Not as productive a Monday as I thought it could have been, though getting through the entire Derrida in two sittings was an accomplishment, I thought. The Du Fu poem has a great line about loyalty: 葵藿傾太陽， 物性固莫奪. Kui2huo4 here refers to two different plants that always face the sun.

Derrida, Jacques, and Derek Attridge. ""this Strange Institution Called Literature" : An Interview with Jacques Derrida." In Acts of Literature. New York: Routledge, 1992, 456
On first reading, this interview with Derrida left me with abstract visions: Autobiography stands at the core of both philosophy and literature -- just look at Nietzsche and Sartre ; literature is logocentric and phallocentric at once ; Romeo and Juliet and other timeless literary classics are iterable singularities, shimmering patterns similar in my vision to the visualizers that come with audio playback software. I think I'll have a much better handle on the second reading; in the meantime I feel confident that the key to understanding Derrida is to put him in the context of the history of language: he belongs at the bleeding edge, where language critiquing itself offers up great hope, but also the potential for nihilism.

Du Fu 杜甫. "Zi Jing Pu Fengxian Xian Yong Huai Wu Bai Zi." In Xiang Zhu Quan Tang Shi. Edited by Lin Debao 林德保, Li Jun 李俊 and Ni Wenjie 倪文杰. Dalian: Dalian chubanshe, 1997, 3544.

Also completed and glossed chapter 7 of Hong lou meng. Also listened to more of Seth Lehrer's lectures on the Story of English.

Needs: Connect Derrida to rhetoric, to the history of world language. Connect Yang Jiang to rhetoric. See rhetorical studies of Chinese lit in Chinese.

Saturday: Reading at Leisure

Adam's work schedule helped me be in my office and looking at books before 9am, and I worked until lunch time. I did a nice combination of inspectional readings (Witke, Zurndorfer, Buse, Derrida) completed a few scans (Chao, Jin Kemu) and a little Chinese reading (Hong lou meng chapter 7). I really need to get to some poems today still, and if possible get started on Zhang Ailing.

Here's some connections I'm thinking about:

1. Li Qingzhao, Yang Jiang: both autobiographical chroniclers of the domestic space.
2. From Hong lou meng to Zhang Ailing. A purposeful (even political, even feminist?) transmission of rhetoric, lexicon, and topoi (?)
3. From Shen Fu to Yang Jiang: identify common expressions, make a case for their importance to identity-formation; figure out what that means for our sense of Chinese history.

Buse, Peter. Benjamin's Arcades : an unguided tour Manchester ; New York: Manchester University Press, 2005
Three historians and a literary critic present seventeen reading-responses to the English translation of Passagen-Werk. The responses are titled with intriguing headings like "Judaism" , "Modernity/modernism" , "Empathy/Einfühlung" , "Jeux/joie/jouissance" ; although these responses stick close to Benjamin's texts, it's easy to see the possible stakes they have in other discussions. The essays read perfectly well without a copy of Passagen-Werk at hand.

Cao Xueqin 曹雪芹. "Zhi Yan Zhai Chong Ping Shi Tou Ji : Geng Chen Jiao Ben (Chapter 7)." In Edited by Deng Suifu 邓遂夫. Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe, 2006, 1503
For chapter 7, I used this edition.

Chao, Yuen Ren. Zao nian zi zhuan 早年自傳 (Yuen Ren Chao's autobiography : the first 30 years, 1892-1921). Taipei: Zhuanji wenxue chubanshe, 1984.

Derrida -- "This Strange Institution Called Literature" -- haven't prepared the formal citation yet.

Jin Kemu 金克木. Shu du wan le 书读完了. Shanghai: Hanyu dacidian chubanshe, 2006.

Witke, Roxane. Transformation of attitudes towards women during the May Fourth Era of modern China Berkeley:1970
Witke's 1970 dissertation is a groundbreaking presentation of the characters and incidents leading to the modern Chinese women's movement. She begins with early critics of such customs as ritual suicide and footbinding, and works her way up to the 20th century and the careers of figures like Mao Zedong and Xiang Jingyu. None of the characters, incidents and issues described are presented in great detail; rather, the dissertation is a large set of short pieces summing up an extremely large set of readings.

Zurndorfer, Harriet Thelma. Chinese women in the imperial past : new perspectives Leiden Netherlands] ; Boston: Brill, 1999
This volume records papers delivered at a 1996 workshop; it also seems to be the prelude to the journal Nannü. Of particular importance is Idema's discussion of the "diversity and internal development" of the poetry collection Duanchang ji and biographical materials about Zhang Yuniang.