Chinese Literature in the Second Half of a Modern Century: A Critical Survey

"... 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.

"This book is the result of an unprecedented conference, participated in by writers and scholars from Hong Kong, Taiwan, the US, Europe, and mainland China, and held in Taipei in 1993. The 15 critical essays survey modern Chinese literature by writers on the China mainland, in Hong Kong, on Taiwan, and overseas, spanning the second half of the 20th century. The final essay, a comprehensive bibliographic survey of publications on Chinese literature in translation from 1949 to 1999, complete with a long list of translations, is a very important reference document, particularly for those who do not read Chinese. Wang (Columbia Univ.) wrote the introduction, which amounts to a short history of Chinese literature of this period. The contents of the book are up-to-date and make an important contribution to the study of recent Chinese literature. Recommended for libraries with collections in modern Chinese literature and comparative literature. Upper-division undergraduates and above." --Y. L. Walls, Simon Fraser University, Choice, July 2001 Indiana University Press Indiana University Press Indiana University Press

Pang-yuan Chi was born in Manchuria and came to Taiwan in 1947; she is Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at National Taiwan University, and Editor-in-Chief of The Chinese PEN Quarterly. She has been a Fulbright Scholar at Indiana University and a Visiting Scholar at the Freie Universitat, Berlin. Her works include An Anthology of Contemporary Literature, Qiannian zhilei (Tears of a Thousand Years) and Wu jianjian sanle de shihou (When the fog is clearing up).

David Der-wei Wang received his Ph.D. degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has taught at National Taiwan University and Harvard University and is now Professor of Chinese Literature and Chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and Columbia University. His recent publications include Fictional Realism in 20th Century China: Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen, Xiaoshuo zhongguo (Narrating China, Ruhexiandai, Zeyang wenxue (The Making of the Modern, the Making of a Literature), and Fin-de-siecle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849-1911.

Preface, Pang-yuan Chi

Editors' Note

Introduction, David Der-wei Wang

1. Farewell to the Gods: Contemporary Chinese Literary Theory's Fin-de-siecle Struggle, Zaifu Liu

2. Taiwan Literature: 1945-1999, Pang-yuan Chi

3. Colonialism, the Cold War, and Marginal Space: The Existential Condition of Five Decades of Hong Kong Literature, William Tay

4. Reinventing National History: Communist and Anti-communist Fiction of the Mid-Twentieth Century, David Der-wei Wang

5. The School and the Hospital: On the Logics of Socialist Realism, Su Wei

6. Modernism and Its Discontents: Taiwanese Literature in the 1960s, Ko Ch'ing-ming

7. Beyond "Nativist Realism": Taiwan Fiction in the 1970s and 1980s, Yang Chao

8. Searching for Roots: Anticultural Return in Mainland Chinese Literature of the 1980s, Li Qingxi

9. Re-membering the Cultural Revolution: Chinese Avant-garde Literature of the 1980s, Wu Liang

10. Resistance to Modernity: Reflections on Mainland Chinese Literary Criticism in the 1980s, Li Tuo

11. Feminism and Female Taiwan Novelists in the 1980s and 1990s

12. Breaking Open: Chinese Women's Writing the Late 1980s and 1990s, Jingyuan Zhang

13. The Cultural Imaginary of a City: Reading Hong Kong Through Xi Xi, Stephen C. K. Chan

14. Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism/Post-Mao- Dengism?, Xiaobin Yang

15. Death of the Poet: Poetry and Society in Contemporary China and Taiwan, Michelle Yeh

Appendix: A Bibliographical Survey of Publications on Chinese Literature from 1949 to 1999, Jeffrey C. Kinkley