More than 200 scholars and academics from around the country attended the 2016 National Symposium on Literature and Landscape at Xiamen University on April 22-24. The symposium was jointly organized by CFLC and the Foreign Literature journal.

The symposium opened on the morning of April 22, with XMU vice president Zhan Xinli and CFLC dean Zhang Longhai each delivering a welcoming speech. In her opening remarks, Jin Li, editor-in-chief of the Foreign Literature journal, stated that the symposium was themed on “literature” and “landscape”, as human life is intimately linked to landscape, which is a major source of inspirations for literature.

As keynote speakers, a number of renowned researchers and academics shared their insights into various literary topics.

Cheng Wei, a research fellow with the Foreign Literature Study Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, elaborated on the aesthetic value of the English countryside in terms of Kant’s aesthetic theory.

Professor Wang Min’an of Beijing Normal University expounded the views on humans and nature as reflected in the landscape paintings by 19^th-century British painters John Constable, J. M. W. Turner and Caspar David Friedrich.

Associate Professor Weng Bingying of CFLC explored the “memory venues” in the Occupation Trilogy by French novelist and Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano.

On the afternoon of April 23 and the morning of April 24, the attendees of the symposium split into five groups for discussion on five specific topics ? landscape in literary history, aesthetic models of landscape, views on landscape and nature, cultural construction of landscape, and landscape politics. This was followed by a presentation of the summary of each group’s discussion.

The symposium concluded on the afternoon of April 24. With its fruitful results, the symposium has made a significant contribution to new knowledge in the literary field.