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Lu Xun (1881-1936) is widely considered the greatest writer of
twentieth-century China. Although primarily known for his two slim
volumes of short fiction, he was a prolific and inventive essayist.
Jottings under Lamplight showcases Lu Xun's versatility as a master
of prose forms and his brilliance as a cultural critic with
translations of sixty-two of his essays, twenty of which are
translated here for the first time. While a medical student in
Tokyo, Lu Xun viewed a photographic slide that purportedly inspired
his literary calling: it showed the decapitation of a Chinese man
by a Japanese soldier, as Chinese bystanders watched apathetically.
He felt that what his countrymen needed was a cure not for their
physical ailments but for their souls. Autobiographical accounts
describing this and other formative life experiences are included
in Jottings, along with a wide variety of cultural commentaries,
from letters, speeches, and memorials to parodies and treatises. Lu
Xun was remarkably well versed in Chinese tradition and playfully
manipulated its ancient forms. But he also turned away from
historical convention, experimenting with new literary techniques
and excoriating the "slave mentality" of a population paralyzed by
Confucian hierarchies. Tinged at times with notes of despair, yet
also with pathos, humor, and an unparalleled caustic wit, Lu Xun's
essays chronicle the tumultuous transformations of his own life and
times, providing penetrating insights into Chinese culture and
society.
This volume presents a broad range of writings on literature from
the period of the inception of literary modernity in China. Of the
55 essays included, 47 are translated here for the first time,
including two essays by Lu Xun. In addition to the selections
themselves, the author has provided, in an extensive General
Introduction and shorter introductions to the five parts of the
book, historical background, a synthesis of current scholarship on
modern views of Chinese literature, and an original thesis on the
complex formation of Chinese literary modernity. In the author's
view, literary discourses were actively reshaped by Chinese writes
and critics as responses to deep-set cultural problematics and the
socio-historical imperative of the times. The selection of the
essays reflects both the mainstream Marxists interpretation of the
literary values of modern China and the marginalized views
proscribed, at one time or another, by the leftist canon. With both
the canonical and the marginal, this collection offers a full
spectrum of modern Chinese perceptions of fundamental literary
issues: the nature of the creative act; the relationship between
the literary text and reality; the moral, social, and political
role of literature; and the filiation of language, literary form,
and content. In presenting the Western reading with a Chinese
discourse (in the more traditional sense of the term) about
literature, the editor attempts to construct a cultural context for
the production of texts in modern Chinese literature. Why did
modern Chinese writers write? What goals did they have? How did
they think about literature and its relation to its audience and
the world? To read the response to these questions is to deepen our
understanding of the experience of modernity that lies at the root
of works of modern Chinese literature. The selections were
translated by 33 leading scholars in the field of modern Chinese
literature.
Crossing Between Tradition and Modernity presents thirteen essays
written in honor of Milena Dolezelova-Velingerova (1932-2012), a
member of the Prague School of Sinology and an important scholar of
Chinese literature who was at the forefront in introducing literary
theory into sinology. Dolezelova-Velingerova was that rare scholar
who wrote with equal knowledge and skill about both modern and
premodern Chinese literature. The essays emulate
Dolezelova-Velingerova's scholarship in terms of treating a broad
range of historical periods, literary genres, and topics from Tang
travel essays to cultural identity in postcolonial Hong Kong.
Organized into two parts, "Language, Structure, and Genre," and
"Identities and Self-Representations," the essays are motivated by
an abiding concern with issues of language, narrative structure,
and the complex nature of literary meaning that were at the heart
of Dolezelova-Velingerova's work.
Lu Ling (1921-94) was one of modern China's most intensely
psychological writers, foregrounding in his many novels and short
stories the narrative representation of consciousness and the
individual psyche. His mentor Hu Feng (1902-85), a leftist literary
theorist, was a leading proponent of the subjective view of
literature, who asserted an active and dynamic role for the self in
the creative process. In the 1930's and 1940's, when they were most
productive, Lu Ling and Hu Feng stood for a position in the leftist
literary field that was opposed to the political, utilitarian view
of literature held by Mao Zedong and the cultural bureaucrats of
the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The tension that existed between
these two positions before the revolution exploded after the CCP
came to power. In 1955, Hu Feng, Lu Ling, and a group of other
writers associated with Hu Feng became the objects of a national
media assault that led to their arrest and imprisonment.
Centered on these two key figures, this study explores in
theoretical and fictional representations of the subject a
problematic at the heart of the experience of modernity in China.
Chinese scholarship in the recent post-Mao liberalization has
tended to represent Hu Feng and Lu Ling as heroic promoters of May
Fourth Enlightenment in the face of the oppressive and
authoritarian legacy of Yan'an and the Maoist discourses of
revolutionary collectivism. Rather than a confrontation between the
values of personal enlightenment and rational salvation, the author
sees Chinese modernity as the interaction and interdependence of
the two.
Subjectivism and psychological fiction constitute an assertion of
an empowered subject against the CCP's efforts to inscribe the
subject into the ideology of collective self-sacrifice. But the
writings of Hu Feng and Lu Ling are also discursive responses to
the deeper epistemological problem of the self and its relation to
the outer world engendered by the reception of Western discourses
of modernity. Hu Feng's response was to merge the social-historical
orientation of the realist mode with the subjectivism of
romanticism, thus allowing for a potential unity of self with the
outer world through the creative process. Lu Ling's intellectual
characters are emblematic of this modern problematic of self: minds
caught in a schizophrenic attraction/revulsion with romantic
individualism and the relinquishing of self to the revolutionary
power of the masses.
The author also shows that beneath Hu Feng's and Lu Ling's modern
theoretical and fictional attention to the subject are ties to the
neo-Confucian self and its relation to "tian," the divine. By
looking at modernity in terms of discursive responses shaped by
traditional cultural desires, he aims to contribute to a breakdown
of the strict division between modernity and tradition that
continues to define modern Chinese literature.
This volume presents a broad range of writings on literature from
the period of the inception of literary modernity in China. Of the
55 essays included, 47 are translated here for the first time,
including two essays by Lu Xun. In addition to the selections
themselves, the author has provided, in an extensive General
Introduction and shorter introductions to the five parts of the
book, historical background, a synthesis of current scholarship on
modern views of Chinese literature, and an original thesis on the
complex formation of Chinese literary modernity. In the author's
view, literary discourses were actively reshaped by Chinese writes
and critics as responses to deep-set cultural problematics and the
socio-historical imperative of the times. The selection of the
essays reflects both the mainstream Marxists interpretation of the
literary values of modern China and the marginalized views
proscribed, at one time or another, by the leftist canon. With both
the canonical and the marginal, this collection offers a full
spectrum of modern Chinese perceptions of fundamental literary
issues: the nature of the creative act; the relationship between
the literary text and reality; the moral, social, and political
role of literature; and the filiation of language, literary form,
and content. In presenting the Western reading with a Chinese
discourse (in the more traditional sense of the term) about
literature, the editor attempts to construct a cultural context for
the production of texts in modern Chinese literature. Why did
modern Chinese writers write? What goals did they have? How did
they think about literature and its relation to its audience and
the world? To read the response to these questions is to deepen our
understanding of the experience of modernity that lies at the root
of works of modern Chinese literature. The selections were
translated by 33 leading scholars in the field of modern Chinese
literature.
Literary Societies in Republican China provides a new and
comprehensive perspective on the fascinating literary world of the
most turbulent period in recent Chinese history: the Republican era
of 1911-1949. Wedged between the fall of the Empire and the
founding of the Communist state, the Republican period witnessed
enormous social, political, and cultural changes. Traditionally the
period is seen as one of transition: from the country being
partially colonized and occupied to being an independent
nation-state, from Confucianism to socialism, from writing in
classical Chinese to writing in the everyday vernacular. Modern
scholarship, however, has become suspicious of such attempts to
analyze history, including cultural history, as a journey from A to
B via C. Instead, attention has turned to the "thick description"
of complex historical phenomena without worrying about whether or
not they fit into some neat linear scheme. Inevitably, such
scholarship benefits from collaboration and teamwork, from the
juxtaposition of different insights and different materials in
order to gain in overall breadth. Literary Societies in Republican
China represents such teamwork and such breadth. The thirteen
essays by eleven scholars from North America, Europe, and Asia
present detailed discussions of particular literary groups active
on the Republican-era literary scene. Some of these groups are
familiar representatives of what used to be considered the
"mainstream," while others represent literary styles that have
hitherto been considered "marginal" or that have been ignored
altogether. Each of the essays in this volume looks in detail at
literary societies both as producers of literary views and texts
and as organizations with sometimes very complex social structures.
The result is a unique blend of literary, cultural, and social
history, unrivalled in any English-language scholarship on China to
date.
Literary Societies in Republican China provides a new and
comprehensive perspective on the fascinating literary world of the
most turbulent period in recent Chinese history: the Republican era
of 1911-1949. Wedged between the fall of the Empire and the
founding of the Communist state, the Republican period witnessed
enormous social, political, and cultural changes. Traditionally the
period is seen as one of transition: from the country being
partially colonized and occupied to being an independent
nation-state, from Confucianism to socialism, from writing in
classical Chinese to writing in the everyday vernacular. Modern
scholarship, however, has become suspicious of such attempts to
analyze history, including cultural history, as a journey from A to
B via C. Instead, attention has turned to the 'thick description'
of complex historical phenomena without worrying about whether or
not they fit into some neat linear scheme. Inevitably, such
scholarship benefits from collaboration and teamwork, from the
juxtaposition of different insights and different materials in
order to gain in overall breadth. Literary Societies in Republican
China represents such teamwork and such breadth. The thirteen
essays by eleven scholars from North America, Europe, and Asia
present detailed discussions of particular literary groups active
on the Republican-era literary scene. Some of these groups are
familiar representatives of what used to be considered the
'mainstream, ' while others represent literary styles that have
hitherto been considered 'marginal' or that have been ignored
altogether. Each of the essays in this volume looks in detail at
literary societies both as producers of literary views and texts
and as organizations with sometimes very complex social structures.
The result is a unique blend of literary, cultural, and social
history, unrivalled in any English-language scholarship on China to
date
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