The Silence of Animals: Writing on the Edge of Anthropomorphism in Contemporary Chinese Literature

Abstract

If a lion could talk, we would not understand him. Modern Chinese literature is a decidedly anthropocentric undertaking. With the repudiation of traditional culture at the turn of the last century, shape-shifting monkeys, foxes, and snakes that populated premodern literature have receded into the literary horizon. The importation of new modes of writing, particularly the critical realism of the European Enlightenment, has brought the hoi polloi of the human race under the representational spotlight, but the populist impulse has not extended to the animal kingdom except in rhetorical evocations of the beastly existence of the wretched of the earth. No animal characters leap out of the pages of modern Chinese literature in the manner of Flush, Black Beauty, Rotpeter, and Fantastic Mr. Fox. Likewise, the silver screen is rarely graced by such larger than life creatures as Rin Tin Tin, Lassie, Seabiscuit, and King Kong. The few genres in which animal figures abound, such as fable, children’s tale, and animated film, are very much a marginal concern that has produced few memorable or culturally significant characters on par with Monkey King, Charlotte the spider, or the Lion King.