Feng Yuan(Chinese pronunciation:yuán fēng;born 28 June 1954,Xian)is a Chinese literary theorist and critic,who is regarded as one of Shaanxinese more influential living worker of Chinese ancient literary theory. Yuan currently serves as a professor of Chinese literature at the Northwest University,and as a former visiting professor scholar at University of Illinois,Urbana-Champaign,in USA. Yuan took his doctorate of history at Northwest University,in Xian. His doctoral advisor is Zhang Qizhi,who is a famous historian.
He has written more than seven books,including The Literary Ideas and Metaphysical Ideas during Wei and Jin Times(1995);Studies of Ancient Chinese Literary Theory(2001);The Reading Life of Qian Zhong Shu(2001); The Selected Readings in Ancient Chinese Literary Theory(2003);Chinese Etymology and Humanistic Theory(2009);Interdisciplinary Studies of Chinese Root(2011);An Interdisciplinary research :Qian and Derrida(2011).
An abstract about Qian Zhongshu and Jacques Derrida:the Legacies of Deconstruction,which by professor Yuan wrote from July 2005 to June 2006,and published in Frontiers of Literary Theory No .4. The essay is an attempt to make a comparative study of literary critical discourses constructed by Jacques Derrida and Qian Zhongshu in the Chinese and Western cultural backgrounds. We are astonished to find something in common by viewing Qian from Derrida ′s perspective. Qian′ critical practice and literary studies could be understood with reference to deconstruction and phenomenology,and Derrida ′s deconstructive criticism could also be understood with reference to Qian′ comprehensive and comparative study of Chinese and Western literature. The thought of water and fire nourish Qian and Derrida. While Qian makes water into fire and lets it become a chill and loneliness,Derrida makes fire into water and gets a kind of warmth and impulse by deconstructing and dissociating. A lot of most advanced things exist in the deconstructive criticism on the alphabetical culture,but in which sign and play of structurality of structure still have traces of Chinese shixin and wenxin. A great deal of miraculous value exists in Qian′ literary and art criticism on the pictographic culture,in which one could find that his critical practice of certain influence of hermeneutics and phenomenology. This is because there some mutual influences between them. Roots of globalization are not only in the West but also in the East. Sign and play in the process of cultural globalization communicate with each other and constantly break up and reunite,so they do not necessarily deviate from their basis,such as text,root,style,trace and difference. In a word,we can make Chinese literary concepts have dialogues with other major international discourses by studying Derrida and Qian in a comparative way.