This book opens up three new topics in modern Chinese literary history: the intimate lives of modern China's most famous literary couple, Lu Xun and Xu Guangping; real and imagined love-letters in modern Chinese literature; and concepts of privacy in China as shown by a comparison between the edited and unedited versions of their letters. Although it has sometimes been claimed that Chinese culture lacks a sense of privacy, this study reveals the contents, functions, and values of privacy in the early twentieth century.

Written by renowned sinologist Bonnie S. McDougall, this is the first full-length, detailed, and theorized treatment in any language of Chinese-English literary translation transactions and will stand as the major primary source of future studies. It opens up new corners of modern Chinese culture and society that sinologists have hitherto overlooked. This book begins by setting out these two contrasting models of translation that co-existed in China during the 1980s: the authoritarian model and the reciprocal, or gift-exchange, model. The following chapters set down the actual circumstances of each model as it operated in its own zone, in the first such testimony from an active observer and participant in both. Two final chapters examine the new theoretical perspectives that arise from the contrast and the overlap between the two zones. A constant challenge in humanistic studies is the problem of exceptionalism versus universalism. In Chinese studies, for instance, books by academic experts often address only a closed, small world of other experts drawing on decades of language and cultural studies. This book is primarily intended for translation studies researchers whose aim is to extend their academic horizons beyond their customary languages and cultures without wishing to devote the rest of their lives to Chinese studies.

The essays in this volume constitute an exceptionally broad and inclusive account of Chinese literature and performing arts since 1949. Extending beyond fiction to poetry and drama, and covering song, opera, and film as well, these essays reveal a more lively and varied cultural life than that disclosed by studies confined to fiction and literary politics. Rather than stopping at the assumption that art reflects Party or government policy, the essays uncover the traditional roots of popular literature and performing art by employing literary and artistic methods of analysis. While often lacking in appeal to Western audiences, these popular arts nonetheless have their own artistic validity and convey complex meanings to broadly based Chinese audiences. The materials and analyses presented here have social as well as cultural relevance. Variety and change rather than monolithic uniformity have characterized post-1949 cultural bureaucracies, writers, performers, and audiences. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1984.

This text surveys the literature of the Chinese mainland, concentrating on fiction, poetry and drama, with background surveys on the historical, social and cultural context, and chapters on individual writers and their works. It assumes no knowledge of Chinese. Topics include: the role of writers and the function of literature in a modernizing society; the long, native chinese tradition; the emphasis on culture and propaganda in a modernizing state; the relation of writers to their readers; and writers general impact on modern Chinese society.