Ideological Patterns in the Critical Reception of Yan Lianke

Abstract

This chapter investigates the critical reception of Yan Lianke's works in China and the West from a comparative perspective. The Chinese reception tends to stress the literary aesthetics and universal significance of Yan's works, although they also convey some form of sociopolitical critique. By contrast, the Western reception promotes a framing of Yan's works, which not only attempts to invoke an autocratic image of China where oppressive censorship is prevalent but also gives priority to highlighting his works as sociopolitical documents. Such disparate critical reception patterns are found to be contingent on the Chinese and Western ideological and poetic contexts. In China, loosening political restrictions after the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) allowed Chinese intellectuals to have an easier access to Western literary trends and to experiment with various literary forms, which have stimulated a more aesthetic assessment of literature. Moreover, focusing on the literary value of Yan's works is also a safe way for Chinese scholars to maintain political correctness, as censorship remains constant in China. On the contrary, in the West, there are established stereotypes of modern and contemporary Chinese literature as sociopolitical documents with little literary value, which direct critics’ attention to the repressive censorship in China via Yan's works.