"... 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 written culture of 20th-century China has only recently begun to receive sustained attention from Western readers and critics. This book presents illuminating information on writers, audiences, and the impact of various literary works on politics and culture--and provides a unique window on Chinese society.

"For much of the twentieth century, the May Fourth movement of 1919 was seen as the foundational moment of modernity in China. Recent examinations of literary and cultural modernity in China have, however, led to a questioning of this view. By approaching May Fourth from novel perspectives, the authors of the eight studies in this volume seek to contribute to the ongoing critique of the movement. The essays are centered on the intellectual and cultural/historical motivations and practices behind May Fourth discourse and highlight issues such as strategies of discourse formation, scholarly methodologies, rhetorical dispositions, the manipulation of historical sources, and the construction of modernity by means of the reification of China’s literary past."

A panoramic vision of the Chinese literary landscape across the twentieth century. Award-winning literary scholar and poet Yunte Huang here gathers together an intimate and authoritative selection of significant works, in outstanding translations, from nearly fifty Chinese writers, that together express a search for the soul of modern China. From the 1912 overthrow of a millennia-long monarchy to the Cultural Revolution, to China’s rise as a global military and economic superpower, the Chinese literary imagination has encompassed an astonishing array of moods and styles—from sublime lyricism to witty surrealism, poignant documentary to the ironic, the transgressive, and the defiant. Huang provides the requisite context for these revelatory works of fiction, poetry, essays, letters, and speeches in helpful headnotes, chronologies, and brief introductions to the Republican, Revolutionary, and Post-Mao Eras. From Lu Xun’s Call to Arms (1923) to Gao Xinjiang’s Nobel Prize–winning Soul Mountain (1990), this remarkable anthology features writers both known and unknown in its celebration of the versatility of writing. From belles lettres to literary propaganda, from poetic revolution to pulp fiction, The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature is an eye-opening, mesmerizing, and indispensable portrait of China in the tumultuous twentieth century.

This volume presents a broad range of writings on modern Chinese literature. Of the fifty-five essays included, forty-seven are translated here for the first time, including two essays by Lu Xun. In addition, the editor has provided 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. The collection reflects both the mainstream Marxist interpretation of the literary values of modern China and the marginalized views proscribed, at one time or another, by the leftist canon. It offers a full spectrum of modern Chinese perceptions of fundamental literary issues.

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.

At least since the late nineteenth century onwards, Chinese literature as a form of cultural production has been taking place within a specific social space, including writers, critics, journalists, editors, publishers, printers and booksellers. Focusing on people as well as on texts, and looking at what writers did as well as at what they wrote, the essays in this volume draw a vivid and variegated picture of Chinese literary life throughout the modern period. The book treats differences between periods, but also traces the continuities that have characterised modern Chinese literary practice and its discourses from the beginning to the present, including ties of allegiance, utilisation of 'the people' and appropriation of the west. The book places modern Chinese literature firmly within its socio-historical context, thereby increasing the reader's awareness of the hidden assumptions behind literary production. In doing so, it opens new perspectives on Chinese culture as a whole, and on literature as a cosmopolitan concept.