Academic literature on the topic 'Yong (1924-2018)'

The works by Chinese Hong Kong writer Jin Yong (1924-2018) fare in the focus of Chinese readers’ attention as the exemplified wu-xia literature. His novels only recently became the object of literary studies within China, and are seen as an alternative to the literary discourse founded by the May Fourth Movement. The article is focused on the transcultural qualities of his prose. Though the imagery and background in his works are distinctly ancient Chinese, embodying the genre principle ancient clothing“’, a lot of techniques, including plot development, characters’ traits are highly reminiscent of Western literature, namely the works by A. Dumas and Shakespearean drama. The Chinese component in the work by Jin Yong is defined as threefold. The first and the most easily noticed is the language, drastically different from China mainland official Putonghua or Mandarin, seen as a complicated sometimes to eccentricity mixture of baihua and wenyan, the lively bright and colorful idiom literally breathing the Chinese tradition. The second component is defined by the titular wu-xia genre. The necessary core of Jin Yong’s novels imagery is the ethics and aesthetics of Chinese legendary “river and lake” chivalric society, with its strong and straightforward sense of justice, martial arts, romance, mysticism and complicated political intrigues. The third component is represented by the vast dialogue with the Chinese canon, from the ancient chronicles to the pre-modern novels such as “The Dream of the Red Chamber’’. It can take the form of creative rethinking and character modernization, almost always with distinct irony.

The Geumryeong-tomp is a tomb in the Silla period, located at the northern end of Gyeongju. It was first excavated in 1924 and again in 2018. Now in 2022, a special exhibition of past archaeological achievements and research is being held. In this tomb, which was named as a ‘Geumryeong-tomb’ in commemoration of the excavation of golden bell, precious Silla precious metal ornaments such as golden crown and golden belt were also excavated. The Geumryeong-tomb was recognized as the tomb of Prince Shilla. It was because the golden crown and the golden belt were all small items suitable for young people of small size. In this article, I have illuminated the objects and the people who handled them with the material of the Geumryeong-tomb. With the results of the research accumulated until recently, I looked at the Geumryeong-tomb ornaments. Explain the speciality and production technique of the Geumryeong-tomb. Because ornaments are artifacts, people are involved in some way. In this article, I explored the three subjects involved in the use of ornaments: the dead, the funeral, and the craftsmen. Find out why the Geumryeong-tomb’s dead man is an infant. I looked at the funeral director who is the actual leader of this funeral. The funeral ornaments prepared by the funeral organizer were derived and explained his presence. Finally, I looked at the craftsmen who made the funeral items. The main characters on the stage of death and funeral are the dead, the funeral, and the craftsmen. And they are intertwined with relics. The purpose of this study is to explore their correlation and Silla society with the theme of Geumryeong-tomb ornaments. This study explains the archaeological existence of Geumryeong-tomb’s dead man, funeral director, and craftsmen with clues to ornaments.

History of the Department of World Literature of H.S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University dates back to 1805 – from the day the Pedagogical Institute was founded in the structure ofKharkovUniversity. It existed for more than a hundred years as part of the institute as a department of Russian literature. After the revolution of 1917, when the Kharkov Institute of Public Education was created, from 1924 to 1934 the department was headed by an outstanding scientist and literary critic then professor, and later academician Alexander Ivanovich Beletsky. The authors of the article pay special attention to the school of acad. A.I. Beletsky, who, with his many years of scientific and pedagogical activity, laid a solid foundation in the development of the science of literature inUkrainefor many decades to come. The authors connect the new, modern, stage in the research work of the department, in the activities of cathedral scientific schools with the beginning of the 1990s, when the so-called “perestroika” and the processes of democratization and publicity associated with it began, and when the university was created as much as possible favorable conditions for research work. It was then that a new generation of scientists and teachers came to the department, new leaders and new scientific schools appeared. This new stage in the history of the department is associated with the fruitful scientific, pedagogical and research activities of such scientists and their scientific schools, as Doctor of Philosophy, prof. L.G. Frezman (1935 - 2018), Doctor of Philosophy, prof. M.F. Getmanets (b. in 1923), Doctor of Philosophy, prof. E.A. Andrushenko (b.1968) and Doctor of Philosophy, prof. A.S. Sylayev (b. 1952). Over the years of stable work at the department, since 1978, graduate school and doctoral studies, the heads of the above scientific schools, as well as other teachers of the department have prepared more than 100 candidate and 14 doctoral dissertations. With its many years of fruitful activity, scientific schools of the Department of World Literature of H.S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University made a significant contribution to the development of Ukrainian literary Russian studies, to the training of language teachers, as well as young scientific personnel – candidates and doctors of sciences.

Globally, breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths, accounting for 15.5% of female cancer deaths in 2020. Breast cancer is also the leading cause of female cancers in South Africa. The rapid epidemiological transition in South Africa may have an impact on the trends in breast cancer mortality in the country. We therefore evaluated the trends in the breast cancer mortality in SA over 20 years (1999–2020).MethodsJoinpoint regression analyses of the trends in crude and age-standardized mortality rates (ASMR) of breast cancer among South African women were conducted from 1999 to 2018 using mortality data from Statistics South Africa. Age–period–cohort regression analysis was then conducted to evaluate the independent effect of age, period, and cohort on breast cancer mortality, and analysis was stratified by ethnicity.ResultsThe mortality rate of breast cancer (from 9.82 to 13.27 per 100,000 women) increased at around 1.4% per annum (Average Annual Percent Change (AAPC): 1.4%, 95% CI:0.8–2.0, P-value< 0.001). Young women aged 30–49 years (1.1%–1.8%, P-value< 0.001) had increased breast cancer mortality. The risk of breast cancer mortality increased among successive birth cohorts from 1924 to 1928 but decreased among recent cohorts born from 1989 to 1993. In 2018, the breast cancer mortality rate among Blacks (9.49/100,000 women) was around half of the rates among the non-Blacks. (Coloreds: 18.11 per 100,000 women; Whites: 17.77/100,000 women; Indian/Asian: 13.24 per 100,000 women).ConclusionsContrary to the trends in high- and middle-income countries, breast cancer mortality increased in South Africa especially among young women. Breast cancer prevention programs should be intensified and should also target young women. The marked disparity in ethnic burden of breast cancer should be considered during planning and implementation of interventions.

This article investigates the prosthesis of identity through the process of branding. It examines cross-cultural manifestations of this phenomena from sixth millennium BCE Syria to twelfth century Japan and Britain. From the Neolithic Era, humanity has sort to extend their identities using pictorial signs that were characteristically simple. Designed to be distinctive and instantly recognisable, the totemic symbols served to signal the origin of the bearer. Subsequently, the development of branding coincided with periods of increased in mobility both in respect to geography and social strata. This includes fifth millennium Mesopotamia, nineteenth century Britain, and America during the 1920s.There are fewer articles of greater influence on contemporary culture than A Theory of Human Motivation written by Abraham Maslow in 1943. Nearly seventy-five years later, his theories about the societal need for “belongingness” and “esteem” remain a mainstay of advertising campaigns (Maslow). Although the principles are used to sell a broad range of products from shampoo to breakfast cereal they are epitomised by apparel. This is with refence to garments and accessories bearing corporation logos. Whereas other purchased items, imbued with abstract products, are intended for personal consumption the public display of these symbols may be interpreted as a form of signalling. The intention of the wearers is to literally seek the fulfilment of the aforementioned social needs. This article investigates the use of brands as prosthesis.Coats and Crests: Identity Garnered on Garments in the Middle Ages and the Muromachi PeriodA logo, at its most basic, is a pictorial sign. In his essay, The Visual Language, Ernest Gombrich described the principle as reducing images to “distinctive features” (Gombrich 46). They represent a “simplification of code,” the meaning of which we are conditioned to recognise (Gombrich 46). Logos may also be interpreted as a manifestation of totemism. According to anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, the principle exists in all civilisations and reflects an effort to evoke the power of nature (71-127). Totemism is also a method of population distribution (Levi-Strauss 166).This principle, in a form garnered on garments, is manifested in Mon Kiri. The practice of cutting out family crests evolved into a form of corporate branding in Japan during the Meiji Period (1868-1912) (Christensen 14). During the Muromachi period (1336-1573) the crests provided an integral means of identification on the battlefield (Christensen 13). The adorning of crests on armour was also exercised in Europe during the twelfth century, when the faces of knights were similarly obscured by helmets (Family Crests of Japan 8). Both Mon Kiri and “Coat[s] of Arms” utilised totemic symbols (Family Crests of Japan 8; Elven 14; Christensen 13). The mon for the imperial family (figs. 1 & 2) during the Muromachi Period featured chrysanthemum and paulownia flowers (Goin’ Japaneque). “Coat[s] of Arms” in Britain featured a menagerie of animals including lions (fig. 3), horses and eagles (Elven).The prothesis of identity through garnering symbols on the battlefield provided “safety” through demonstrating “belongingness”. This constituted a conflation of two separate “needs” in the “hierarchy of prepotency” propositioned by Maslow. Fig. 1. The mon symbolising the Imperial Family during the Muromachi Period featured chrysanthemum and paulownia. "Kamon (Japanese Family Crests): Ancient Key to Samurai Culture." Goin' Japaneque! 15 Nov. 2015. 27 July 2019 <http://goinjapanesque.com/05983/>.Fig. 2. An example of the crest being utilised on a garment can be found in this portrait of samurai Oda Nobunaga. "Japan's 12 Most Famous Samurai." All About Japan. 27 Aug. 2018. 27 July 2019 <https://allabout-japan.com/en/article/5818/>.Fig. 3. A detail from the “Index of Subjects of Crests.” Elven, John Peter. The Book of Family Crests: Comprising Nearly Every Family Bearing, Properly Blazoned and Explained, Accompanied by Upwards of Four Thousand Engravings. Henry Washbourne, 1847.The Pursuit of Prestige: Prosthetic Pedigree from the Late Georgian to the Victorian Eras In 1817, the seal engraver to Prince Regent, Alexander Deuchar, described the function of family crests in British Crests: Containing The Crest and Mottos of The Families of Great Britain and Ireland; Together with Those of The Principal Cities and Heraldic Terms as follows: The first approach to civilization is the distinction of ranks. So necessary is this to the welfare and existence of society, that, without it, anarchy and confusion must prevail… In an early stage, heraldic emblems were characteristic of the bearer… Certain ordinances were made, regulating the mode of bearing arms, and who were entitled to bear them. (i-v)The partitioning of social classes in Britain had deteriorated by the time this compendium was published, with displays of “conspicuous consumption” displacing “heraldic emblems” as a primary method of status signalling (Deuchar 2; Han et al. 18). A consumerism born of newfound affluence, and the desire to signify this wealth through luxury goods, was as integral to the Industrial Revolution as technological development. In Rebels against the Future, published in 1996, Kirkpatrick Sale described the phenomenon:A substantial part of the new population, though still a distinct minority, was made modestly affluent, in some places quite wealthy, by privatization of of the countryside and the industrialization of the cities, and by the sorts of commercial and other services that this called forth. The new money stimulated the consumer demand… that allowed a market economy of a scope not known before. (40)This also reflected improvements in the provision of “health, food [and] education” (Maslow; Snow 25-28). With their “physiological needs” accommodated, this ”substantial part” of the population were able to prioritised their “esteem needs” including the pursuit for prestige (Sale 40; Maslow).In Britain during the Middle Ages laws “specified in minute detail” what each class was permitted to wear (Han et al. 15). A groom, for example, was not able to wear clothing that exceeded two marks in value (Han et al. 15). In a distinct departure during the Industrial Era, it was common for the “middling and lower classes” to “ape” the “fashionable vices of their superiors” (Sale 41). Although mon-like labels that were “simplified so as to be conspicuous and instantly recognisable” emerged in Europe during the nineteenth century their application on garments remained discrete up until the early twentieth century (Christensen 13-14; Moore and Reid 24). During the 1920s, the French companies Hermes and Coco Chanel were amongst the clothing manufacturers to pioneer this principle (Chaney; Icon).During the 1860s, Lincolnshire-born Charles Frederick Worth affixed gold stamped labels to the insides of his garments (Polan et al. 9; Press). Operating from Paris, the innovation was consistent with the introduction of trademark laws in France in 1857 (Lopes et al.). He would become known as the “Father of Haute Couture”, creating dresses for royalty and celebrities including Empress Eugene from Constantinople, French actress Sarah Bernhardt and Australian Opera Singer Nellie Melba (Lopes et al.; Krick). The clothing labels proved and ineffective deterrent to counterfeit, and by the 1890s the House of Worth implemented other measures to authenticate their products (Press). The legitimisation of the origin of a product is, arguably, the primary function of branding. This principle is also applicable to subjects. The prothesis of brands, as totemic symbols, assisted consumers to relocate themselves within a new system of population distribution (Levi-Strauss 166). It was one born of commerce as opposed to heraldry.Selling of Self: Conferring Identity from the Neolithic to Modern ErasIn his 1817 compendium on family crests, Deuchar elaborated on heraldry by writing:Ignoble birth was considered as a stain almost indelible… Illustrious parentage, on the other hand, constituted the very basis of honour: it communicated peculiar rights and privileges, to which the meaner born man might not aspire. (v-vi)The Twinings Logo (fig. 4) has remained unchanged since the design was commissioned by the grandson of the company founder Richard Twining in 1787 (Twining). In addition to reflecting the heritage of the family-owned company, the brand indicated the origin of the tea. This became pertinent during the nineteenth century. Plantations began to operate from Assam to Ceylon (Jones 267-269). Amidst the rampant diversification of tea sources in the Victorian era, concerns about the “unhygienic practices” of Chinese producers were proliferated (Wengrow 11). Subsequently, the brand also offered consumers assurance in quality. Fig. 4. The Twinings Logo reproduced from "History of Twinings." Twinings. 24 July 2019 <https://www.twinings.co.uk/about-twinings/history-of-twinings>.The term ‘brand’, adapted from the Norse “brandr”, was introduced into the English language during the sixteenth century (Starcevic 179). At its most literal, it translates as to “burn down” (Starcevic 179). Using hot elements to singe markings onto animals been recorded as early as 2700 BCE in Egypt (Starcevic 182). However, archaeologists concur that the modern principle of branding predates this practice. The implementation of carved seals or stamps to make indelible impressions of handcrafted objects dates back to Prehistoric Mesopotamia (Starcevic 183; Wengrow 13). Similar traditions developed during the Bronze Age in both China and the Indus Valley (Starcevic 185). In all three civilisations branding facilitated both commerce and aspects of Totemism. In the sixth millennium BCE in “Prehistoric” Mesopotamia, referred to as the Halaf period, stone seals were carved to emulate organic form such as animal teeth (Wengrow 13-14). They were used to safeguard objects by “confer[ring] part of the bearer’s personality” (Wengrow 14). They were concurrently applied to secure the contents of vessels containing “exotic goods” used in transactions (Wengrow 15). Worn as amulets (figs. 5 & 6) the seals, and the symbols they produced, were a physical extension of their owners (Wengrow 14).Fig. 5. Recreation of stamp seal amulets from Neolithic Mesopotamia during the sixth millennium BCE. Wengrow, David. "Prehistories of Commodity Branding." Current Anthropology 49.1 (2008): 14.Fig. 6. “Lot 25Y: Rare Syrian Steatite Amulet – Fertility God 5000 BCE.” The Salesroom. 27 July 2019 <https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/artemis-gallery-ancient-art/catalogue-id-srartem10006/lot-a850d229-a303-4bae-b68c-a6130005c48a>. Fig. 7. Recreation of stamp seal designs from Mesopotamia from the late fifth to fourth millennium BCE. Wengrow, David. "Prehistories of Commodity Branding." Current Anthropology 49. 1 (2008): 16.In the following millennia, the seals would increase exponentially in application and aesthetic complexity (fig. 7) to support the development of household cum cottage industries (Wengrow 15). In addition to handcrafts, sealed vessels would transport consumables such as wine, aromatic oils and animal fats (Wengrow 18). The illustrations on the seals included depictions of rituals undertaken by human figures and/or allegories using animals. It can be ascertained that the transition in the Victorian Era from heraldry to commerce, from family to corporation, had precedence. By extension, consumers were able to participate in this process of value attribution using brands as signifiers. The principle remained prevalent during the modern and post-modern eras and can be respectively interpreted using structuralist and post-structuralist theory.Totemism to Simulacrum: The Evolution of Advertising from the Modern to Post-Modern Eras In 2011, Lisa Chaney wrote of the inception of the Coco Chanel logo (fig. 8) in her biography Chanel: An Intimate Life: A crucial element in the signature design of the Chanel No.5 bottle is the small black ‘C’ within a black circle set as the seal at the neck. On the top of the lid are two more ‘C’s, intertwined back to back… from at least 1924, the No5 bottles sported the unmistakable logo… these two ‘C’s referred to Gabrielle, – in other words Coco Chanel herself, and would become the logo for the House of Chanel. Chaney continued by describing Chanel’s fascination of totemic symbols as expressed through her use of tarot cards. She also “surrounded herself with objects ripe with meaning” such as representations of wheat and lions in reference prosperity and to her zodiac symbol ‘Leo’ respectively. Fig. 8. No5 Chanel Perfume, released in 1924, featured a seal-like logo attached to the bottle neck. “No5.” Chanel. 25 July 2019 <https://www.chanel.com/us/fragrance/p/120450/n5-parfum-grand-extrait/>.Fig. 9. This illustration of the bottle by Georges Goursat was published in a women’s magazine circa 1920s. “1921 Chanel No5.” Inside Chanel. 26 July 2019 <http://inside.chanel.com/en/timeline/1921_no5>; “La 4éme Fête de l’Histoire Samedi 16 et dimache 17 juin.” Ville de Perigueux. Musée d’art et d’archéologie du Périgord. 28 Mar. 2018. 26 July 2019 <https://www.perigueux-maap.fr/category/archives/page/5/>. This product was considered the “financial basis” of the Chanel “empire” which emerged during the second and third decades of the twentieth century (Tikkanen). Chanel is credited for revolutionising Haute Couture by introducing chic modern designs that emphasised “simplicity and comfort.” This was as opposed to the corseted highly embellished fashion that characterised the Victorian Era (Tikkanen). The lavish designs released by the House of Worth were, in and of themselves, “conspicuous” displays of “consumption” (Veblen 17). In contrast, the prestige and status associated with the “poor girl” look introduced by Chanel was invested in the story of the designer (Tikkanen). A primary example is her marinière or sailor’s blouse with a Breton stripe that epitomised her ascension from café singer to couturier (Tikkanen; Burstein 8). This signifier might have gone unobserved by less discerning consumers of fashion if it were not for branding. Not unlike the Prehistoric Mesopotamians, this iteration of branding is a process which “confer[s]” the “personality” of the designer into the garment (Wengrow 13 -14). The wearer of the garment is, in turn, is imbued by extension. Advertisers in the post-structuralist era embraced Levi-Strauss’s structuralist anthropological theories (Williamson 50). This is with particular reference to “bricolage” or the “preconditioning” of totemic symbols (Williamson 173; Pool 50). Subsequently, advertising creatives cum “bricoleur” employed his principles to imbue the brands with symbolic power. This symbolic capital was, arguably, transferable to the product and, ultimately, to its consumer (Williamson 173).Post-structuralist and semiotician Jean Baudrillard “exhaustively” critiqued brands and the advertising, or simulacrum, that embellished them between the late 1960s and early 1980s (Wengrow 10-11). In Simulacra and Simulation he wrote,it is the reflection of a profound reality; it masks and denatures a profound reality; it masks the absence of a profound reality; it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum. (6)The symbolic power of the Chanel brand resonates in the ‘profound reality’ of her story. It is efficiently ‘denatured’ through becoming simplified, conspicuous and instantly recognisable. It is, as a logo, physically juxtaposed as simulacra onto apparel. This simulacrum, in turn, effects the ‘profound reality’ of the consumer. In 1899, economist Thorstein Veblen wrote in The Theory of the Leisure Class:Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods it the means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure… costly entertainments, such as potlatch or the ball, are peculiarly adapted to serve this end… he consumes vicariously for his host at the same time that he is witness to the consumption… he is also made to witness his host’s facility in etiquette. (47)Therefore, according to Veblen, it was the witnessing of “wasteful” consumption that “confers status” as opposed the primary conspicuous act (Han et al. 18). Despite television being in its experimental infancy advertising was at “the height of its powers” during the 1920s (Clark et al. 18; Hill 30). Post-World War I consumers, in America, experienced an unaccustomed level of prosperity and were unsuspecting of the motives of the newly formed advertising agencies (Clark et al. 18). Subsequently, the ‘witnessing’ of consumption could be constructed across a plethora of media from the newly emerged commercial radio to billboards (Hill viii–25). The resulting ‘status’ was ‘conferred’ onto brand logos. Women’s magazines, with a legacy dating back to 1828, were a primary locus (Hill 10).Belonging in a Post-Structuralist WorldIt is significant to note that, in a post-structuralist world, consumers do not exclusively seek upward mobility in their selection of brands. The establishment of counter-culture icon Levi-Strauss and Co. was concurrent to the emergence of both The House of Worth and Coco Chanel. The Bavarian-born Levi Strauss commenced selling apparel in San Francisco in 1853 (Levi’s). Two decades later, in partnership with Nevada born tailor Jacob Davis, he patented the “riveted-for-strength” workwear using blue denim (Levi’s). Although the ontology of ‘jeans’ is contested, references to “Jene Fustyan” date back the sixteenth century (Snyder 139). It involved the combining cotton, wool and linen to create “vestments” for Geonese sailors (Snyder 138). The Two Horse Logo (fig. 10), depicting them unable to pull apart a pair of jeans to symbolise strength, has been in continuous use by Levi Strauss & Co. company since its design in 1886 (Levi’s). Fig. 10. The Two Horse Logo by Levi Strauss & Co. has been in continuous use since 1886. Staff Unzipped. "Two Horses. One Message." Heritage. Levi Strauss & Co. 1 July 2011. 25 July 2019 <https://www.levistrauss.com/2011/07/01/two-horses-many-versions-one-message/>.The “rugged wear” would become the favoured apparel amongst miners at American Gold Rush (Muthu 6). Subsequently, between the 1930s – 1960s Hollywood films cultivated jeans as a symbol of “defiance” from Stage Coach staring John Wayne in 1939 to Rebel without A Cause staring James Dean in 1955 (Muthu 6; Edgar). Consequently, during the 1960s college students protesting in America (fig. 11) against the draft chose the attire to symbolise their solidarity with the working class (Hedarty). Notwithstanding a 1990s fashion revision of denim into a diversity of garments ranging from jackets to skirts, jeans have remained a wardrobe mainstay for the past half century (Hedarty; Muthu 10). Fig. 11. Although the brand label is not visible, jeans as initially introduced to the American Goldfields in the nineteenth century by Levi Strauss & Co. were cultivated as a symbol of defiance from the 1930s – 1960s. It documents an anti-war protest that occurred at the Pentagon in 1967. Cox, Savannah. "The Anti-Vietnam War Movement." ATI. 14 Dec. 2016. 16 July 2019 <https://allthatsinteresting.com/vietnam-war-protests#7>.In 2003, the journal Science published an article “Does Rejection Hurt? An Fmri Study of Social Exclusion” (Eisenberger et al.). The cross-institutional study demonstrated that the neurological reaction to rejection is indistinguishable to physical pain. Whereas during the 1940s Maslow classified the desire for “belonging” as secondary to “physiological needs,” early twenty-first century psychologists would suggest “[social] acceptance is a mechanism for survival” (Weir 50). In Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard wrote: Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal… (1)In the intervening thirty-eight years since this document was published the artifice of our interactions has increased exponentially. In order to locate ‘belongness’ in this hyperreality, the identities of the seekers require a level of encoding. Brands, as signifiers, provide a vehicle.Whereas in Prehistoric Mesopotamia carved seals, worn as amulets, were used to extend the identity of a person, in post-digital China WeChat QR codes (fig. 12), stored in mobile phones, are used to facilitate transactions from exchanging contact details to commerce. Like other totems, they provide access to information such as locations, preferences, beliefs, marital status and financial circumstances. These individualised brands are the most recent incarnation of a technology that has developed over the past eight thousand years. The intermediary iteration, emblems affixed to garments, has remained prevalent since the twelfth century. Their continued salience is due to their visibility and, subsequent, accessibility as signifiers. Fig. 12. It may be posited that Wechat QR codes are a form individualised branding. Like other totems, they store information pertaining to the owner’s location, beliefs, preferences, marital status and financial circumstances. “Join Wechat groups using QR code on 2019.” Techwebsites. 26 July 2019 <https://techwebsites.net/join-wechat-group-qr-code/>.Fig. 13. Brands function effectively as signifiers is due to the international distribution of multinational corporations. This is the shopfront of Chanel in Dubai, which offers customers apparel bearing consistent insignia as the Parisian outlet at on Rue Cambon. Customers of Chanel can signify to each other with the confidence that their products will be recognised. “Chanel.” The Dubai Mall. 26 July 2019 <https://thedubaimall.com/en/shop/chanel>.Navigating a post-structuralist world of increasing mobility necessitates a rudimental understanding of these symbols. Whereas in the nineteenth century status was conveyed through consumption and witnessing consumption, from the twentieth century onwards the garnering of brands made this transaction immediate (Veblen 47; Han et al. 18). The bricolage of the brands is constructed by bricoleurs working in any number of contemporary creative fields such as advertising, filmmaking or song writing. They provide a system by which individuals can convey and recognise identities at prima facie. They enable the prosthesis of identity.ReferencesBaudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. United States: University of Michigan Press, 1994.Burstein, Jessica. Cold Modernism: Literature, Fashion, Art. United States: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012.Chaney, Lisa. Chanel: An Intimate Life. United Kingdom: Penguin Books Limited, 2011.Christensen, J.A. Cut-Art: An Introduction to Chung-Hua and Kiri-E. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1989. Clark, Eddie M., Timothy C. Brock, David E. Stewart, David W. Stewart. Attention, Attitude, and Affect in Response to Advertising. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis Group, 1994.Deuchar, Alexander. British Crests: Containing the Crests and Mottos of the Families of Great Britain and Ireland Together with Those of the Principal Cities – Primary So. London: Kirkwood & Sons, 1817.Ebert, Robert. “Great Movie: Stage Coach.” Robert Ebert.com. 1 Aug. 2011. 10 Mar. 2019 <https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-stagecoach-1939>.Elven, John Peter. The Book of Family Crests: Comprising Nearly Every Family Bearing, Properly Blazoned and Explained, Accompanied by Upwards of Four Thousand Engravings. London: Henry Washbourne, 1847.Eisenberger, Naomi I., Matthew D. Lieberman, and Kipling D. Williams. "Does Rejection Hurt? An Fmri Study of Social Exclusion." Science 302.5643 (2003): 290-92.Family Crests of Japan. California: Stone Bridge Press, 2007.Gombrich, Ernst. "The Visual Image: Its Place in Communication." 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Introduction This article is concerned with the recent rise in popularity of crypto art, the term given to digital artworks whose ownership and provenance are confirmed with a non-fungible token (NFT), making it possible to sell these works within decentralised cryptocurrency art markets. The goal of this analysis is to trace a genealogy of crypto art to Dada, an avant-garde movement that originated in the early twentieth century. My claim is that Dadaism in crypto art appears in its exhausted form that is a result of its revival in the 1950s and 1960s by the Neo Dada that reached the current age through Pop Art. Dada’s anti-art project of rejecting beauty and aesthetics has transformed into commercial success in the Neo Dada Pop Art movement. In turn, Pop Art produced its crypto version that explores not only the question of what art is and is not, but also when art becomes money. In what follows, I will provide a brief overview of NFT art and its three categories that could generally be found within crypto marketplaces: native crypto art, non-digital art, and digital distributed-creativity art. Throughout, I will foreground the presence of Dadaism in these artworks and provide art historical context. NFTs: Brief Overview A major technological component that made NFTs possible was developed in 1991, when cryptographers Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta proposed a method for time-stamping data contained in digital documents shared within a distributed network of users (99). This work laid the foundation for what became known as blockchain and was further implemented in the development of Bitcoin, a digital currency invented by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. The original non-fungible tokens, Coloured Coins, were created in 2012. By “colouring” or differentiating bitcoins, Coloured Coins were assigned special properties and had a value independent of the underlying Bitcoin, allowing their use as commodity certificates, alternative currencies, and other financial instruments (Assia et al.). In 2014, fuelled by a motivation to protect digital artists from unsanctioned distribution of their work while also enabling digital art sales, media artist Kevin McCoy and tech entrepreneur Anil Dash saw the potential of blockchain to satisfy their goals and developed what became to be known as NFTs. This overnight invention was a result of McCoy and Dash’s participation in the Seven on Seven annual New York City event, a one-day creative collaboration that challenged seven pairs of artists and engineers to “make something” (Rhizome). McCoy and Dash did not patent their invention, nor were they able to popularise it, mentally archiving it as a “footnote in internet history”. Ironically, just a couple of years later NFTs exploded into a billion-dollar market, living up to an ironic name of “monetized graphics” that the pair gave to their invention. Crypto art became an international sensation in March 2021, when a digital artist Mike Winklemann, known as Beeple, sold his digital collage titled Everydays: The First 5000 Days for US$69.3 million, prompting Noah Davis, a curator who assisted with the sale at the Christie’s auction house, to proclaim: “he showed us this collage, and that was my eureka moment when I knew this was going to be extremely important. It was just so monumental and so indicative of what NFTs can do” (Kastrenakes). As a technology, a non-fungible token can create digital scarcity in an otherwise infinitely replicable digital space. Contrary to fungible tokens, which are easily interchangeable due to having an equal value, non-fungible tokens represent unique items for which one cannot find an equivalent. That is why we rely on the fungibility of money to exchange non-fungible unique goods, such as art. Employing non-fungible tokens allows owning and exchanging digital items outside of the context in which they originated. Now, one can prove one’s possession of a digital skin from a videogame, for example, and sell it on digital markets using crypto currency (“Bible”). Behind the technology of NFTs lies the use of a cryptographic hash function, which converts a digital artwork of any file size into a fixed-length hash, called message digest (Dooley 179). It is impossible to revert the process and arrive at the original image, a quality of non-reversibility that makes the hash function a perfect tool for creating a digital representation of an artwork proofed from data tampering. The issued or minted NFT enters a blockchain, a distributed database that too relies on cryptographic properties to guarantee fidelity and security of data stored. Once the NFT becomes a part of the blockchain, its transaction history is permanently recorded and publicly available. Thus, the NFT simultaneously serves as a unique representation of the artwork and a digital proof of ownership. NFTs are traded in digital marketplaces, such as SuperRare, KnownOrigin, OpenSea, and Rarible, which rely on a blockchain to sustain their operations. An analysis of these markets’ inventory can be summarised by the following list of roughly grouped types of artistic works available for purchase: native crypto art, non-digital art, distributed creativity art. Native Crypto Art In this category, I include projects that motivated the creation of NFT protocols. Among these projects are the aforementioned Colored Coins, created in 2012. These were followed by issuing other visual creations native to the crypto-world, such as LarvaLabs’s CryptoPunks, a series of 10,000 algorithmically generated 8-bit-style pixelated digital avatars originally available for free to anyone with an Ethereum blockchain account, gaining a cult status among the collectors when they became rare sought-after items. On 13 February 2022, CryptoPunk #5822 was sold for roughly $24 million in Ethereum, beating the previous record for such an NFT, CryptoPunk #3100, sold for $7.58 million. CryptoPunks laid the foundation for other collectible personal profile projects, such Bored Ape Yacht Club and Cool Cats. One of the ultimate collections of crypto art that demonstrates the exhaustion of original Dada motivations is titled Monas, an NFT project made up of 5,000 programmatically generated versions of a pixelated Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci (c. 1503-1506). Each Monas, according to the creators, is “a mix of Art, history, and references from iconic NFTs” (“Monas”). Monas are a potpourri of meme and pop culture, infused with inside jokes and utmost silliness. Monas invariably bring to mind the historic Dadaist gesture of challenging bourgeois tastes through defacing iconic art historical works, such as Marcel Duchamp’s treatment of Mona Lisa in L.H.O.O.Q. In 1919, Duchamp drew a moustache and a goatee on a reproduction of La Joconde, as the French called the painting, and inscribed “L.H.O.O.Q.” that when pronounced sounds like “Elle a chaud au cul”, a vulgar expression indicating sexual arousal of the subject. At the time of its creation, this Dada act was met with the utmost public contempt, as Mona Lisa was considered a sacred work of art and a patron of the arts, an almost religious symbol (Elger and Grosenick 82). Needless to say, the effect of Monas on public consciousness is far from causing disgust and, on the contrary, brings childish joy and giggles. As an NFT artist, Mankind, explains in his YouTube video on personal profile projects: “PFPs are built around what people enjoy. People enjoy memes, people enjoy status, people enjoy being a part of something bigger than themselves, the basic primary desire to mix digital with social and belong to a community”. Somehow, “being bigger than themselves” has come to involve collecting defaced images of Mona Lisa. Turning our attention to historical analysis will help trace this transformation of the Dada insult into a collectible NFT object. Dada and Its Legacy in Crypto Art Dada was founded in 1916 in Zurich, by Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Hans Richter, and other artists who fled their homelands during the First World War (Hapgood and Rittner 63). One of Dada’s primary aspirations was to challenge the dominance of reason that brought about the tragedy of the First World War through attacking the postulates of culture this form of reason produced. Already in 1921, such artists as André Breton, Louis Aragon, and Max Ernst were becoming exhausted by Dada’s nihilist tendencies and rejection of all programmes for the arts, except for the one that called for the total freedom of expression. The movement was pronounced dead about May 1921, leaving no sense of regret since, in the words of Breton, “its omnipotence and its tyranny had made it intolerable” (205). An important event associated with Dada’s revival and the birth of the Neo Dada movement was the publication of The Dada Painters and Poets in 1951. This volume, the first collection of Dada writings in English and the most comprehensive anthology in any language, was introduced to the young artists at the New School by John Cage, who revived Tristan Tzara’s concept that “life is far more interesting” than art (Hapgood and Rittner 64). The 1950s were marked by a renewed interest in Dadaism that can also be evidenced in galleries and museums organising numerous exhibitions on the movement, such as Dada 1916 –1923 curated by Marcel Duchamp at the Sidney Janis Gallery in 1953. By the end of the decade, such artists as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg began exploring materials and techniques that can be attributed to Dadaism, which prompted the title of Neo Dada to describe this thematic return (Hapgood and Rittner 64). Among the artistic approaches that Neo Dada borrowed from Dada are Duchampian readymades that question the status of the art object, Kurt Schwitters’s collage technique of incorporating often banal scraps and pieces of the everyday, and the use of chance operations as a compositional device (Hapgood and Rittner 63–64). These approaches comprise the toolbox of crypto artists as well. Monas, CryptoPunks, and Bored Ape Yacht Club are digital collages made of scraps of pop culture and the everyday Internet life assembled into compositional configurations through chance operation made possible by the application of algorithmic generation of the images in each series. Art historian Helen Molesworth sees the strategies of montage, the readymade, and chance not only as “mechanisms for making art objects” but also as “abdications of traditional forms of artistic labor” (178). Molesworth argues that Duchamp’s invention of the readymade “substituted the act of (artistic) production with consumption” and “profoundly questioned the role, stability, nature, and necessity of the artist’s labor” (179). Together with questioning the need for artistic labour, Neo Dadaists inherited what an American art historian Jack D. Flam terms the “anything goes” attitude: Dada’s liberating destruction of rules and derision of art historical canon allowed anything and everything to be considered art (xii). The “anything goes” approach can also be traced to the contemporary crypto artists, such as Beeple, whose Everydays: The First 5000 Days was a result of assembling into a collage the first 5,000 of his daily training sketches created while teaching himself new digital tools (Kastrenakes). When asked whether he genuinely liked any of his images, Beeple explained that most digital art was created by teams of people working over the course of days or even weeks. When he “is pooping something out in 45 minutes”, it “is probably not gonna look that great comparatively” (Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg). At the core of Dada was a spirit of absurdism that drove an attack on the social, political, artistic, and philosophical norms, constituting a radical movement against the Establishment (Flam xii). In Dada Art and Anti-Art, Hans Richter’s personal historical account of the Dada movement, the artist describes the basic principle of Dada as guided by a motivation “to outrage public opinion” (66). Richter’s writings also point out a desensitisation towards Dada provocations that the public experienced as a result of Dada’s repetitive assaults, demanding an invention of new methods to disgrace the public taste. Richter recounts: our exhibitions were not enough. Not everyone in Zurich came to look at our pictures, attending our meetings, read our poems and manifestos. The devising and raising of public hell was an essential function of any Dada movement, whether its goal was pro-art, non-art or anti-art. And the public (like insects or bacteria) had developed immunity to one of kind poison, we had to think of another. (66) Richter’s account paints a cultural environment in which new artistic provocations mutate into accepted norms in a quick succession, forming a public body that is immune to anti-art “poisons”. In the foreword to Dada Painters and Poets, Flam outlines a trajectory of acceptance and subjugation of the Dadaist spirit by the subsequent revival of the movement’s core values in the Neo Dada of the 1950s and 1960s. When Dadaism was rediscovered by the writers and artists in the 1950s, the Dada spirit characterised by absurdist irony, self-parody, and deadpan realism was becoming a part of everyday life, as if art entered life and transformed it in its own image. The Neo Dada artists, such as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol, existed in a culturally pluralistic space where the project of a rejection of the Establishment was quickly absorbed into the mainstream, mutating into the high culture it was supposedly criticising and bringing commercial success of which the original Dada artists would have been deeply ashamed (Flam xiii). Raoul Hausmann states: “Dada fell like a raindrop from heaven. The Neo-Dadaists have learnt to imitate the fall, but not the raindrop” (as quoted in Craft 129). With a similar sentiment, Richard Huelsenbeck writes: “Neo-Dada has turned the weapons used by Dada, and later by Surrealism, into popular ploughshares with which to till the fertile soil of sensation-hungry galleries eager for business” (as quoted in Craft 130). Marcel Duchamp, the forefather of the avant-garde, comments on the loss of Dada’s original intent: this Neo-Dada, which they call New Realism, Pop Art, Assemblage, etc., is an easy way out, and lives on what Dada did. When I discovered ready-mades I thought to discourage aesthetics. In Neo-Dada they have taken my ready-mades and found aesthetic beauty in them. I threw the bottle-rack and the urinal into their faces as a challenge and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty. (Flam xiii) In Neo Dada, the original anti-art impulse of Dadaism was converted into its opposite, becoming an artistic stance and a form of aesthetics. Flam notes that these gradual transformations resulted in the shifts in public consciousness, which it was becoming more difficult to insult. Artists, among them Roy Lichtenstein, complained that it was becoming impossible to make anything despicable: even a dirty rug could be admired (Flam xiii). The audience lost their ability to understand when they were being mocked, attacked, or challenged. Writing in 1981, Flam proclaimed that “Dada spirit has become an inescapable condition of modern life” (xiv). I contend that the current crypto art thrives on the Dada spirit of absurdism, irony, and self-parody and continues to question the border between art and non-art, while fully subscribing to the “anything goes” approach. In the current iteration of Dada in the crypto world, the original subversive narrative can be mostly found in the liberating rhetoric promoted by the proponents of the decentralised economic system. While Neo Dada understood the futility of shocking the public and questioning their tastes, crypto art is ignorant of the original Dada as a form of outrage, a revolutionary movement ignited by a social passion. In crypto art, the ambiguous relationship that Pop Art, one of the Neo Dada movements, had with commercial success is transformed into the content of the artworks. As Tristan Tzara laconically explained, the Dada project was to “assassinate beauty” and with it all the infrastructure of the art market (as quoted in Danto 39). Ironically, crypto artists, the descendants of Dada, erected the monument to Value artificially created through scarcity made possible by blockchain technology in place of the denigrated Venus demolished by the Dadaists. After all, it is the astronomical prices for crypto art that are lauded the most. If in the pre-NFT age, artistic works were evaluated based on their creative merit that included considering the prominence of the artist within art historical canon, current crypto art is evaluated based on its rareness, to which the titles of the crypto art markets SuperRare and Rarible unambiguously refer (Finucane 28–29). In crypto art, the anti-art and anti-commercialism of Dada has fully transformed into its opposite. Another evidence for considering crypto art to be a descendant of Dada is the NFT artists’ concern for the question of what art is and is not, brought to the table by the original Dada artists. This concern is expressed in the manifesto-like mission statement of the first Museum of Crypto Art: at its core, the Museum of Crypto Art (M○C△) challenges, creates conflict, provokes. M○C△ puts forward a broad representation of perspectives meant to upend our sense of who we are. It poses two questions: “what is art?” and “who decides?” We aim to resolve these questions through a multi-stakeholder decentralized platform of art curation and exhibition. (The Museum of Crypto Art) In the past, the question regarding the definition of art was overtaken by the proponent of the institutional approach to art definition, George Dickie, who besides excluding aesthetics from playing a part in differentiating art from non-art famously pronounced that an artwork created by a monkey is art if it is displayed in an art institution, and non-art if it is displayed elsewhere (Dickie 256). This development might explain why decentralisation of the art market achieved through the use of blockchain technology still relies on the endorsing of the art being sold by the widely acclaimed art auction houses: with their stamp of approval, the work is christened as legitimate art, resulting in astronomical sales. Non-Digital Art It is not surprising that an NFT marketplace is an inviting arena for the investigation of questions of commercialisation tackled in the works of Neo Dada Pop artists, who made their names in the traditional art world. This brings us to a discussion of the second type of artworks found in NFT marketplaces: non-digital art sold as NFT and created by trained visual artists, such as Damien Hirst. In his recent NFT project titled Currency, Hirst explores “the boundaries of art and currency—when art changes and becomes a currency, and when currency becomes art” (“The Currency”). The project consists of 10,000 artworks on A4 paper covered in small, coloured dots, a continuation of the so-called “spot-paintings” series that Hirst and his assistants have been producing since the 1980s. Each artwork is painted on a hand-made paper that bears the watermark of the artist’s bust, adorned with a microdot that serves as a unique identification, and is made to look very similar to the others—visual devices used to highlight the ambiguous state of these artworks that simultaneously function as Hirst-issued currency. For Hirst, this project is an experiment: after the purchase of NFTs, buyers are given an opportunity to exchange the NFT for the original art, safely stored in a UK vault; the unexchanged artworks will be burned. Is art going to fully transform into currency? Will you save it? In Hirst’s project, the transformation of physical art into crypto value becomes the ultimate act of Dada nihilism, except for one big difference: if Dada wanted to destroy art as a way to invent it anew, Hirst destroys art to affirm its death and dissolution in currency. In an ironic gesture, the gif NFT artist Nino Arteiro, as if in agreement with Hirst, attempts to sell his work titled Art Is Not Synonymous of Profit, which contains a crudely written text “ART ≠ PROFIT!” for 0.13 Ether or US$350. Buying this art will negate its own statement and affirm its analogy with money. Distributed-Creativity Art When browsing through crypto art advertised in the crypto markets, one inevitably encounters works that stand out in their emphasis on aesthetic and formal qualities. More often than not, these works are created with the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). To a viewer bombarded with creations unconcerned with the concept of beauty, these AI works may serve as a sensory aesthetic refuge. Among the most prominent artists working in this realm is Refik Anadol, whose Synthetic Dreams series at a first glance may appear as carefully composed works of a landscape painter. However, at a closer look nodal connections between points in rendered space provide a hint at the use of algorithmic processes. These attractive landscapes are quantum AI data paintings created from a data set consisting of 200 million raw images of landscapes from around the world, with each image having been computed with a unique quantum bit string (“Synthetic Dreams”). Upon further contemplation, Anadol’s work begins to remind of the sublime Romantic landscapes, revamped through the application of AI that turned fascination with nature’s unboundedness into awe in the face of the unfathomable amounts of data used in creation of Anadol’s works. These creations can be seen as a reaction against the crypto art I call exhausted Dada, or a marketing approach that targets a different audience. In either case, Anadol revives aesthetic concern and aligns himself with the history of sublimity in art that dates back to the writings of Longinus, becoming of prime importance in the nineteenth-century Romantic painting, and finding new expressions in what is considered the technological sublime, which, according to David E. Nye. concentrates “on the triumph of machines… over space and time” (as quoted in Butler et al. 8). In relation to his Nature Dreams project, Anadol writes: “the exhibition’s eponymous, sublime AI Data Sculpture, Nature Dreams utilizes over 300 million publicly available photographs of nature collected between 2018- 2021 at Refik Anadol Studio” (“Machine Hallucinations Nature Dreams”). From this short description it is evident that Anadol’s primary focus is on the sublimity of large sets of data. There is an issue with that approach: since experiencing the sublime involves loss of rational thinking (Longinus 1.4), these artworks cease the viewer’s ability to interrogate cultural adaptation of AI technology and stay within the realm of decorative ornamentations, demanding an intervention akin to that brought about by the historical avant-garde. Conclusions I hope that this brief analysis demonstrates the mechanisms by which the strains of Dada entered the vocabulary of crypto artists. It is probably also noticeable that I equate the nihilist project of the exhausted Dada found in such works as Hirst’s Cryptocurrency with a dead end similar to so many other dead ends in art history—one only needs to remember that the death of painting was announced a myriad of times, and yet it is still alive. Each announcement of its death was followed by its radiant return. It could be that using art as a visual package for monetary value, a death statement to art’s capacity to affect human lives, will ignite artists to affirm art’s power to challenge, inspire, and enrich. References Assia, Yoni et al. “Colored Coins Whitepaper.” 2012-13. <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AnkP_cVZTCMLIzw4DvsW6M8Q2JC0lIzrTLuoWu2z1BE/edit>. Breton, André. “Three Dada Manifestoes, before 1924.” The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology, Ed. Robert Motherwell, Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1989. 197–206. Butler, Rebecca P., and Benjamin J. Butler. “Examples of the American Technological Sublime.” TechTrends 57.1 (2013): 9–10. Craft, Catherine Anne. Constellations of Past and Present: (Neo-) Dada, the Avant- Garde, and the New York Art World, 1951-1965. 1996. PhD dissertation. University of Texas at Austin. Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg, Kasia. “Creativity Is Hustle: Make Something Every Day.” The Atlantic, 7 Oct. 2011. 12 July 2021 <https://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2011/10/creativity-is-hustle-make-something-every-day/246377/#slide15>. Danto, Arthur Coleman. The Abuse of Beauty: Aesthetics and the Concept of Art. Chicago, Ill: Open Court, 2006. Dash, Anil. “NFTs Weren’t Supposed to End like This.” The Atlantic, 2 Apr. 2021. 16 Apr. 2022 <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/nfts-werent-supposed-end-like/618488/>. Dickie, George. “Defining Art.” American Philosophical Quarterly 6.3 (1969): 253–256. Dooley, John F. History of Cryptography and Cryptanalysis: Codes, Ciphers, and Their Algorithms. 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Ressusciter l’héroïsme en réécrivant des épopées aux temps modernes, telle est l’idée commune à l’auteur de la trilogie des Mousquetaires et à Jin Yong, romancier d’arts martiaux souvent appelé « l’Alexandre Dumas chinois ». Mais qu’est-ce qu’un héros ? Chacun des deux écrivains explore à sa manière ce thème majeur de la littérature d’aventures chevaleresques à travers les portraits des grandes figures dans son œuvre, que nous abordons dans notre étude comparative sous trois aspects qui se déroulent comme sur une échelle des plans au cinéma : le parcours évolutif du héros, les relations affectives qui marquent sa personnalité et les traits saillants de son tempérament. Constamment en rapport de forces avec le pouvoir en place souvent représenté par l’autorité paternelle, les mousquetaires dumasiens et les chevaliers errants chez Jin Yong se transforment progressivement en grands transgresseurs qui se débattent contre la fatalité de la caste à laquelle ils appartiennent afin d’agir en liberté dans un monde cherchant à les dompter. Ce fil épique est entouré, à l’instar du bâton d’un thyrse, du fil sentimental. Deux discours de l’amour anticonformistes se construisent, se contrastent et finalement se répondent dans une réalité beaucoup moins rose que l’image codifiée de l’idylle, cédant la place à l’amitié virile, née dans une camaraderie chaleureuse ou des moments d’intensité, idéalisée ou revêtant d’une certaine ambiguïté, et magnifiée dans tous les deux univers romanesques comme une valeur suprême sans forcément être sainte. Le grand écart entre nos héros et le profil d’un chevalier sans peur et sans reproche se fait sentir davantage lorsque l’on les examine de plus près à l’aune du niveau culturel, de la moralité et de la motivation de leurs actes. Très humains en partageant des défauts, des banalités et des limites, ils n’étonnent pas moins par de hautes qualités primitives, sans exclure un accent comique. L’héroïsme est revalorisé dans la continuité et la rupture avec les traditions, dans l’unisson et le choc entre Occident et Orient
Reviving heroism by writing modern epics is a shared authorial intention on the part of the author of the Musketeers trilogy and Jin Yong, a writer of martial arts and chivalry novels often called “China’s Alexandre Dumas”. But what is a hero? These two novelists respectively explore this major theme in chivalric literature through their portrayal of important characters in their works. This comparative study, drawing upon the zooming technique in cinematography, explores these three topics: the heroes’ bildung, the affective relationships that influence their character formation, and the salient features of their personalities. In their constant struggles against the established authorities, especially paternal authorities, the Dumasian musketeers and Jin Yong’s knight-errants gradually transform into great transgressors who struggle to break free from the restraints of the social class to which they belong in order to act freely in a world seeking to tame them. This epic theme is entangled, like Dionysus’s scepter, with the intricacies of affective relationships. Two non-conformist discourses of love are constructed, contrasted and eventually pitted against each other in a reality much less rosy than the codified idyll, as they inevitably give way to the notion of brotherhood, which, either idealized or obfuscated, is celebrated and glorified even with its fallibities. The wide gap between the hero characters and the ideal image of a fearless and infallible knight is all the more visible when we examine them more closely in terms of their book knowledge, moral awareness and behavioral motivation. They are portrayed as ordinary human beings characterized by faults, banalities and limitations, while they are also given a sense of noble savageness and a touch of comic lightheartedness. Heroism is recalibrated in these novel’s conformity to and departure from traditions, and in the context of the harmony and clash between West and East