The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School Department of Comparative Literature PROMISES OF MODERN RENAISSANCE: ITALIAN PRESENCES IN CHINESE MODERNITY A Dissertation in Comparative Literature by Kyle David Anderson © 2010 Kyle David Anderson Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2010 The dissertation of Kyle David Anderson was reviewed and approved* by the following: Alexander C.Y. Huang Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies Dissertation Advisor Chair of Committee Caroline D. Eckhardt Professor of Comparative Literature and English Head of the Department of Comparative Literature Robert Roy Edwards Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English On-Cho Ng Professor of History, Religious Studies and Asian Studies *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School ABSTRACT Following the re-opening of China to the outside world in the late 1970s, scholarship exploded with attempts to write and rewrite China’s modern history. In seeking to define Chinese modernity, many of these studies have taken a comparative approach sensitive to the international influences and forces informing developments in China in the twentieth century. In the American academy, attention to external influences has focused mainly on the major world powers of the nineteenth century that were involved in China’s semi-colonization (England, the United States, Russia, Japan, Germany, and France). This study explores an unduly neglected portion of China’s modern history, its appropriations of Italian literature and culture. To date, outside of Italy, few have attempted to push beyond the iconic commonplaces of Polo and pasta to understand the cultural history of Sino-Italian relations. This project demonstrates that just as Italian culture influenced the evolution of modern art, thought, values, education, economies, and governments in the West, it was also used to fashion China’s projects for modernization. The principal topics analyzed in this study include China’s understanding of the Italian Renaissance, Liang Qichao’s 新羅馬 Xin Luoma (New Rome ) (1902), Chinese theorizations of the Petrarchan sonnet, and Chinese decamerons. Chapters on the Italian Renaissance and the Petrarchan sonnet describe important intellectual discourses and local debates into which notions of the renaissance and the sonnet were drawn during the early Republican period (1911-1930s). Research on the New Rome and the Decameron analyzes how the figures of Dante, Boccaccio, and Risorgimento heroes were employed in competing models for modernity in the late Qing (1900-1911) and Communist periods (1949-). These case studies verify the importance of borrowings from Italian culture in Chinese modernity. More importantly, they contribute to a fuller understanding of China’s modern literary history. In order to see Chinese modernity more clearly, it is imperative to look through the Italian lenses that Chinese intellectuals had once chosen to help perceive themselves as subjects in a modern world system. This study demonstrates how Chinese writers articulated and elevated the regenerative power of the Renaissance, the patriotism of Dante Alighieri and Risorgimento heroes, the normalizing function of the Petrarchan sonnet, and the Decameron ’s lessons in sexuality and nationalism, as integral parts of their projects for China’s cultural modernization. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………………………vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS……………………………………………………………….vii INTRODUCTION China’s Italian Borrowings in a Modern Global System...…..............................................1 CHAPTER 1 Naturalizing the Italian Renaissance…………………………...…………………….......39 CHAPTER 2 A Dantean Holiday in Shanghai: The New Rome and Chinese Pietas …………………..78 CHAPTER 3 Reductiones ad musicam : New Poetry Rhythmics and the Petrarchan Sonnet................126 CHAPTER 4 Chinese Decamerons: Sex and Revolutionary Fervor………………………………….190 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………....254 APPENDIX Personal Communication with Jiao Naifang……….……..….........................................259 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………...….……....268 vi LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1 Xi Jiyu’s “Map of Italy”…..………………………………………………..…….ix Fig. 2 Personal photo of the Yin bing shi …...…………………………………………..81 Fig. 3 Chen Yuexi’s “The Daoist Immortal Magu with a Crane”…..…………………..93 Fig. 4 Xi Li’s “Day Six, Story Ten”………………………………..………………….190 Fig. 5 Louis Chalon’s “Title Page” ...…………………………….…………………...229 Fig. 6 Louis Chalon’s “Day Two, Tale Six”...……………….....……………………. 229 Fig. 7 “The Brigata”...………………………..…………..……..……….………….…236 Fig. 8 Steele Savage’s “Day One, Story Four”………………….…………………….238 Fig. 9 Steele Savage’s “Day Two, Story Eight”…………..….……………………….238 vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am thankful for the support of my dissertation advisor and committee members, who have encouraged me in my research while holding me to high standards of professionalism and scholarship. My education would have been poorer without their intimate involvement. I am immeasurably grateful to Alexander C.Y. Huang, who has seen me through thick and thin, lending me expert advice, gentle guidance, and needed encouragement. Caroline D. Eckhardt’s keen eye for detail and professional insight, Robert Roy Edward’s appreciation of clarity and scholarly sophistication, as well as On- Cho Ng’s confidence in my abilities, will always be warmly remembered. Liu Hongtao and Federico Masini’s guidance and support while I conducted research abroad are also greatly appreciated. I am thankful for the financial support of various institutions that enabled me to pursue my research and for those libraries whose collections provided me with many of this dissertation’s primary materials: the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of Education, the Taiwan Fulbright Office, the American Institute in Taiwan, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, the Institute for Arts and Humanities and the College of the Liberal Arts at The Pennsylvania State University, the Vittorio Emanuele II National Library in Rome, the Harvard Yenching library, the Beijing National Library, and the Beijing University Library. A special thanks to contemporary Chinese authors Liang Yuan, Jiao Naifang, and Meng Jinghui, who offered their valuable time to discuss their work with me and who granted me permission to reproduce our interviews and communications in this study. viii In addition, I wish to acknowledge other people who have helped me in various ways while I completed this dissertation: Sophia A. McClennen for her constant professional support and guidance, Liana Chen for her language coaching and steady flow of letters of recommendation, Djelal Kadir for introducing me to the contradictions of modernity, Eric Hayot and David G. Atwill for their candor and professional advice, and Maritza Davidson for her warm smile and friendship. Finally, a very special thank you is due to my comrades, my good friends, and colleagues, who suffered through my pontificating and silliness. I will never forget you: Germán Campos-Muñoz, Sun Jinai, Nathan Devir, Bunny Torrey, Xin Wei, Sara Marzioli, Atia Sattar, Dawn Taylor, Mich Nyawalo, Jeffrey Resta, Rhett McNeil, Riadh Bounatirou, Aaron Rosenberg, Justin Halverson, and others. Furthermore, I offer my sincere gratitude and appreciation for all of the work that the Comparative Literature office staff has done for me. JoElle DeVinney, Irene Grassi, Mona Muzzio, Lynn Setzler, Bonnie Rossman, and Sharon Laskowsky have saved my computer, arranged for me to be paid, tolerated my whining, slipped me a couple of free copies, and have done it all with grace, patience, and warm hellos. Most importantly, I would like to thank my beloved wife, Jenny Wardle Anderson, for her undying support and stamina to endure this Ph.D. program with me, on a five-year trek across State College and the globe. Special hugs and a kiss too to our daughters, Abigail and Sophia, who filled my down time with their invigorating sunshine. ix FRONTISPIECE Fig. 1 Xi Jiyu’s “Map of Italy” 1 Looking Over Vesuvius 都会二千年, 英雄战事酷. 德法与奥班, 争霸来逐鹿. 近起烧炭堂, 竟成统一局. 虽历火山灾, 岂舍胜地曲. This city of 2,000 years, and the travails of war heroes, where Germans, French, Austrians and Spanish tore at the throne, melds now into a single chimney of smoke. The fire and rock are terrible. What can rival their thunderous song? Kang Youwei, Italian Travels 1 Xi Ju, “Map of Italy,” Complete Geography Ying huan zhi lue 瀛寰志略 (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 2001), 184-85. 1 INTRODUCTION China’s Italian Borrowings in a Modern Global System Long Santiao’s 龙三条 recently published fictional memoirs about a young Chinese bride’s life in Rome, 罗马天空下 Sotto il cielo di Roma (Under the Roman Heaven ) (2010),1 like most travel diaries is part reportage and part bildungsroman . For the novel’s protagonist, coming of age is intimately connected to establishing what it means to be modern and Chinese. Nestled between monuments of European curiosities, Ying Xi 樱溪 discovers a space where she can be herself—and “想穿什么样的袜子就穿 什么样的袜子 ” (“wear whatever socks I want!”).2 At the same time, she experiences the crux of having to reconcile that quest for individual freedom and meaning with the desire to be Chinese. At one point, her individualist streak is attacked and pressed into patriotic service by blogger friends at home, who push her to denounce publically the West’s spurious coverage of the 2008 Olympics and the flash boycotts of Chinese products in Europe. 3 The fictional Ying Xi thus finds in Italy a place to work out