A Study of Literary Trends in China Since the 1980s

A Study of Literary Trends in China Since the 1980s PDF Author: Teresa Chi-Ching Sun
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0761871098
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 87

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Book Description
This book intends to trace the revival of traditional literary works since the 1980s in China as it is revealed on the revitalized College Entrance Examination (CEE). In order to show how these changes reflect China’s altering ideology after the fall of Communism, selections from the CEE’s literary portion will be examined. Taking advantage of the resurrection of the powerful CEE, test creators have composed the literary portion as an education tool to shape public opinion in the post-Communist era. Literature in China have never been an independent art but had shared the responsibility for transmitting China’s intellectual and ethical traditions. The introduction of Communism to China silenced these traditions and made literature the servant of political ideology. This book traces the chronological process of restoring modern vernacular literature from the pre-Communist era and the ways in which traditional literature is being used for modern purposes. For many Chinese intellectuals, the gradual withdrawal of literature for serving political causes and the reinstatement of classical literature and early vernacular works to on the CEE bring to light the recovery of the aesthetic literary tradition and a return to normalcy. When students take the CEE, they not only mentally scrutinize literature that they first read during their secondary education, but also experience an assertive presentation of current Chinese cultural values and outlooks on life. This study argues that in the post-1980s CEE literary selections, students experience a variety of texts that summon up China’s pre-Communist literary tradition in order to serve as an intellectual guiding light for future social development. For those interested in comparative higher education, a particular area of interest may be the book’s singular consideration of the science and technology passages in connection with the restructuring of higher education in China as a remedy of China’s cultural tradition.

A Study of Literary Trends in China Since the 1980s

A Study of Literary Trends in China Since the 1980s PDF Author: Teresa Chi-Ching Sun
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0761871098
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 87

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book intends to trace the revival of traditional literary works since the 1980s in China as it is revealed on the revitalized College Entrance Examination (CEE). In order to show how these changes reflect China’s altering ideology after the fall of Communism, selections from the CEE’s literary portion will be examined. Taking advantage of the resurrection of the powerful CEE, test creators have composed the literary portion as an education tool to shape public opinion in the post-Communist era. Literature in China have never been an independent art but had shared the responsibility for transmitting China’s intellectual and ethical traditions. The introduction of Communism to China silenced these traditions and made literature the servant of political ideology. This book traces the chronological process of restoring modern vernacular literature from the pre-Communist era and the ways in which traditional literature is being used for modern purposes. For many Chinese intellectuals, the gradual withdrawal of literature for serving political causes and the reinstatement of classical literature and early vernacular works to on the CEE bring to light the recovery of the aesthetic literary tradition and a return to normalcy. When students take the CEE, they not only mentally scrutinize literature that they first read during their secondary education, but also experience an assertive presentation of current Chinese cultural values and outlooks on life. This study argues that in the post-1980s CEE literary selections, students experience a variety of texts that summon up China’s pre-Communist literary tradition in order to serve as an intellectual guiding light for future social development. For those interested in comparative higher education, a particular area of interest may be the book’s singular consideration of the science and technology passages in connection with the restructuring of higher education in China as a remedy of China’s cultural tradition.

Chinese Literature for the 1980s

Chinese Literature for the 1980s PDF Author: Howard Goldblatt
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317284828
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Editor Howard Goldblatt explains that while most societies analyse and revere their literary trends in retrospect, post-Liberation China’s literary trends tend to be announced beforehand allowing for critics to judge how close or far from the prescribed norms a piece of art is. In this volume, a collection of speeches and reports from the Fourth Congress of Writers and Artists, well-known Chinese writers (novels, poets, and dramatists alike) debate the future direction of Chinese literature for the 1980s. Originally published in 1982, the book lends a contemporary view into the state of art and literature in China during a critical era of transformation. This title is suitable for students of Literature and East Asian Studies.

The “Historicization" of Contemporary Literature

The “Historicization Author: Cheng Guangwei
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040114318
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
This book provides a concise introduction to the intellectual trends in contemporary Chinese literature from the 1950s to the 1990s and the influence of overseas Sinology. The turbulent period of the second half of the 20th century in China witnessed a significant societal shift from a revolutionary to an economic focus. This transformation introduced and stimulated various ideas, reshaping public thought and reconstructing the historical landscape of contemporary Chinese literature. This book explores the response and self-exploration of domestic literary studies of the period, which were heavily influenced by the Western academic tradition and overseas Sinology studies. It examines critical phenomena, figures, and events in this context. The author's narrative vividly illustrates the interplay and dialogue of factors such as revolution, reform and opening up, and the rise of literature in the 1980s and 1990s. Combining the methodologies of literary and social history, and integrating personal historical experience with rigorous academic methods, this book provides a unique research framework for revisiting the cultural scene of the period. The title will appeal to scholars and students of contemporary Chinese literature and history. It will also attract general readers interested in Chinese culture and society in the 1980s and 1990s.

The "historicization" of Contemporary Chinese Literature

The Author: Guangwei Cheng
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781003505716
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"This book provides a concise introduction to the intellectual trends in contemporary Chinese literature from the 1950s to the 1990s and the influence of overseas Sinology. The turbulent period of the second half of the 20th century in China witnessed a significant societal shift from a revolutionary to an economic focus. This transformation introduced and stimulated various ideas, reshaping public thought and reconstructing the historical landscape of contemporary Chinese literature. This book explores the response and self-exploration of domestic literary studies of the period, which were heavily influenced by the Western academic tradition and overseas Sinology studies. It examines critical phenomena, figures and events in this context. The author's narrative vividly illustrates the interplay and dialogue of factors such as revolution, reform and opening up, and the rise of literature in the 1980s and 1990s. Combining the methodologies of literary and social history, and integrating personal historical experience with rigorous academic methods, this book provides a unique research framework for revisiting the cultural scene of the period. The title will appeal to scholars and students of contemporary Chinese literature and history. It will also attract general readers interested in Chinese culture and society in the 1980s and 1990s"--

The "Historicization of Contemporary Literature

The Author: Cheng Guangwei
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781032815701
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book provides a concise introduction to the intellectual trends in contemporary Chinese literature from the 1950s to the 1990s and the influence of overseas Sinology. The turbulent period of the second half of the 20th century in China witnessed a significant societal shift from a revolutionary to an economic focus. This transformation introduced and stimulated various ideas, reshaping public thought and reconstructing the historical landscape of contemporary Chinese literature. This book explores the response and self-exploration of domestic literary studies of the period, which were heavily influenced by the Western academic tradition and overseas Sinology studies. It examines critical phenomena, figures and events in this context. The author's narrative vividly illustrates the interplay and dialogue of factors such as revolution, reform and opening up, and the rise of literature in the 1980s and 1990s. Combining the methodologies of literary and social history, and integrating personal historical experience with rigorous academic methods, this book provides a unique research framework for revisiting the cultural scene of the period. The title will appeal to scholars and students of contemporary Chinese literature and history. It will also attract general readers interested in Chinese culture and society in the 1980s and 1990s.

Chinese Literature in the Second Half of a Modern Century

Chinese Literature in the Second Half of a Modern Century PDF Author: Bangyuan Qi
Publisher: Indiana University Press (Ips)
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
" . . . an important contribution to the study of recent Chinese literature." — Choice "This fine, scholarly survey of Chinese literature since 1949 . . . discusses such trends as modernism, nativism, realism, root-seeking and 'scar' literature, 'misty' poets, and political, feminist, and societal issues in modern Chinese literature." —Library Journal This volume is a survey of modern Chinese literature in the second half of the twentieth century. It has three goals: (1) to introduce figures, works, movements, and debates that constitute the dynamics of Chinese literature from 1949 to the end of the century; (2) to depict the enunciative endeavors, ranging from ideological treatises to avant-garde experiments, that inform the polyphonic discourse of Chinese cultural politics; (3) to observe the historical factors that enacted the interplay of literary (post)modernities across the Chinese communities in the Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and overseas.

The Uses of Literature

The Uses of Literature PDF Author: Perry Link
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691227845
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 397

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Book Description
Why do people in socialist China read and write literary works? Earlier studies in Western Sinology have approached Chinese texts from the socialist era as portraits of society, as keys to the tug-of-war of dissent, or, more recently, as pursuit of "pure art." The Uses of Literature looks broadly and empirically at these and many other "uses" of literature from the points of view of authors, editors, political authorities, and several kinds of readers. Perry Link, author of Evening Chats in Beijing, considers texts ranging from elite "misty" poetry to underground hand-copied volumes (shouchauben) and shows in concrete detail how people who were involved with literature sought to teach, learn, enjoy, explore, debate, lead, control, and resist. Using the late 1970s and early 1980s as an entree to the workings of China's "socialist literary system," the author shows how that system held sway from 1950 until around 1990, when an encroaching market economy gradually but fundamentally changed it. In addition to providing a definitive overview of how the socialist Chinese literary system worked, Link offers comparisons to the similar system in the Soviet Union. In the final chapter, the book seeks to explain how the word "good" was used and understood when applied to literary works in such systems. Combining aspects of cultural and literary studies, The Uses of Literature will reward anyone interested in the literature of modern China or how creativity is affected by a "socialist literary system."

The Subject in Crisis in Contemporary Chinese Literature

The Subject in Crisis in Contemporary Chinese Literature PDF Author: Rong Cai
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824828462
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Post-Mao China produced two parallel discourses on the human subject in the New Era (1976–1989). One was an autonomous, Enlightenment humanist self aimed at replacing the revolutionary paragon that had dominated under Mao. The other was a more problematic subject suffering from either a symbolic physical deformity or some kind of spiritual paralysis that undermines its apparent normalcy. How do we explain the stubborn presence, in the literature of the 1980s and 1990s, of this crippled agent who fails to realize the humanist autonomy envisioned by post-Mao theorists? What are the anxieties and tensions embedded in this incongruity and what do they reveal? This illuminating and original critical study of the crippled subject in post-Mao literature offers a detailed textual analysis of the work of five well-known contemporary writers: Han Shaogong, Can Xue, Yu Hua, Mo Yan, and Jia Pingwa. The author investigates not only the literary characters within the texts, but also their creators—real subjects in history, Chinese writers whose own agency was being tested and established in the search for a new subjectivity. She argues that, reenacting the Maoist legacy, the literary search failed to provide a viable model for a postrevolutionary China. In addition, the deficiency and inadequacy of the subject cannot always be contained in the Communist past—a history to be transcended in the design of modernity after Mao. The representation of the problematic subject thus punctured post-Mao optimism and foreshadowed the eventual abandonment of the move to rethink subjectivity in the 1990s. By diving beneath the euphoria of the 1980s and the confusion and frustration of the 1990s, these critical readings offer a unique perspective with which to gauge the complexity of China’s quest for modernity and a fuller understanding of the self’s multifaceted experience in the post-Mao era.

Decadence in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture

Decadence in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture PDF Author: Hongjian Wang
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781621965435
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
"European Decadence, a controversial artistic movement that flourished mainly in late-nineteenth-century France and Britain, has inspired several generations of Chinese writers and literary scholars since it was introduced to China in the early 1920s. Translated into Chinese as tuifei, which has strong hedonistic and pessimistic connotations, the concept of Decadence has proven instrumental in multiple waves of cultural rebellion, but has also become susceptible to moralistic criticism. This is the first comprehensive study of decadence in Chinese literature since the early twentieth century. Standing at the intersection of comparative literature and cultural history, it transcends the framework of tuifei by locating European Decadence in its sociocultural context and uses it as a critical lens to examine Chinese Decadent literature and Chinese society. Its in-depth analysis reveals that some Chinese writers and literary scholars creatively appropriated the concept of Decadence for enlightenment purposes or to bid farewell to revolution. This study is also the first to offer a holistic understanding of European Decadence, uncovering both its internal logic and external circumstances, hence excavating its distinct explanatory power. It also sheds fresh light on modern Chinese literature and culture. By examining the careers of seven prominent writers-Yu Dafu, Shao Xunmei, Yu Hua, Su Tong, Wang Shuo, Wang Xiaobo, and Yin Lichuan-this study disentangles apparent contradictions in their writing and reveals the nuances in the changing status of China's modern cultural elite. Last but not least, the book significantly expands the scope of comparative literary studies beyond influence studies and cultural translation by effectively adopting a literary-historical approach-a literary phenomenon is seen at once as a product and an indicator of certain sociocultural conditions, so similar literary phenomena can illuminate comparable contexts"--

Inside Out

Inside Out PDF Author: Wendy Larson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
This collection of papers is the outcome of the symposium "Modernism and Postmodernism in Chinese Literature", which took place at Aarhus University, Denmark in October 1991, was arranged by Bei Dao and Anne Wedell-Wedellsborg of the Institute of East Asian Studies. One of the guiding ideas behind this initiative was to bring together scholars from Europe and America with China in the 1980s, as scholars, critics, editors or as writers. Those who study China, regardless of national origin, are increasingly abandoning the "objective" stance of writing about culture, and insisting on their own right to become participants in the creation of culture. This book brings together essays written by those who breach the categories -- scholars, cultural critics and writers, ethnic Chinese and non-Chinese. All of the contributors are working or studying in Western universities, and many have published in the overseas literary journal "Jintian". This mix marks the study of Chinese literature as a new space where Chinese literary discourse is not only studied, but also created. Although contributions to this volume are diverse, a central theme is the attempt to discover how literature is changing in definition and social function. Essays analyse the concepts of the autonomy of art and creativity, modernism and subjectivity, and the form and structure of narrative language. The focus on theory and rhetoric that informs these essays highlights a concern with the way in which literary discourse is represented by intellectuals, and the way in which this representation itself becomes a frame that constructs literary meaning. Investigations into the Mao Wenti (the Maoist literary style) that persists even in post-Mao writers, the seemingly contentless language of Can Wue's work, the concept "pure literature" and the anti-modernity stance of the poetic Feifei (No-no) school all provide clues to the developing cultural consciousness of contemporary China.