Towards a Sinophone Insect Humanities: A Review Essay
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Towards a Sinophone Insect Humanities: A Review Essay Daniel Burton‑Rose1 Accepted: 15 November 2020 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. part of Springer Nature 2020
Durand-Dastès, Vincent. 2007. Poisons exotiques et vices domestiques: de vertueux héros aux prises avec les gu 蠱 dans un roman du XVII e siècle. Études Chinoises 26: 83–107. Idema, Wilt L. 2019. Insects in Chinese Literature: A Study and Anthology. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press. Milburn, Olivia. 2017. The Chinese Mosquito: A Literary Theme. Sino-Platonic Papers 270: 1–50. Over the last decade, as the interdisciplinary field of Animal Studies has come into its own, a distinct subset of scholarship on the interactions of humans and non-humans has emerged: human-insect relations. I term this body of scholarship Insect Humanities: engaging to varying degrees with social sciences such as anthropology and sociology as well as biology (particularly entomology), the primary disciplines involved are the humanistic ones of literary studies, history, philology, and religious studies. In realms as divergent as Chinese and Latin American history, one can observe a ratio of one insect-centered article per Animal Studies anthology.1 Cumulatively, this scholarly corpus on insects has increased to the point that it begs consideration in its own right: what commonalities and differences exist between human relations with non-human species of mammals, birds, and fish and those with insects? Commonalities of insects vis à vis other non-human animal species include a utility in parables; particularities include tininess, multitudinousness, and—in tension with the commonalities—a profound alienness defying anthropocentric relatability. The present article is an initial effort to organize one subset of this Insect Humanities corpus: that in the Sinophone cultural sphere. This cultural sphere is defined by a common usage of Classical Chinese and is in no way confined to the contemporary 1 Pattinson (2019; bees) and Few (2013; locusts) are the only insect-focused chapters in the first Animal Studies anthologies focusing on Chinese and Latin American history, respectively. This ratio of roughly 10-1 non-insect, non-human animal to insect subject matter is also evident in the monograph series devoted to individual non-human animal species. See the discussion in Bello and Burton-Rose forthcoming.
* Daniel Burton‑Rose [email protected] 1
International Consortium for Research in the Humanities at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universitat Erlangen-Nurnburg, Erlangen, Germany
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borders of the People’s Republic of China: much of the area currently within the boundaries of North and South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam at one time employed Classical Chinese as a lingua franca and remains profoundly influenced by this linguistic legacy. The area studies qualification emphasizes the cultural particularity of source bases in different regions and the way in which depictions of insects have impacts both within cultura
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