debajo de
la puerta.
—Ya sabes tú que voy por más arriba.
—Por el marqués de la esquina, ¿eh?
—¿Se llama así?
—No; pero vive á la esquina de la calle, dos puertas más abajo que
nosotros... como vive un duque tres puertas más arriba, y un conde
enfrente.
—De modo que en tu calle todos sois personajes.
—Eso sí.
—¡Qué gusto! ¿Y lo del marqués será cosa hecha?
—Psé... Hay poco que fiar, si os he de decir la verdad; no porque él
no esté bien apasionado, sino porque como en Madrid hay tantas
proporciones y cambia una tantas veces de parecer... Esto nació del
teatro Real... Como es muy amigo de papá, me acompañó hasta
casa á la salida. Después me ha visitado muchas veces, y siempre
ha tenido alguna cosa que decirme al oído.
—Y tú, ¿qué le has contestado?
—Que se lo diga á papá.
—¿Ve usted? ¿Á que desprecias también esa proporción?
—Allá veremos.
—¡Ay, qué sangre de chufas!... ¿De modo que vas muy á menudo al
Real?
—Bastante.
—Estarás abonada.
—No quise que se abonara papá á turno con las Consejeras del
principal: ellas bien me lo rogaron; y desde entonces, porque no lo
tomaran á desprecio, no me he abonado nunca.
—¡Buenas estarán aquellas funciones! ¡Qué concurrencia habrá allí!
—Mucho personaje... toda la corte... y muchísimo título; pero de
confianza.
—Como que os conoceréis todos.
—La mayor parte son íntimos de papá.
—¿Por qué no tiene título tu papá?
—Porque, como él dice, está por lo positivo.
—¿Tendréis carruaje?
—¡Como hay tantísimos de alquiler!...
—Es verdad.
—Por supuesto, que te escribirás con el marqués.
—Anda, curiosa, picarona: ¿quieres saber tanto como yo? ¡Esas
cosas no se dicen, ea!
Y con esto, ó algo parecido, y cuatro palmaditas sobre el hombro de
la preguntona, corta Ofelia el interrogatorio á que todos los días se
la somete, y cambia de conversación.
Entre su madre y doña Calixta pasa, en el ínterin, algo por el estilo.
—¿Y cómo no se anima su esposo de usted á acompañarlas algún
verano?—pregunta á la de Madrid la coronela.
—Porque no puede, doña Calixta.
—¡Que no puede!... ¡un hombre de su posición!
—Pues por lo mismo. ¡Usté no sabe, doña Calixta, qué bregas y qué
laberientos trae ese hombre de Dios metidos en aquella cabeza! Ya
se lo digo yo bien á menudo: «¡Cualquiera pensará que no tienes
qué comer!».
—Lo mismo me pasa á mí con el coronel, Carmelita. Ahí le tiene
usted metido en sus haciendas todo el año de Dios. Hoy, que está
levantando la presa de una fábrica de harinas; mañana, que va á los
cierros con un regimiento de cavadores; otro día, que está cercando
una mies que compró la víspera; ahora, que construye una casa de
labor; después, que entró la peste en la ganadería y ha tenido que
visitarla con los albéitares; cuando que los colonos; cuando que el
administrador... ¡Nunca jamás tiene un día para ver á su familia!...
«Pero, hombre—le he dicho algunas veces,—sacrifica media
semana siquiera para saludar á estas señoras tan buenas y que
tanto nos quieren...». Como si callara, Carmelita...
—Pues sucediéndole á usted eso con su esposo, ¿cómo le extraña
que el mío no nos acompañe jamás?
—Creía yo que los negocios de ese caballero no serían de los que
amarran tanto como las aficiones de Guerrilla.
—¡Mucho más, doña Calixta! Figúrese usted que mi esposo no tiene
hora libre. Estamos almorzando: carta del ministro de Hacienda para
que se vea con él inmediatamente; nos sentamos á comer: volante
del gobernador que tiene que hablarle de continente; vamos á salir
al Prado, ó á la Castellana, ó al teatro, ó al baile de Palacio, es de
suponer: pues el diputado, ó el ayudante del general, ó el diablo,
está ya á la puerta para que se vea en el azto con el presidente de
las Cortes, ó con el capitán general, ó con el director de
Beneficencia, sobre que la contrata, ó el suministro... Le digo á
usted que él podrá ganar buenos caudales, pero buenos sudores le
cuestan al pobre. Así es que algunos días tiene un humor que
tumba de espaldas.
—Y ¿por qué no tiene un hombre de su confianza en quien
descansar?

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Asian English: Histories, Texts,

Institutions Myles Chilton

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Myles’ Textbook for Midwives E-Book

Michael Balz: Shells and Visions John Chilton

Orality, Textuality, and the Homeric Epics: An

Temporalities, Texts, Ideologies Bobby Xinyue

Zach: A Brash Brothers Romance (The Brash Brothers Book

Cambridge Prepare B1 Level 5 second edition Student's

Instapoetry: Digital Image Texts Niels Penke

More information about this series at

ISSN 2524-7638 ISSN 2524-7646 (electronic)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021

Cover illustration: Contributor: RubberBall/Alamy Stock Photo

This collection of essays started as an extended conversation which then

1 Introduction: Redefining English in Asia

7 Stephen Spender and Japanese Atomic Bomb Poetry

Firas A. J. Al-Jubouri is an assistant professor of English and communi-

Steve Clark is a professor in the Graduate School of Humanities and

in numerous journals including ARIEL, Journal of Commonwealth Liter-

John W. P. Phillips teaches in the Department of English Language and

reception of American literature outside of the United States and on the

Table 11.1 Countries represented in the sample 215

Introduction: Redefining English in Asia

Myles Chilton, Steve Clark, and Yukari Yoshihara

Anglophone literary studies have a long though not at all straightforward

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

language study and an education in science and mathematics. In Japan

In our subtitle Histories, Texts, Institutions the middle term holds

English studies. Assuming a unitary Asian perspective is indeed prob-

of Anglophone literature has heretofore been relatively untouched schol-

In the decade and a half since the publication of English Studies in

underlying positions is to treat any such project with suspicion—just as it

and culturally complex developments occasioned by its establishment in

In “Cultural Diplomacy, Literature(s) in English and Creative Writing

Silliman University Writers Workshop (SUNWW), which was patterned

the Ministry of Education, avoiding the potential for controversy in favor

the campus is no longer a place. Many of the traditional structures of

4. Williams, Jeffrey J. “Introduction: Institutionally Speaking.” The Institu-

British Romanticism in China: Received,

The reception history of British Romanticism in twentieth-century China

Originally published as “British Romanticism in China: Revised in Reception,”

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 17

It then traces the reception of British Romantic literature in the course of

“Romanticism” and Langman

“a country in romance”4 for Wordsworth. The origin of the word refers

Chinese intellectual and cultural figures spent an important stage of their

their appropriateness. His example is “Romanticism” as well: the dictio-

and (2) unrestrained and unconventional, especially in sexual relation-

which these Romantic characteristics are seen as products of their socio-

it is the consequence of the bankruptcy of the kingdom of Reason

The Marxist vocabulary such as “the French Bourgeois Revolution”

and Lin were both key late-Qing disseminators of Western literature,

The Proliferation of Romanticism: The

most important New Culturist manifestos, Hu Shi’s (1891–1962) 1917

represented a reaction against the classic tradition of order, reason, schema-

A closer look at this Romantic generation’s diverse programs of the

a different Shelley, they both appropriated Shelley to promote their own

increasing concern with the masses. Literary revolution, as the Associ-

Revolutionized Romanticism: Communist

EN UN CUARTO DE UNA FONDA

OTRA VEZ EN SU CUARTO

«Soy el león... perseguido