Looking Beyond the Social: Religion as a Solution to Alienation in Xu Dishan’s, Bing Xin’s, and Su Xuelin’s Republican Era Literature

Gina Elia

doi:10.3390/rel10120664

Abstract

I argue that by participating in religious cultural phenomena, the protagonists of Xu Dishan’s and Su Xuelin’s fiction cultivate values that allow them to overcome their sense of social alienation by making them feel more confident about their ability to strengthen their relationships with others. These values include selflessness in the literature of both authors, as well as compassion in Su Xuelin’s literature. I further argue that these two authors’ literary narratives use the category of religion to label these values as existing outside of the space of human social interactions. This then allows protagonists to view the cultivation of these values as an ostensibly perfected resolution to their feeling of social alienation, which in the first place is caused by the imperfect sphere of human social interactions. The two case studies upon which this study draws to exemplify the argument include Yuguan from Xu Dishan’s Yuguan and Xingqiu from Su Xuelin’s Thorny Heart.

Highlights

The argument of this article is based on two observations concerning the literature of Su Xuelin
No one “essentialist” definition of “religion” is possible because it is a category of thought used to designate certain cultural phenomena as existing outside of the realm of human social interaction, and as such is always contingent on historically specific political, social, and economic contexts
This paper has demonstrated that “religion” in the literature of Su Xuelin and Xu Dishan acts as a narrative device that drives the plot and narrative structure of their works toward a positive resolution

Summary

Introduction

The argument of this article is based on two observations concerning the literature of Su Xuelin. All of the above scholars primarily analyze the religiosity of Republican Era literature to learn more about authors’ personal religious beliefs This assumption is clear from the arguments the aforementioned scholars make, which generally involve determining which religion exerted the greatest influence on each author and how to best define what “religion” meant to each author based on its manifestation within their literary narratives. Why do the authors choose to label certain cultural phenomena as “religious,” and why do they portray their protagonists as resolving their feelings of social alienation by participating in so-called “religious” cultural phenomena? Addressing these questions enables a greater understanding of what is at stake politically, culturally, and socially in each of these narrative choices

Religious Cultural Phenomena in Xu Dishan’s and Su Xuelin’s Literature

Conclusions