The Chinese Political Novel: Migration of a World Genre by Catherine Vance Yeh

Abstract

YEH, CATHERINE VANCE. The Chinese Political Novel: Migration of a World Genre. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. 442 pp. $59.95 hardcover. Readers interested in the political novel would welcome The Chinese Political Novel: Migration of a World Genre, which examines the genre's emergence in China in the first decade of the twentieth century. Going beyond national borders, Catherine Vance Yeh locates the development of the political novel in a transcultural context. She shows how Chinese writers' engagement with this genre'--through translation, adaptation, transformation, creation--was a way through which they imagined the place of China in the world. Part I traces worldwide developments of the political novel. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the as it emerged in England. Italy. America, and the Philippines. Yeh argues that the novels she analyzes. which share similar literary strategies and the mission of showing readers the need for political reform, should be seen as embodiments of an interconnected world genre (50). Chapter 2 provides an overview of the Japanese political novels of the Meiji period. Yeh notes the great impact that Japanese translations of English and French works (which were later translated secondhand into Chinese) had in shaping the Japanese political novel, overshadowing the once dominant role of translations of Chinese works. She examines how some of these ideas about the political novel were transplanted to China by the reformer Liang Qichao. and how, in turn, Liang's ideas were adapted to suit local purposes and tastes in Korea and Vietnam. Part II examines the development of the political novel in China, where the once lowly form of the novel was elevated to one capable of transforming the nation. Chapter 3 traces the transcultural flow of ideas from Japan to China, and examines in particular novels with a futuristic theme. Chapter 4 explores the ways the political novel, appealing to an enlightened public who could be mobilized for support, was deployed as a medium to express frustration and criticize Qing court reforms. Chapter 5 shows how the new novels appealed to women readers and the ways in which new-models of womanhood were tied to the creation of a new citizenry and nation. Chapter 6 examines the political novel's exploration of foreign ideas, characters, and political worlds, which both introduced and made the new world intelligible to its readers. …