Download or read book Zhou Zuoren and an Alternative Chinese Response to Modernity written by Susan Daruvala and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book explores the issues of nation and modernity in China by focusing on the work of Zhou Zuoren (1885-1967), one of the most controversial of modern Chinese intellectuals and brother of the writer Lu Xun. Zhou was radically at odds with many of his contemporaries and opposed their nation-building and modernization projects. Through his literary and aesthetic practice as an essayist, Zhou espoused a way of constructing the individual and affirming the individual’s importance in opposition to the normative national subject of most May Fourth reformers. Zhou’s work presents an alternative vision of the nation and questions the monolithic claims of modernity by promoting traditional aesthetic categories, the locality rather than the nation, and a literary history that values openness and individualism."
Download or read book Zhuangzi and Modern Chinese Literature written by Liu Jianmei and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-04 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a powerful account of how the ruin and resurrection of Zhuangzi in modern China's literary history correspond to the rise and fall of modern Chinese individuality. Liu Jianmei highlights two central philosophical themes of Zhuangzi: the absolute spiritual freedom as presented in the chapter of "Free and Easy Wandering" and the rejection of absolute and fixed views on right and wrong as seen in the chapter of "On the Equality of Things." She argues the twentieth century reinterpretation and appropriation of these two important philosophical themes best testify to the dilemma and inner-struggle of modern Chinese intellectuals. In the cultural environment in which Chinese writers and scholars were working, the pursuit of individual freedom as well as the more tolerant and multifaceted cultural mentality has constantly been downplayed, suppressed, or criticized. By addressing a large number of modern Chinese writers, including Guo Moruo, Hu Shi, Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren, Lin Yutang, Fei Ming, Liu Xiaofeng, Wang Zengqi, Han Shaogong, Ah Cheng, Yan Lianke, and Gao Xingjian, the author provides an insightful and engaging study of how they have embraced, rejected, and returned to ancient thought and how the spirit of Zhuangzi has illuminated their writing and thinking through the turbulent eras of modern China. This book not only explores modern Chinese writers' complicated relationship with "tradition," but also sheds light on if the freedom of independence, non-participation, and roaming and the more encompassing cultural space inspired by Zhuangzi's spirit were allowed to exist in the modern Chinese literary context. Involving the interplay between philosophy, literature, and history, Liu delineates a neglected literary tradition influenced by Zhuangzi and Daoism and traces its struggles to survive in modern and contemporary Chinese culture.
Download or read book The Literature of Leisure and Chinese Modernity written by Charles A. Laughlin and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2008-03-06 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Chinese essay is arguably China’s most distinctive contribution to modern world literature, and the period of its greatest influence and popularity—the mid-1930s—is the central concern of this book. What Charles Laughlin terms "the literature of leisure" is a modern literary response to the cultural past that manifests itself most conspicuously in the form of short, informal essay writing (xiaopin wen). Laughlin examines the essay both as a widely practiced and influential genre of literary expression and as an important counter-discourse to the revolutionary tradition of New Literature (especially realistic fiction), often viewed as the dominant mode of literature at the time. After articulating the relationship between the premodern traditions of leisure literature and the modern essay, Laughlin treats the various essay styles representing different groups of writers. Each is characterized according to a single defining activity: "wandering" in the case of the Yu si (Threads of Conversation) group surrounding Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren; "learning" with the White Horse Lake group of Zhejiang schoolteachers like Feng Zikai and Xia Mianzun; "enjoying" in the case of Lin Yutang’s Analects group; "dreaming" with the Beijing school. The concluding chapter outlines the impact of leisure literature on Chinese culture up to the present day. The Literature of Leisure and Chinese Modernity dramatizes the vast importance and unique nature of creative nonfiction prose writing in modern China. It will be eagerly read by those with an interest in twentieth-century Chinese literature, modern China, and East Asian or world literatures.
Download or read book A Modernity Set to a Pre Modern Tune written by Haosheng Yang and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-03-11 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Modernity Set to a Pre-Modern Tune, Haosheng Yang studies the classical-style poems of the most iconoclastic May Fourth Chinese writers and highlights the use of traditional language and forms as a salient facet of Chinese literary modernity.
Download or read book Modern Selfhood in Translation written by Limin Chi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-09-03 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the development of Chinese translation practice in relation to the rise of ideas of modern selfhood in China from the 1890s to the 1920s. The key translations produced by late Qing and early Republican Chinese intellectuals over the three decades in question reflect a preoccupation with new personality ideals informed by foreign models and the healthy development of modern individuality, in the face of crises compounded by feelings of cultural inadequacy. The book clarifies how these translated works supplied the meanings for new terms and concepts that signify modern human experience, and sheds light on the ways in which they taught readers to internalize the idea of the modern as personal experience. Through their selection of source texts and their adoption of different translation strategies, the translators chosen as case studies championed a progressive view of the world: one that was open-minded and humanistic. The late Qing construction of modern Chinese identity, instigated under the imperative of national salvation in the aftermath of the First Sino-Japanese War, wielded a far-reaching influence on the New Culture discourse. This book argues that the New Culture translations, being largely explorations of modern self-consciousness, helped to produce an egalitarian cosmopolitan view of modern being. This was a view favoured by the majority of mainland intellectuals in the post-Maoist 1980s and which has since become an important topic in mainland scholarship.
Download or read book Detecting Chinese Modernities written by Yan Wei and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-05-18 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Detecting Chinese Modernities: Rupture and Continuity in Modern Chinese Detective Fiction (1896–1949), Yan Wei historicizes the two stages in the development of Chinese detective fiction and discusses the rupture and continuity in the cultural transactions, mediation, and appropriation that occurred when the genre of detective fiction traveled to China during the first half of the twentieth century. Wei identifies two divergent, or even opposite strategies for appropriating Western detective fiction during the late Qing and the Republican periods. She further argues that these two periods in the domestication of detective fiction were also connected by shared emotions. Both periods expressed ambivalent and sometimes contradictory views regarding Chinese tradition and Western modernity.
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Modern Chinese Literature written by Li-hua Ying and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 825 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern Chinese literature has been flourishing for over a century, with varying degrees of intensity and energy at different junctures of history and points of locale. An integral part of world literature from the moment it was born, it has been in constant dialogue with its counterparts from the rest of the world. As it has been challenged and enriched by external influences, it has contributed to the wealth of literary culture of the entire world. In terms of themes and styles, modern Chinese literature is rich and varied; from the revolutionary to the pastoral, from romanticism to feminism, from modernism to post-modernism, critical realism, psychological realism, socialist realism, and magical realism. Indeed, it encompasses a full range of ideological and aesthetic concerns. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Modern Chinese Literature presents a broad perspective on the development and history of literature in modern China. It offers a chronology, introduction, bibliography, and over 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on authors, literary and historical developments, trends, genres, and concepts that played a central role in the evolution of modern Chinese literature.
Download or read book The A to Z of Modern Chinese Literature written by Li-Hua Ying and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2010 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The A to Z of Modern Chinese Literature presents a broad perspective on the development and history of literature in modern China. It offers a chronology, introduction, bibliography, and over 300 cross-referenced dictionary entries on authors, literary and historical developments, trends, genres, and concepts that played a central role in the evolution of modern Chinese literature.
Download or read book Mapping Modern Beijing written by Weijie Song and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation 'Mapping Modern Beijing' investigates various modes of representing Beijing by writers travelling across mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and overseas Sinophone and non-Chinese communities.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Modern Chinese Literatures written by Carlos Rojas and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 953 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: Rather than attempt to offer a definition of modern Chinese literature or provide a comprehensive survey of all that the category might entail, this volume instead uses a series of strategic interventions to illustrate the structural conditions out of which modern Chinese literature has emerged, how it is viewed, and how it may be interpreted. Our goal, in other words, is to showcase a set of methodologies that one may use to approach modern Chinese literature, while in the process offering different ways of reassessing what modern Chinese literature is in the first place. We contend that modern Chinese literature is not a static category but rather it is a dynamic entity whose significance and limits are continually being reshaped through the process of interpretation itself. Similarly, modern Chinese literature is not a singular, unitary category, but rather a plurality of overlapping categories--of modern Chinese literatures. Divided into three parts, on "structure," "taxonomy," and "methodology," this volume contains 46 original articles that examine unfamiliar texts and literary phenomena and offer new perspectives on more familiar ones
Download or read book Liberal Cosmopolitan written by Qian Suoqiao and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a cross-cultural critique on the problem of the liberal cosmopolitan in modern Chinese intellectuality in light of Lin Yutang’s literary and cultural practices across China and America. It points to the desirability of a middling Chinese modernity.
Download or read book Literary Representations of Christianity in Late Qing and Republican China written by John T. P. Lai and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-03-27 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literary Representations of Christianity in Late Qing and Republican China examines the multiple representations of Christianity through the major genres of Chinese Christian literature (novels, drama and poetry) of the late Qing and Republican periods.
Download or read book The Rise of Political Intellectuals in Modern China written by Shakhar Rahav and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-02-17 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The May Fourth movement (1915-1923) is widely considered a watershed in the history of modern China. This book is a social history of cultural and political radicals based in China's most important hinterland city at this pivotal time, Wuhan. Current narratives of May Fourth focus on the ideological development of intellectuals in the seaboard metropoles of Beijing and Shanghai. And although scholars have pointed to the importance of the many cultural-political societies of the period, they have largely neglected to examine these associations, seeing them only as seedbeds of Chinese communism and its leaders, like Mao Zedong. This book, by contrast, portrays the everyday life of May Fourth activists in Wuhan in cultural-political societies founded by local teacher and journalist Yun Daiying (1895-1931). The book examines the ways by which radical politics developed in hinterland urban centers, from there into a nation wide movement, which ultimately provided the basis for the emergence of mass political parties, namely the Nationalist Party (Guomindang) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The book's focus on organizations, everyday life, and social networks provides a novel interpretation of where mechanisms of historical change are located. The book also highlights the importance of print culture in the provinces. It demonstrates how provincial print-culture combined with small, local organizations to create a political movement. The vantage point of Wuhan demonstrates that May Fourth radicalism developed in a dialogue between the coastal metropoles of Beijing and Shanghai and hinterland urban centers. The book therefore charts the way in which seeds of political change grew from individuals, through local organizations into a nation-wide movement, and finally into mass-party politics and subsequently revolution. The book thus connects everyday experiences of activists with the cultural-political ferment which gave rise to both the Chinese Communist party and the Nationalist Party.
Download or read book Routledge Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature written by Ming Dong Gu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-09-03 with total page 740 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature presents a comprehensive overview of Chinese literature from the 1910s to the present day. Featuring detailed studies of selected masterpieces, it adopts a thematic-comparative approach. By developing an innovative conceptual framework predicated on a new theory of periodization, it thus situates Chinese literature in the context of world literature, and the forces of globalization. Each section consists of a series of contributions examining the major literary genres, including fiction, poetry, essay drama and film. Offering an exciting account of the century-long process of literary modernization in China, the handbook’s themes include: Modernization of people and writing Realism, rmanticism and mdernist asthetics Chinese literature on the stage and screen Patriotism, war and revolution Feminism, liberalism and socialism Literature of reform, reflection and experimentation Literature of Taiwan, Hong Kong and new media This handbook provides an integration of biographical narrative with textual analysis, maintaining a subtle balance between comprehensive overview and in-depth examination. As such, it is an essential reference guide for all students and scholars of Chinese literature.
Download or read book Dialect and Nationalism in China 1860 1960 written by Gina Anne Tam and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-05 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes how fangyan (local Chinese languages or dialects) were central to the creation of modern Chinese nationalism.
Download or read book written by 周作人 and published by Chinese University of Hong Kong Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique selection of essays by Zhou Zuoren (1885-1967), one of the most controversial intellectuals in modern China, presenting an alternative vision of China as a nation.
Download or read book Reading Shenbao written by W. Tsai and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-11-30 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through a study of the readership of the most popular commercial daily newspaper in China during the early twentieth century, Reading Shenbao investigates ideas of nationalism, consumerism and individuality, looking at the relationship between advertising, modern lifestyles and changing social attitudes in China as it underwent modernization.
