A Comparative Study of Chinese and Western Cyclic Myths

The cyclic myth is a temporal schema of the unity of man and the cosmos. It identifies man with the periodic becoming and perpetual regeneration in nature, and guarantees personal duration against the flux of time. It has imprints on every sphere of human experience in Chinese and Western cultures. The author first traces the origin, formation, abstraction and presentation of the cyclic myth in Chinese mythology, ritual, philosophy and literature, and confirms that the cyclic ontology is the core of Chinese culture. He then adumbrates the transmutation of the cyclic mentality in the linear eschatology of the Western culture and its impact in literature from Dante, Milton, Defoe, Sterne, Goethe, Shelley and Yeats to Joyce and Beckett. The author concludes with the assertion that the cyclic myth is an informing structure of literary works and an index of cultures.

Auteur

The Author: Robert Shanmu Chen graduated from Soochow University and received his M.A. in Comparative Literature and his Ph.D. in Classical Chinese Literature from the University of British Columbia. He has been actively involved in the media, theatre and in cross-cultural programs and has held positions as newspaper columnist, radio commentator, magazine editor, and television and theatrical program director and producer. His research, work and publications include areas of literature in translation, myth and archetype, utopia and utopian thought, cross-cultural study, classical Chinese literature, and television and theatrical screen play, directing and production. He is currently teaching in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia.