The Contemporary English Language Biji, Post- Minford & Tong

Abstract

In 1999 John Minford and Tong Man proposed a model for a contemporary English language biji that possessed the same qualities as the ancient Chinese equivalent in a paper titled ‘Whose Strange Stories? P'u Sung-ling (1640–1715), Herbert Giles (1845–1935), and the Liao-chai chih-yi.’ This paper will examine Minford and Tong's model, and use it to evaluate two texts by Douglas Coupland: Survivor, a creative non-fiction hybrid that appeared in an anthology of new takes on old forms titled Vikings, Monks, Philosophers, Whores: Old Forms, Unearthed, and the book-length work developed from it, Worst. Person. Ever. In the paper accompanying their re-rendering of ‘Miss Lien-hsiang, the Fox-girl’ (as titled in Giles' translation) Minford proposes: ‘This literary vivi-section attempts to recreate some of the features of an unusual reading experience, to build a new environment that approximates the richness of the original’. This paper evaluates that attempt, and examines two other texts against the model established by Minford and Tong.