Table Of ContentJohn Z. Ming Chen · Yuhua Ji
Canadian-
Daoist Poetics,
Ethics, and
Aesthetics
An Interdisciplinary and Cross-cultural
Study
Canadian-Daoist Poetics, Ethics, and Aesthetics
John Z. Ming Chen (cid:129) Yuhua Ji
Canadian-Daoist Poetics,
Ethics, and Aesthetics
An Interdisciplinary and Cross-cultural Study
John Z. Ming Chen Yuhua Ji
College of Foreign Languages Department of English
and Cultures Xiamen University
Xiamen University Xiamen , China
Xiamen , China
ISBN 978-3-662-47958-2 ISBN 978-3-662-47959-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-662-47959-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015951974
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To /(cid:10590) (cid:13577):
Heather and Dr. James Steele
Chen Suming, Zhou Jian, and Zhou Xiuling
((cid:19576) (cid:14591)(cid:7230)(cid:451) (cid:2712)(cid:3466)(cid:451) (cid:2712)(cid:12272)(cid:14595)(cid:3)(cid:3))
Jianqiang Lin ((cid:7623)(cid:1685)(cid:5482))
Daoism and Canadian Literature Foreword
Canada. Why should we take it as a starting point for our multinational Daoist proj-
ect? Why not America? Why not Britain or Germany? The answers are, paradoxi-
cally, simple and complex. The simple ones may run the full gamut of surface
attractiveness in size, position, language, culture, nature, and colors: Canada is big,
in fact, the biggest country in the world in terms of territory; it sits on the North
Pole, half submerged in unspoiled water, with much pristine land “from coast to
coast to coast,” as CBC anchorman Peter Mansbridge likes to repeat. Canada is one
of the few countries that turned bilingual and multicultural much earlier than most
other countries and is deemed a peace-loving and peace-keeping country replete
with red salmon and red maple leaves on white snow. Simple answers can run end-
lessly, but we will let the cat out of the bag: Mary Wu, our English composition
teacher, came from Canada, more than three and a half decades ago, so did Dr.
Robert Cosby, our American literature professor in graduate studies. Their instruc-
tions and inspirations have been instrumental. This much can be said: in an inter-
related and interpenetrating sense, these simple answers have intimate though
sometimes tenuous connections with certain Daoist values, visions, and schemes on
the one hand and with Daoist causality of the cosmos and “ten thousand” things on
the other. As our thesis unfolds in the book proper, we hope all these Daoist-related
themes will become apparent and meaningful.
Complex answers are much harder to fi nd, as any “intelligent and complex
human beings” would expect, so said Gayatri Spivak in a different context at the
Asian Center Auditorium at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver,
Canada, in 1993. Take, for example, Hu Fuchen, a preeminent Chinese Daoist
scholar. He has perspicaciously though uncannily pointed out the potential for
Canada to be an ideal place for Daoism, as compared with America, in his A General
Discourse on Daoism (translation ours; 2009: 126), but Hu does not expound on the
specifi c reasons. On this side of the Pacifi c, a few famed North American writers or
critics have provided us with literary intimations or examples that border on modern
or postmodern enlightenment, if not apocalypses. The fi rst is German-born writer,
translator, and essayist F.P. Grove. His I n Search of Myself and A Search for America
vii
viii Daoism and Canadian Literature Foreword
both conclude, with an undisguised candor, that America has lost its ideals and that
Canada is a better place than America. He arrives at this determination after nearly
a thousand pages of exploration, and this determination explains his choice to stay
in Canada and become a Canadian citizen. Another Canadian writer, poet, essayist,
and critic Margaret Atwood wrote two novels turned movies: S urfacing and T he
Handmaid ’ s Tale. In the former, diseases from the south (read: America) can be
construed as imagery and symbolism of anti-Americanism; in the latter, the escalat-
ing military violence and blatant misogynist attitudes against women in a dystopian
society present a scathing critique of American religious fundamentalism. Our
study does use these two Canadians for illustrating certain Daoist values and visions.
Similarly, two novels turned fi lms by as many American writers also come
immediately to mind: Mrs. Stowe’s U ncle Tom ’ s Cabin and Ken Kesey’s One Flew
Over the Cuckoo ’s Nest . Where are the protagonists in these novels trying to escape
to? Canada. Again, these two works of fi ction have confi rmed the will and need to
embrace Canada as a haven, if not heaven. Here is not a place to give all the answers
as to why both American writers envision Canada as a better place than America,
and we do not mean to be anti-American for no good reason. Rather, we suggest that
the works by Canadian and American writers cited above may offer some measure
of hints about our choice of Canada as the fi rst country for scrutiny.
In fact, Canada boasts over 70 fi ction writers, poets, and critics/theorists who
have been infl uenced and inspired by, and who have contributed to, Daoism on a
global scale. Number counts, and there is power in a great number. This is the high-
est number per capita among all English-speaking countries; it is a number that
serves to justify our placing Canada fi rst. While we do not wish to engage in an
unwarranted eulogy, Canadian creative writers have given us much food for thought.
They range mainstream writers such as Malcolm Lowry, Fred Cogswell, Geoff
Hancock, and Gary Geddes to multicultural and First Nations writers like Edith
Eaton, Fred Wah, Sky Lee, Paul Yee, Wayson Choy, Joanne Arnott, and Larissa Lai.
Why have they been drawn to, and engaged in the construction of, Daoism then? It
will probably take two or even three slim volumes to answer the question
satisfactorily.
I n this connection, we will strive to address a further question why Canada has
produced an equally impressive number of Daoist-inspired critics/theorists in the
world per capita. Canadian critics and theorists like Northrop Frye, George
Woodcock, W.H. New, Sherrill Grace, Shaobo Xie, John Z. Ming Chen, and Peide
Jia have commented on Daoist creativity, topics, and visions. Xie and Chen have
also identifi ed linguistic and philosophical parallels between Jacques Derrida and
Daoism in the mid-1990s. To crown it all, Zhang Longxi, author of The Tao and the
Logos : Literary Hermeneutics East and West, delivered a series of Alexander
Lectures at the University of Toronto, which resulted in the publication of
Unexpected Affi nities : Reading Across Cultures . Signifi cantly, his latter work has
pointed out that many people have missed what follows from Kipling’s much-cited
line – “Never the twain shall meet”; the ensuing lines from Rudyard Kipling’s poem
actually suggest the possibility of the meeting of the West and East. As the global-
ization keeps roaring and moving with a relentless logic of its own, East and West
Daoism and Canadian Literature Foreword ix
are bound to meet more than before. Canada seems to have shown the enviable pos-
sibility of bridging East and West in the recent past and in the near future.
“We are all immigrants,” Margaret Atwood once wrote. We can take this remark
to mean locally or globally, and we can move well beyond the boundaries of Canada
to those of the planet in relation to other planets in the universe. Canada is an immi-
grant country, with its fair share of ambivalence and diasporic experiences; it is also,
to follow Linda Hutcheon’s argument, a typical postmodern country. Canadians
have used their creative and critical energies to communicate or commune with, and
to construct, the Dao, from another place and another time. As our thesis unfolds,
we hope the readers will fi nd a number of keys to the Daoist continuum and conun-
drum across languages, literatures, and cultures.
“Just watch me.” The initiator of Canadian bilingualism and multiculturalism
and former Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Trudeau, once said invitingly. Let’s
wait and watch what Canada has to offer.
Vancouver, Canada John Z. Ming Chen
Xiamen, China Yuhua Ji
Works Cited
Hu, Fuchen. General Discourse on Daoism . Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2009.
Hutcheon, Linda. T he Canadian Postmodern . Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 1988.
S pivak, Gayatri. “A Conversation with Gayatri Spivak.” Asian Center, the University of British
Columbia, Vancouver. Sept. 3, 1993.
Zhang, Longxi. The Tao and the Logos : L iterary Hermeneutics East and West . Durkham: Duke UP,
1992.
Zhang, Longxi. Unexpected Affi nities : R eading Across Cultures . Toronto: The University of
Toronto, 2007.
