The University of Melbourne
10:00-11:00am 4 April 2019
North Theatre, Old Arts 239, Parkville campus, the University of Melbourne
Born in the Qing Dynasty, achieving literary renown in the Republic of China and purged in the People’s Republic of China, Fou Lei (1908–1966) was one of Shanghai’s most illustrious intellectuals. His youthful sojourn in interwar Paris (1928–1931) marked his formation. In a life defined by political unrest, he translated book after book. His language, that of a superb stylist, ensures his place in modern Chinese literature.
Considering Fou Lei’s learned engagements with Hippolyte Taine, Romain Rolland and Bertrand Russell, whom he translated at different points in life, Mingyuan Hu proposes a reading of the man of letters’ linguistic pursuance as a civic undertaking, one which urged a critical historical reckoning, much in the humanist tradition, with the burning political questions of his time.
About the Speaker
Mingyuan Hu is a research associate of “Bilderfahrzeuge. Aby Warburg’s Legacy and the Future of Iconology”, an international research project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Formerly she was Lecturer in Art Histories of Asia at the University of Leeds. From the University of Glasgow she received her MA (Hons.) and PhD. Hu’s work concerns art and intellectual histories in China and Europe. She is the author of “Fou Lei: An Insistence on Truth” (Brill).