From History to Fiction: Inventing Hong Kong StoriesOn April 4, 2018, acclaimed author Dung Kai-cheung enraptured an audience at the UBC Institute of Asian Research with an account of Hong Kong came into being by an act of invention. Weaving together works of history, cartography, and literature, including his novel Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City, Mr. Dung retraced the idea of Hong Kong as a place of stories—with profoundly subversive implication. In 1842, the city was founded by the British on the steep and nearly landless northern coast of a barely inhabited island in southern China. This island had no official name and was not even recorded on the map. By naming it 「Hong Kong,」 the city was created from scratch. History began as fiction and with fiction we reinvent the sites of history. All narratives about Hong Kong, he argued, thus inevitably cross the line between fact and myth, reality and imagination.
The Challenge of World Literary HistoryOn March 28, 2018, Dr. Zhang Longxi, currently Chair Professor of Comparative Literature and Translation at the City University of Hong Kong, spoke at the UBC Centre for Chinese Research about literary history writ large. Professor Zhang pointed out that in much of its history from the 19th century to the last decade of the 20th, comparative literature remains largely Euro-centered, and the rise of world literature today offers an opportunity to transcend Eurocentrism and introduce many of the yet unknown canonical works from non-Western and “minor” European literatures to a global readership. In introducing his recent and ongoing writing projects, including his recent book, From Comparison to World Literature (SUNY Press, 2015) and his editorship of the Journal of World Literature, Professor Zhang argued that we need a world literary map of important works, and that therefore a world history of literature is the necessary first step towards a better understanding of what is world literature.
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