Editor's Introduction: Modern Chinese Literature from Local to Global

Abstract

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...