Lost and Found in Transnation: Modern Conceptualization of Chinese Rhetoric

Hui Wu University of Central Arkansas

Abstract

Why do the Chinese relate rhetoric only to stylistic devices in writing? This question, which has puzzled scholars for decades, is finally answered. Modern Chinese rhetoric began to form in the late 1800s when Chinese students learned Western rhetoric from their Japanese professors, who translated it into “the study of beautiful prose,” subsequently severing it from oratory. In the early twentieth century, scholars returning from Japan and the US integrated Japanese theories and Anglo-American figures of speech into Chinese literary and literacy traditions despite nativists' protests and appropriated them into a canon of aesthetics only for writing studies.

Journal
Rhetoric Review
Published
2009-03-16
DOI
10.1080/07350190902740026
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