This volume explores the notions of excess, intemperance and overabundance in cultures and literatures of both the English- and Chinese-speaking worlds. It concentrates on some aspects of literary and cultural meanings of excess(es) in various theories and practices of these antipodean territories of human experience and consciousnesses, bringing together what is common between them and what sets the West apart from the East: eroticism, drug abuse, alcoholism, urban concepts, music, food, etc. In times of a serious crisis of Western-style capitalism, growing consumerism and the collapse of...

This book analyses representations of East Asia, mainly China and Japan, in selected Anglophone novels and films. Starting with the earliest texts and accounts, the first two chapters explore wider historical and cultural contexts of the mutual influences between the cultures of the East and West. The subsequent three chapters discuss symptomatic examples of contemporary Anglophone films and novels and seek to show how various cultural flows have continued to mould Western images of East Asia. The book focuses on narratives that highlight Western subjects transforming or becoming...