Zhuangzi And Modern Chinese Literature

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. The book highlights two central philosophical themes of Zhuangzi: the absolute spiritual freedom and the rejection of absolute and fixed views on right and wrong. It argues that the twentieth-century reinterpretation and appropriation of these two important philosophical themes best testify to the dilemma and inner struggle of modern Chinese intellectuals.

With over forty original essays, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Chinese Literatures offers an in-depth engagement with the current analytical methodologies and critical practices that are shaping the field in the twenty-first century. Divided into three sections--Structure, Taxonomy, and Methodology--the volume carefully moves across approaches, genres, and forms to address a rich range topics that include popular culture in Late Qing China, Zhang Guangyu's Journey to the West in Cartoons, writings of Southeast Asian migrants in Taiwan, the Chinese Anglophone Novel, and depictions of HIV/AIDS in Chu T'ien-wen's Notes of a Desolate Man.

What do the Chinese literature and film inspired by the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) have in common with the Chinese literature and film of the May Fourth movement (1918-1930)? This new book demonstrates that these two periods of the highest literary and cinematic creativity in twentieth-century China share several aims: to liberate these narrative arts from previous aesthetic orthodoxies, to draw on foreign sources for inspiration, and to free individuals from social conformity. Although these consistencies seem readily apparent, with a sharper focus the distinguished contributors to this volume reveal that in many ways discontinuity, not continuity, prevails. Their analysis illuminates the powerful meeting place of language, imagery, and narrative with politics, history, and ideology in twentieth-century China. Drawing on a wide range of methodologies, from formal analysis to feminist criticism, from deconstruction to cultural critique, the authors demonstrate that the scholarship of modern Chinese literature and film has become integral to contemporary critical discourse. They respond to Eurocentric theories, but their ultimate concern is literature and film in China's unique historical context. The volume illustrates three general issues preoccupying this century's scholars: the conflict of the rural search for roots and the native soil movement versus the new strains of urban exoticism; the diacritics of voice, narrative mode, and intertextuality; and the reintroduction of issues surrounding gender and subjectivity. Table of Contents: Preface Acknowledgments Introduction David Der-wei Wang part:1 Country and City 1. Visitation of the Past in Han Shaogong's Post-1985 Fiction Joseph S. M. Lau 2. Past, Present, and Future in Mo Yan's Fiction of the 1980s Michael S. Duke 3. Shen Congwen's Legacy in Chinese Literature of the 1980s Jeffrey C. Kinkley 4. Imaginary Nostalgia: Shen Congwen, Song Zelai, Mo Yan, and Li Yongping David Der-wei Wang 5. Urban Exoticism in Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature Heinrich Fruehauf part: 2 Subjectivity and Gender 6. Text, Intertext, and the Representation of the Writing Self in Lu Yun, Dafu,and Wang Meng Yi-tsi Mei Feuerwerker 7. Invention and Intervention: The Making of a Female Tradition in Modern Chinese Literature Lydia H. Liu 8. Living in Sin: From May Fourth via the Antirightist Movement to the Present Margaret H. Decker part: 3 Narrative Voice and Cinematic Vision 9. Lu Xun's Facetious Muse: The Creative Imperative in Modern Chinese Fiction Marston Anderson 10. Lives in Profile: On the Authorial Voice in Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature Theodore Huters 11. Melodramatic Representation and the "May Fourth" Tradition of Chinese Cinema Paul G. Pickowicz 12. Male Narcissism and National Culture: Subjectivity in Chen Kaige's King of the Children Rey Chow Afterword: Reflections on Change and Continuity in Modern Chinese Fiction Leo Ou-fan Lee Notes Contributors From May Fourth to June Fourth will he warmly welcomed. It should be of great interest to all concerned with literary developments in the contemporary world on the one hand, and on the other with the enigmas surrounding China's alternating attempts to develop and to destroy herself as a civilization. --Cyril Birch, University of California, Berkeley

The Zhuangzi is an ancient Chinese work from the late Warring States period (3rd century BC) which contains stories and anecdotes that exemplify the carefree nature of the ideal Daoist sage. Named for its traditional author, "Master Zhuang" (Zhuangzi), the Zhuangzi is one of the two foundational texts of Daoism, along with the Laozi (Dao De Jing). The Zhuangzi is composed of a large collection of anecdotes, allegories, parables, and fables, which are often humorous or irreverent in nature. Its main themes are of spontaneity in action and of freedom from the human world and its conventions. The fables and anecdotes in the text attempt to illustrate the falseness of human distinctions between good and bad, large and small, life and death, and human and nature. While other philosophers wrote of moral and personal duty, Zhuangzi promoted carefree wandering and becoming one with "the Way" by following nature. Though primarily known as a philosophical work, the Zhuangzi is regarded as one of the greatest literary works in all of Chinese history, and has been called "the most important pre-Qin text for the study of Chinese literature." A masterpiece of both philosophical and literary skill, it has significantly influenced writers for more than 2000 years from the Han dynasty to the present.

Centered around the figures of Hu Feng, a leftist literary theorist who promoted "subjectivism," and his disciple Lu Ling, known for his psychological fiction, this study explores theoretical and fictional responses to the problematic of self at the heart of the experience of modernity in 20th-century China.

The World of Master Zhuang is translated from Zhuangzi annotated and put into modern Chinese by Chen Guying. It is a fascinating collection of essays and tales composed by Zhou Zhuang of China’s Warring States Period and his followers. It is classified as literary, rich in philosophical ideas and taken as one of the three major classics of Daoism (the other two are Laozi and Liezi). This is why virtually all literate Chinese know the book, and its readers adopt the rich supply of idioms in their daily communication and always learn from it something helpful, whether it is wisdom, knowledge, insight, consonance, sympathies, comfort, relief, reconciliation or compromise. All those who have attempted a translation either intralingually or interlingually share similarities in most cases but differ sometimes, due to occasional illegibility of the original and divergence in interpretation. For this reason, the translators tried to comprehend the original against its historiocultural background, trace the missing information from its context guided by linguistic theories, correct errors adopting expository strategies, make the text coherent by means of necessary cohesive devices and express in English as a native speaker, so that it may be appropriately understood by as many readers as possible.

Regarded as a pioneering classic study of 20th-century Chinese fiction, this volume covers some 60 years, from the Literary Revolution of 1917 through the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76.'

The Chuang Tsu is one of the most important books in Chinese literature and philosophy. It stands with Confucius (who often appear as a character in its stories).James Legge's translation is perhaps the most sophisticated and exacting one in existence. It carries as much as possible of the subtlety and detail in the original masterwork. Essentially, it is a commentary and extension of the Dao de Jing/Tao Te Ching, in the same way that Mencius' Analects are an exploration of Confucius' thought. Written in around 300BCE during the Warring States period, it is a collection of anecdotes, fables, and stories that re as silly and funny as they are deep and thought provoking.Illustrated with historical drawings and paintings of Zhuangzi's adventures with Confucius, and illustrating tales in the book.