Contributors

Editor's Introduction:Modern Chinese Literature from Local to Global Wang Ning Given the current debate on world literature, more and more scholars realize the limits of old-fashioned views deriving from Eurocentric or Western-centric modes of conceptualizing it and start shifting their attention to the literatures of countries beyond the confines of the West. This new turn follows Goethe's initial conjectures about world literature. In recent years, world literature has been one of the most heatedly debated topics in international academic gatherings, at least since the concept was launched by Franco Moretti (2000) and David Damrosch (2003). However, in spite of a number of excellent analyses, the relations between world literature and modern Chinese literature have not yet been fully discussed. In the past decade, some of the leading journals in literary studies such as Modern Language Quarterly (2008), Neohelicon (2010), Comparative Literature Studies (2012) and Modern Fiction Studies (2016) have published special issues or clusters of articles on related topics; most of these were edited by myself in collaboration with Western colleagues; nevertheless, compared with other monographs and edited volumes on general topics of comparative literature, the results are still far from satisfactory. Here is one of the reasons why my colleague Peng Qinglong and I wanted to edit a special issue on this topic. This time, our perspective is wider and more international, for here we attempt to consider modern Chinese literature in the broad context of world literature, examining how it has changed from its original local context to the current global context and how it has formed a unique tradition, which defines our modern Chinese literary tradition. We also wanted to study how some of the major Chinese writers have been involved in the mainstream of world literature. We will discuss these issues both sychronically and diachronically. In this special issue, contibutions come from different perspectives so as to offer re-readings and interpretations both of influential theoretical trends and of important authors whose works are analyzed in the context of world literature. Indeed, Western literature has been dominant in the field of world literature studies and it hs been enthusiastically received in the Chinese context, which has helped shape a modern Chinese literary tradition. In this respect, translation has [End Page 1] played an important role: without it, modern Chinese literature would not have been able to form a new tradition. Obviously, this modern tradition is different from its precursors in classical Chinese literature. It is also quite different from its Western counterparts, although it has no doubt been inspired by the latter. This is the state in which modern Chinese literature finds itself, both "modern" and "Chinese." This special issue is divided into two parts. In the first part, five essays deal with modern Chinese literary and theoretical trends with regard to their relations with world literature in general, even though some contributors deal more specifically with genres like drama and poetry. Wang Ning analyzes the evolution of humanism that started with the New Culture Movement (1915–1923) and offers his construction of a cosmo-humanism in the age of globalization. Yang Mingming and Yang Xin survey how Russian-Soviet literature was translated and received in a Chinese context, which paved the way to the formation of modern Chinese revolutionary literature. Xiaohong Zhang and Jiazhao Lin focus on new Chinese poetry, which started at the period of the New Culture Movement and developed till the current postmodern era, moving from modernism to the postmodern. He Chengzhou discusses modern Chinese drama taking Cao Yu's plays as the most representative case. Tong-King Lee examines the hybridized elements of Hong Kong literature, made up of factors like colonialism, cosmopolitanism and consumption before offering a critical analysis. Thanks to historical contextualization and descriptive critical analysis, it is hoped that readers who are not familiar with Chinese literature will get a comprehensive picture of its developmen in the context of world literature. In the second part, the essays deal with the most prominent modern Chinese writers. Here are authors whose literary achievements are not only recognized by domestic scholarship but also have gained a wider international reputation. Ming Dong Gu's essay focuses on...

This paper analyses the development of Chinese modern and contemporary literary trends and phenomena from the perspectives of modernity and postmodernism and gives readers a comprehensive understanding of modern and contemporary Chinese literature. The author traces the origin of the expression “Chinese modern and contemporary literature” and summarizes the important aspects of the revolution of Chinese literature which have led to the creation of modern and contemporary Chinese literature. In this paper, the author examines the influence of great Western thinkers such as Freud, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre who have made outstanding and lasting contributions to the development and reform of modern Chinese literature in different literary circles. In addition, the author highlights some of the prominent literary themes that permeate Chinese modern literature and discusses the changes in the attitude of literary scholars to different literary genres. This paper also discusses the popular trends of modern Chinese literature and the development trend of postmodern literature. Keywords: modernity, modern and contemporary literature, Chinese literature, literary trends, literary genres DOI : 10.7176/JLLL/62-08 Publication date: November 30 th 2019

In the 1920's and 1930's, while modern ”fairy tale” (童話) begins to rise in Chinese literature, ”the child” issue appears in Chinese literature research gradually .Modern children literature writers pay attention to nation mission than child's nature. In their works, real liberation of the child does not exist .In other words, Zhou Zuoren (周作人) and Zheng Zhenze (鄭振鐸) are not only important writers of modern literature but also important children's literature writers。Zheng Zhenze objects to traditional education regarding child as ”adult that dwindle”, and he recognizes fairy tale are ”mostly ridiculous and unusual statements”. Therefore, his children's literature theory produces the paradox. Reviewing ”reformed popular literature (改良主義的爲大衆的文學)”, such as Chinese-Knight- errant novel (武俠小說), which Zheng Zhenze criticizes, there are a lot of child exploration stories that are accord with Zhou Zuoren's theory of ”fairy tale of literature (文學的童話)”. Because the research in modern Chinese children literature concentrates on novel, articles, magazine of ”newly camp”, comparatively neglects popular literature/culture. This thesis is drafted with ”child's image” which is in the popular Chinese-Knight-errant novel” Jiang hu qi xia zhuan (江湖奇俠傳)”, and publication” red magazine (紅雜誌)” (also named” red rose (紅玫瑰)” in 1924-1937). The child's image in popular literature will contrast the child theory of ”newly camp” so as to fill the discourse of children in modern Chinese literature.

Reviewed by: Contested Modernities in Chinese Literature Yibing Huang (bio) Charles A. Laughlin , editor. Contested Modernities in Chinese Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. x, 246 pp. Hardcover $65.00, ISBN 1-4039-6782-2. This collected volume is a timely and solid contribution to the burgeoning field of modern Chinese literature in North America from a new generation of scholars who are likely to play major roles in the field in the future. In his introduction, editor Charles Laughlin explains his editorial principle: "to map and negotiate" boundaries, and to explore "the intersections of . . . nation, gender and city, diaspora and modernity, feminism, and historiography" (p. 4). This may be an approach similar to what Fredric Jameson once called "cognitive mapping." Accordingly, the book is divided into three parts whose themes illuminate one another: "Rewriting Literary History," "The Quotidian Apocalypse," and "The Moral Subject under Global Capitalism." Laughlin's introduction itself stands as an ingenious critical [End Page 444] reexamination of the boundaries and nature of modern Chinese literature in addition to providing useful critical frameworks that will aid readers' understanding of some of the most interesting developments in the field. In the first section, "Rewriting Literary History," five authors tackle the problematic of Chinese literary historiography from rather different perspectives. Engaging ambitiously in contemporary theoretical inquiries and debates, Alexander Des Forges locates a tendency to fetishize "a modernity that is subjunctive, spectral, limited, failed, problematic, or once removed" (p. 25) in modern Chinese literature itself as well as in the studies of it in both China and the United States. On the other hand, Xiaobin Yang reveals Chinese postmodernity as "a parody of modernity" and a deconstruction of "sociopolitical totality, grand national imagination, and the discourse of rigid historical teleology" (p. 82), concepts that are closely associated with what he calls "the political-historical Mao-Deng and the culture-literary modern" (p. 93). Emma Tang brings this quest of "rewriting literary history" to a different frontier-questioning, crossing, and almost literally breaking down the boundaries between modern Chinese literature and the emergent Chinese diasporic literature. Megan Ferry and Amy Dooling, in a more historicist fashion, offer feminist rereadings of the May Fourth "New Woman." Interesting enough, similar to Des Forges' discovery of a lack of presence of "modernity" and the anxiety surrounding this lack in modern Chinese literature, Ferry finds the same degree of despair and anguish among some May Fourth women writers and intellectuals over the fact "that no representative New Woman existed in Chinese literature to emulate" (p. 44), with the woman writer or "New Woman" being taken as "an icon of Chinese modernity" (p. 46). Dooling notices the same "absence-rather than agency-of women in the narratives of Chinese modernity" (p. 51), and yet she also challenges this notion of "absence" and gives it a critical spin in her reading of the "noncanconical" woman writer Bai Wei and Bai Wei's 1936 autobiographical novel Tragic Life. What distinguishes her reading from conventional ones is her sophisticated application of the feminist critique of subjectivity and identity, as shown in this analysis: Rather than make claims to special knowledge about the "real truth" of feminine nature or seek to uncover an "essential" self buried beneath woman's myriad social guises, what Bai Wei strives to represent is how the female self is constructed in social interactions but also how these constructions can render the self as other to itself. (p. 54) Rather than setting forth a simplistic proposal for recovering an alternative canon of the always called-for and yet always "absent" New Woman, Dooling provides an incisive critique of the very mechanisms of essentialism and fetishization of identity. Dooling's nuanced and gendered reading of Bai Wei may be reflecting a common agenda to which all the authors included in this section have subscribed-to resist and deconstruct an obsession with an essentialist and absolutist identity, be [End Page 445] it "Chinese modernity and postmodernity," "canon," "Chineseness," or the "New Woman." This anti-essentialist realization itself could bring us closer to the most liberating objectives of "rewriting literary history," rather than constituting yet another attempt to engender and foster "new" or "alternative" icons of modernity. In...

A Century of Chinese Literature in Translation (1919–2019): English Publication and Reception

“Modern Chinese Literature” has many similar descriptions such as “Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature”, “Chinese Literature in the 20th Century”, and “New Chinese Literature”. The concept of “New Literature in Chinese Language” is a best choice to define it, especially in the visual field of world literature. “New Literature in Chinese” contains modern and contemporary literature, together with “literatures in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and overseas Chinese literature”, or “international Chinese literature”. “New Literature in Chinese” enjoys the advantage of furthest surpassing and even overcoming the regulations and restrictions of national plates and political regions, hence the New Literature studies can get rid of the politicized academic prediction and construct new paths in exploring the laws of Chinese aesthetic expressions. Just as the concept “English literature” should be understood as “literature in English” rather than “British literature”, the concept of “New Literature in Chinese Language” is acceptable.

Reviewed by: Chinese Literature and Culture in the Age of Global Capitalism: Renaissance or Rehabilitation? by Wang Xiaoping Gal Gvili Wang Xiaoping. Chinese Literature and Culture in the Age of Global Capitalism: Renaissance or Rehabilitation? Leiden and Boston: Brill. 2021. Pp. x+388. US$167.00 hardcover, US$167.00 ebook. Wang Xiaoping is a prolific scholar of modern and contemporary Chinese literature, [End Page 568] cinema, and culture and a keen observer and interpreter of contemporary academic debates in China. In English alone, Wang has published four books and numerous articles, and his output in Chinese far surpasses these numbers. In Chinese Literature and Culture in the Age of Global Capitalism, Wang embarks upon an ambitious endeavour: mapping the contours, the premises, and the impetus fueling Chinese literature, cinema, and cultural criticism from 1976 to the present. Wang reads poetry, films, short and long fiction, as well as a robust set of critical works in English and Chinese that all, in his thesis, engage an acute identity crisis China has been facing. Namely, Wang investigates literature, culture, and academic debates to search for an answer to the question: what constitutes Chineseness in the current era, in which China is both a Communist country and a major player in global capitalism? The answer is given through an extensive discussion and close readings of Chinese new poetry, 1980s Avant Garde Fiction, 1990s Historical Fiction, Six Generation Cinema, and critical essays and books by thinkers associated with the Chinese New Left and Liberal camps. Wang argues that Chineseness today is refracted in cultural texts as a dialectic between a socialist consciousness that harks back to the Mao era while looking forward to envision new possibilities, and a liberal mentality that draws upon both the Chinese pre-modern, mostly Confucian ethos and Western liberalism to forge a future for the Chinese nation. In a dense analytical narrative, Wang moves chronologically from the late 1970s to contemporary times, and examines each cultural phenomenon by loosely employing Raymond Williams’s concept of Three Cultures. Williams suggested, as early as the late 1950s, that the complex dynamic underscoring national cultures can be understood as a dynamic of triangulation between the dominant hegemonic culture, residual culture-a culture of a previous age that resides within the dominant national culture either as a fortification of or as a disruption to its values-and an emergent culture that generates new social structures and values and thus becomes a new force that challenges dominant culture. Wang adopts this framework for one main use: detecting residues of socialist culture in poetry, fiction, and cinema that had often been misread, in his view, as emblems of a new “free” expression that the end of the Mao era supposedly enabled. In the impressive array of texts examined, Wang identifies a slow “disappearance of idealism” (18) that nevertheless remains a fait accompli. Socialist themes, aesthetics, and value continually inform Chinese language literature and cinema even though they have diminished over the years. Juxtaposing, for example, in Chapters Six and Seven, the films Dirt (Toufa luanle 頭髮亂了, 1992) and The Making of Steel (Zhangda chengren 长大成人, 1997) with Lust/Caution (Se/Jie 色戒, 2007) demonstrates how, in Wang’s reading, even as thematic eulogizing of the revolutionary generation made way for more so-called universal engagement with espionage and sex, residues of the CCP/KMT conflict, with their radically different ideologies, still shaped the artistry and the reception of Ang Lee’s 2007 work. Indeed, as Wang states in the opening pages of the introduction, this academic study promotes a political agenda, which is calling for a “socialist re-orientation” [End Page 569] (313) that could carry forward, revitalized, the values of China’s socialist revolution. One way to move in this direction, this book suggests, is by revisiting contemporary culture and reading it through a lens that is sensitive to socialist undercurrents: While China’s postsocialism is, to a certain extent, characterized by pragmatism-a political principle practiced by Chinese politicians in the post Mao period in general, as well as the living conditions and life philosophy followed by the Chinese populace in their daily activities in particular-we must still pay close attention to...

With the development of China's economic and international status, countries around the world have begun to understand Chinese culture, language, history, and literature. Chinese literature has attracted more and more attention from foreign readers. At the same time, translation and dissemination of Chinese literature have begun too. Since 2009, the Chinese government has launched a large-scale literary translation and publishing project. Through this project, dissemination of Chinese literature has achieved certain results overseas. However, the reception of modern and contemporary Chinese literature abroad is still not very stable. This research introduces the dissemination of modern and contemporary Chinese literature translation in Europe and America. It initially sketches out the translation of Chinese literature abroad, then it introduces famous overseas institutions conducting Chinese teaching and literary studies and journals of Chinese literature as a background. Within this framework, Chinese literature translations of the American Sinologist Howard Goldblatt, the German Sinologist Wolfgang Kubin, the British Sinologist Julia Lovell and their works are chronologically discussed. Their translated works make a significant contribution to the spreading of Chinese literature in the world.

The article is devoted to the problem of interaction between the genres of Eastern and Western literature, which is an important part of modern literary criticism. In this paper, the interaction of genres is considered on the basis of Mo Yan’s novel “The Republic of Wine” (1992), translated into Russian in 2012 by I. Egorov. The work of the modern Chinese writer is studied in the aspect of “hallucinatory realism”, for its development the author was awarded the Nobel Prize (2012). The article studies the influence of classical Chinese literature genres and philosophy and Western literature on modern Chinese literature, based on the novel “The Republic of Wine” by Mo Yan. The novel of the Chinese writer is analyzed in the context of the world literary process. The article discusses the transformation of motifs and characters of Chinese classical literature in the novel by a modern Chinese author. The main characters of the novel are studied in relation to the plot-forming function they perform, the main of them is the detective one. The plot of the detective story is considered in relation to the satirical tradition. The article presents Mo Yan’s view of the traditions, mentality and lifestyle of the Chinese people. The purpose of the work is to determine the main aspects of the influence of Chinese and Western literature on the work of Mo Yan “The Republic of Wine”. As a result of the study, we describe the plot motifs and images of classical Chinese and Western novels, the ideological principles of Chinese philosophy, which are embodied in Mo Yan’s novel “The Republic of Wine”.

This is a two-pronged study of how the Chinese and Tibetan literary traditions have become intertwined in the modern era. Setting out from the contention that the study of minority literatures in China must be fundamentally multilingual in its approach, this dissertation investigates how Tibetans were written into Chinese literature, and how Tibetans themselves adopted and adapted Chinese literary discourses to their own ends. It begins with Lu Xun and the formative literary conceptions of nation in the late Qing and Republican periods – a time when the Tibetan subject was fundamentally absent from modern Chinese literature – and then moves to the 1980s, when Tibet and Tibetans belatedly, and contentiously, became valid subject matter for Han Chinese writers. The second aspect of the project situates modern Tibetan-language literature, which arose from the 1980s onwards, within the literary and intellectual context of modern China. I read Dondrup Gyel, modern Tibetan literature’s “father figure,” as working within unmistakably Lu Xun-ian paradigms, I consider the contradictions that arose when Tsering Dondrup’s short story “Ralo” was interpreted as a Tibetan equivalent of “The True Story of Ah Q,” and I analyze the rise of a “Tibetan May Fourth Movement” in the 2000s, which I argue presented a selective reading of modern China’s intellectual history. Throughout, I focus on the intersections and divergences at play and examine the ways in which these texts navigate complex and conflicting discourses of nationalism, statism, and colonialism. The conclusions of this research point us toward significant theoretical reconceptualizations of literary practices in the People’s Republic of China, which now include not only a vast body of Chinese-language writing on minority peoples, but also numerous minority-language literatures and distinct “national” literary traditions.

Chinese prose has a long history. During this period, various famous artists have created many excellent works. Prose is a very important literature and art form which takes writing as creation and aesthetic object. In ancient Chinese literature, prose just like verses and parallel writings, does not pursue rhyme and sentence pattern. This is prose in a broad sense. And I would like to talk about prose in a narrow sense. In modern Chinese literature, prose refers to a literary genre which is in parallel with poetry, novel and drama. The major characteristics of prose are the sincere feeling and the beautiful language. After May 4th Movement, the social literature form was influenced by the New Culture Movement, a number of splendid writers in our country created a good deal of excellent works of prose. These are the precious treasures of Chinese literature, carrying the Chinese spirit and culture. But it is a pity that academics at home and abroad have done few researches on the modern Chinese essays translation, and the study about it is rare. The research on Chinese prose translation study, however, is far from enough. The Chinese prose translation study has lagged behind the other literary genre study all the time. Mr. Zhang's two series of "Modern Chinese Prose Selection" translations are his classic masterpieces. The selected works are all famous prose of young intellectuals after the May 4th Movement in China. The essays in them are of profound significance and full of characteristics of the times. So this article tries to explore Professor Zhang Peiji's translation art style in combination with prose selection. The fact that Professor Zhang has successfully translated also proves that the Chinese can make a great contribution in the Chinese-English translation career. The author also expects that Chinese scholars and translators will actively participate in the translation career, and to learn from each other's strengths in future translations. Really let Chinese culture go to the world as soon as possible.

Offering the first systematic overview of modern and contemporary Chinese literature from a translation studies perspective, this handbook provides students, researchers and teachers with a context in which to read and appreciate the effects of linguistic and cultural transfer in Chinese literary works. Translation matters. It always has, of course, but more so when we want to reap the benefits of intercultural communication. In many universities Chinese literature in English translation is taught as if it had been written in English. As a result, students submit what they read to their own cultural expectations; they do not read in translation and do not attend to the protocols of knowing, engagements and contestations that bind literature and society to each other. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature in Translation squarely addresses this pedagogical lack. Organised in a tripartite structure around considerations of textual, social, and large-scale spatial and historical circumstances, its thirty plus essays each deal with a theme of translation studies, as emerged from the translation of one or more Chinese literary works. In doing so, it offers new tools for reading and appreciating modern and contemporary Chinese literature in the global context of its translation, offering in-depth studies about eminent Chinese authors and their literary masterpieces in translation. The first of its kind, this book is essential reading for anyone studying or researching Chinese literature in translation.

The development process of literary history is always accompanied by changes in the evaluation of certain literary classics, as well as the process of shaping literary classics in each era. For modern and contemporary Chinese literature is concerned, a very prominent situation is that it has two different types of literary classics: one from the traditional time difference, the other from exotic spatial distance, two different literary classics have different demands, and the tension formed this contradiction constitutes motivation for the internal development of modern Chinese literature. It should also see the two literary classics in Chinese literature as the guiding force of the other side, and it is itself a two classic literature and evaluation system at this moment. Through the analysis of literary classics, you can see a side of literary

In response to the call to reexamine the boundaries that circumscribe and define “modern Chinese literature”, this chapter considers the geographic and linguistic parameters of this field.1 Traditional distinctions between “Chinese literature” and “Asian American literature” rely on geographic, linguistic, and disciplinary divisions: the former being literature produced in China, written in the Chinese language, and studied by China specialists; the latter being literature produced in America, written in English, and studied by Asian Americanists. Recent trends within academia, however, have led to a blurring of these boundaries and a questioning of their continued relevance. This phenomenon, celebrated by some and decried by others, will have major implications for how we define the two fields of Chinese literature and Asian American literature in the new millennium.2

Since the modern era, the advancement of women's literature has brought increasing scholarly attention to feminist narratology, which has also demonstrated trends of localized innovation. Focusing on the theoretical framework of feminist narratology, this paper examines gender consciousness and gender subjectivity in modern Chinese literary texts. Through close readings of works by Ding Ling, Chen Ran, and Li Juan, it explores womens self-identity in the context of emancipation, female friendship, and the reflection of the authors self-awareness and self-recognition. Furthermore, by comparing how Fang Fang and Yu Hua approach similar themes, the study summarizes narrative differences between male and female writers. The paper also discusses the relationship between feminist narrative and gender politicsincluding issues such as womens economic rights, the constraints of feudal ideology, and the influence of consumerism on womens narrativesthereby tracing the evolution and cultural significance of feminist narratology in modern and contemporary Chinese literature.