A Survey of Twentieth-century Literary Theory and Criticism in Chinese
In their article "A Survey of Twentieth-century Literary Theory and Criticism in Chinese"
Xiaoming Chen and Anfeng Sheng survey Chinese-language scholarship that for the reason of the East-
West divide is less known in the West. Although heavily influenced by both Western and Soviet Marxist
thought, twentieth-century Chinese literary theorization and criticism produced much incisive
scholarship based on the vast knowledge existing in Chinese culture and literary scholarship. Chen and
Sheng survey pioneering works by numerous Chinese literary theorists and critics who have been
influential in their own time and exerted persistent modeling influences until today and the article is
meant to adjust the anonymous position of Chinese literary theorization in the West and thus to
contribute to the diversity of literary studies.
Comparative Literature in Chinese
In their article "Comparative Literature in Chinese" Xiaolu Wang and Yan Liu describe the development of comparative poetics in Chinese by sketching major publications and the general institutional situation of the discipline. Wang and Liu suggest that comparative work remains impulsive while at the same time dynamic. Like other fields in the humanities, the study of poetics — comparative or other — in Chinese is no longer traditional in terms of discursive form but copied from the West. Although the scholarly achievements in the field within the past thirty years are considerable, problems remain including the issue of translation of Western theories and the approaching of foreign scholarship with narrow minded nationalism. Wang's and Liu's postulate that the role scholars working in Chinese ought to play in the humanities in general and in comparative poetics in particular would be to bring about knowledge from the ways of how the issues and questions studied would cross cultural boundaries. Xiaolu Wang and Yan Liu, "Comparative Literature in Chinese" page 2 of 10 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 13.4 (2011):  Xiaolu WANG and Yan LIU Comparative Literature in Chinese Poetics (shixue), like most of the frequently used literary terms with a long history, does not necessarily carry a strict definition. In both China and the West, poetics has long been used as a technical term referring to different approaches to composition, interpretation, and the exegesis of poetry. According to Webster's New World Dictionary of American Language, poetics is "the theory or structure of poetry" (1100) whereas in The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics it is defined as "theory of literature, i.e. theory of literary discourse; theory of poetry" (930). As poetry was the major literary genre in ancient China, several other terms were used with similar connotations but with slight differences such as shifa (rules of poetry) and shige (manner and structure of poetry). Other similar terms include shiwei (poetic flavor), shiyan (highlights of poetic diction), and shiqu (liveliness in poetry) (see Peng). As observed by Richard John Lynn, "The earliest remarks that have bearing on poetics are found in the philosophical writings of pre-Confucian, Confucian, and other early thinkers — notably Daoist (Taoist) — from the 6th C.B.C. to the 2nd C.A.D." ("Chinese Poetics" 187). Therefore, poetry writing in ancient China "enjoyed a unique prestige" and "every cultivated person was expected to be able to compose poetry" (Van Zoeren 146). Huarong Xiao writes that "Poetics in my book does not refer to the 'poetics' Aristotle held to cover all the literary and art theory in general, but to the theory concerning poetry in the narrow sense... because the pure theory involving literature and art throughout ancient China is one on poetry only" (1; unless indicated otherwise, all translations are ours). At the same time, Xingpei Yuan believes that Aristotle's idea on ambiguity in his Poetics is still of use for the discussion of the art of poetry (3). Since the late nineteenth century, however, Chinese scholarship has been impacted by Western ideas with the result that scholarship in China was fashioned on a large scale in the Western way. Consequently, in Chinese poetics the above referred to notions and terms are no longer used; instead the translated term shixue (although the word shixue appeared several times in the poems in the Tang (618-907), Song (960-1179), and Yuan (1271-1368) dynasties. Since the late twentieth century shixue has been frequently used to indicate literary theory and the composition of literary works in a more general sense. Therefore, "poetics" in contemporary China always stands for "the learning to evaluate and examine literature" (Yue 468). In fact, this new notion of "poetics" is not new at all but could be traced back to that of Aristotle: "Aristotle's example enables us to define the word as an account of the nature and practice of (in his case dramatic) literature considered as an autonomous subject" (Miner 12). Such a review enables us to differentiate the true meanings of the word in Chinese academia and thus paves the way for further analysis in order to find out the changes of its connotations as a result of Western influences. The research conducted by Chinese scholars in the field of comparative poetics in the past reflects these changes in more ways than one. The history of the Chinese usage of "poetics" in literary studies, as well as in comparative studies since the twentieth century is carried out in accordance with the changes of taxonomy as mentioned above. From the early twentieth century to the 1930s, Chinese scholars in this field include Guowei Wang, Xun Lu, Honglie Yang, Zhongfan Chen, Xiaoyue Fang, Genze Luo, and Mi Wu, to name a few, among whom Guowei Wang is the most representative. Wang is one of the earliest scholars who consciously employed Western conceptions of philosophy and concepts from aesthetics in the study of literature and in his studies on the novel Story of the Stone (other translations of the title include Dream of the Red Chamber; Dream of Red Towers) and on early Chinese drama and song lyrics he adopted the comparative approach. In a way he regulated the standards for literary criticism in China. In turn, "Lu Xun desires a 'demonic,' aggressive role for poetry. He laments the absence in China of poets who, in 'singing of themselves,' disturb a national psyche that wants nothing more than the peace and solace of spiritual slumber" (Denton 27). Lu's essay "Moluo Shi Li Shuo" ("On the Power of Mara Poetry," 1907) set a fine example of literary criticism by appealing for new perspectives from the West (see Tang 58). Honglie Yang, who used "Chinese poetics" almost for the first time in Chinese history, states in the preface of his 1928 book that European and US-American principles in poetics should be used in doing literary criticism on Chinese poetry. His Zhongguo Shixue Dagang (Chinese Poetics: An Outline) offers a detailed definition of Chinese poetry, its classification, structures, compoXiaolu Wang and Yan Liu, "Comparative Literature in Chinese" page 3 of 10 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 13.4 (2011):  sition, and functions and evolvement in history. Wu's essay "Hongloumeng Xin Tan" ("Reread Dream of the Red Chamber," 1920) refers to Western concepts, especially those by Aristotle, in treating traditional Chinese literary subjects (see Xu 54), thus standing as one of the earliest attempts at comparative studies in the Chinese academia. During the 1930s to mid-1960s, the leading scholars in the field of comparative poetics in China included Zhongshu Qian, Guangqian Zhu, and Cunzhong Fan. Zhongshu Qian adopts comparative approaches in Tan Yi Lu (Discourse on the Literary Art) in an attempt to find out the common effects behind the different Chinese and Western conceptions (see, e.g., Longxi Zhang, "Qian Zhongshu as Comparatist"). His ways of making comparison across different cultures and disciplines in order to observe the general principles of literary creation mark him a unique figure in Chinese literary history whose academic achievement remains insurmountable by scholars of later generations. His Guan Zhui Bian (The Tube and Awl Chapters) published in 1979 made an immediate impact upon the academia. It is culturally interesting, too, that Qian, as he did in his previous book on art and literature, wrote the book in the very form of traditional written Chinese. Guangqian Zhu in his Shi Lun (On Poetry), first published in 1943, traces the origins of Chinese poetry, especially focusing on how Chinese poetry has taken on rigid rhyming schemes and tonal patterns. His perspectives combine history, archeology and psychology, and he compares poetry with music, prose, and painting in order to find out poetry's unique features. Cunzhong Fan published articles on the relationship between English literature and Chinese culture, especially his essays on Chinese thought in seventeenthand eighteenth-century England, some of which were collected later in his Zhongguo Wenhua zai Qimeng Shiqi de Yingguo (Chinese Culture in the England of the Enlightenment Age 1931 as his Ph.D. dissertation at Harvard and published in Chinese in 1991). The book closely observes how Chinese culture went into English literary genres such as poetry, prose, and drama, and one chapter of the book is devoted to the discussion of the influence of Chinese gardening and indoor decorative art in English literature. The studies in comparative poetics in the following decade or so almost became suspended because of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Thus, during this period most scholarship in the field was published by Chinese US-American scholars but this turned out to be influential in Mainland China starting from 1976. One of the many achievements made by overseas Chinese was by James J.Y. Liu, whose The Art of Chinese Poetry (1962) and Chinese Theories of Literature (1975) carry some of Liu's own theories of poetic criticism. In the former, by analyzing how Chinese language works as a medium of poetic expression, Liu further summarizes the four kinds of Chinese views of poetry, namely, the didactic view, the individualist view, the technical view and the intuitionalist view. And he finally attempts to describe how poetry and some of the poetic elements are able to bridge gaps across cultures. In the latter book, Liu looks closely at the seemingly chaotic threads of literary theories in China, makes comparisons between these theories and similar theories from the West, and then attempts to draw up some universal literary theory through such a dialogue. As Lynn said, Liu's thought was always upon "the nature of Chinese poetic expression, how to induce systems of literary theory from the often unsystematic and fragmentary modes of critical discourse in China, how to build on the comparat
Intentional poisoning cases of animals with anticholinesterase pesticide-carbofuran in Sri Lanka.
Carbofuran is a broad spectrum insecticide and nematicide which inhibits acetyl cholinesterase. Several intentional poisoning cases of animals and birds including crows, dogs, cow, and elephant, using carbofuran were reported in Sri Lanka. Qualitative analysis of carbofuran in biological specimens was carried out using T.L.C and GC-MS. The quantitative analysis was carried out by HPLC using Zorbax Eclips XDB-C18 (150 x 4.6 mm I.D x 5 microm particle size) column with acetonitrile: water 25:75 v/v mobile phase and UV detection at 210 nm. The liquid-liquid extraction with chloroform was reproducible and sensitive. The procedure was validated in terms of linearity (0.996<r<0.999) for concentrations ranging from 1 to 200 microg/ml, repeatability (RSD 4.4% at 100 microg/ml, n=10) extraction recovery (91.7% at 100 microg/g, 77.3% at 20 microg/g), limit of detection (S/N ratio=3, 0.7 microg/ml) and limit of quantification (S/N ratio=10, 2.4 microg/ml). The method was found satisfactory and successfully applied in fatal cases of animals and birds due to carbofuran poisoning. The fatal carbofuran levels detected were in the range of 42-910 microg/g in crow's gizzard and contents, 50-800 microg/g in dog's stomach contents, 13-20 microg/g in dog's liver, 0.9 microg/g in cow's stomach and contents, 35 microg/g in elephant's stomach and contents.