The Chinese American Association of the West and the Chinese Writers Association of North America Southern California will hold a literary seminar at 2:00 pm on May 18 at the Overseas Chinese Education Center in Los Angeles. Professor Chen Jinsong is invited to give a special lecture on “Forbidden Love in Literary Works,” welcoming people from all walks of life to attend. The seminar will be held at 9443 Telstar Ave., El Monte, CA 91731.
Love is an eternal theme in literature, and literature in various languages has produced timeless and groundbreaking works on love. Among all literary works that depict love, the most moving are stories of love that withstand hardships and remain steadfast. These works juxtapose purity, sensibility, and fervent “love” with tradition, reason, and cold “worldliness,” making love more noble and great. Literary and artistic praise for love as the supreme ideal is evident in various forms of literature, including poetry, novels, essays, plays, films, music, and more. The arts of drama and film best exemplify the conflict between love and worldliness because they condense this conflict into about two hours, captivating audiences, shocking them, allowing them to experience a storm of love, and achieving the aesthetic effect of catharsis as Aristotle stated.
While the theme of “love” transcends time and culture, the prejudices and suppression that love encounters in different periods and different societies vary due to different cultural and social backgrounds. Furthermore, even within the same culture and social background, the societal prejudices of each era are different. This conflict between love and worldliness, manifested in various love literature from different eras and cultures, has given rise to many enchanting and colorful masterpieces.
As a topic for his doctoral dissertation, Dr. Chen Jinsong will analyze this literary theme from a comparative literature perspective: first, how various art forms (novels, poetry, drama, film, music, etc.) present this theme differently; second, how different cultural backgrounds influence the different expressions of this theme; third, how the same culture, but different eras, results in different presentations of this theme. The works to be discussed are famous world literary and artistic works (mainly in Chinese and English), including “The Peacock Flies Southeast,” “The Story of the Western Wing,” “Farewell My Concubine,” “The Peony Pavilion,” “The Butterfly Lovers,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Tristan and Isolde,” “Wuthering Heights,” “Jane Eyre,” “The Thorn Birds,” “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” “Brokeback Mountain,” and more. Through novels, poetry, drama, film, and even music works, we will see how this “love” and “worldliness” oppose and collide. Whether in destruction or sublimation through collision, it undoubtedly stirs emotions and leaves behind timeless moving chapters!
Chen Jinsong (Xiaolu), an American lawyer, professor, writer, and actor, holds a Bachelor of Arts in Literature, a Master of Fine Arts in Drama, and dual doctorates in Comparative Literature and Law from the University of California, USA. He has published a collection of essays “Youth in the Green Mountains,” a collection of miscellaneous essays “Coffee and Tea,” as well as a collection of novels in Chinese and English “Corner” and “The Conner.”