Two outstanding literary phenomena of the Chinese literature at the end of the 20th century

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-9
Author(s):  
Chanh Nguyen Thi Mai
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Modern Chinese Literature ◽  
Critical Observation ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
Literary Composition ◽  
Objective Research ◽  
Literary Phenomenon

Song thực ra, nếu không có cái định mệnh như thế thì đã không có lịch sử văn học đích thực. Việc đặt vấn đề nghiên cứu một cách khách quan những đóng góp của các hiện tượng văn xuôi nổi bật cuối thế kỉ XX đối với sự phát triển của văn học đương đại Trung Quốc là điều hết sức cần thiết. The emergence of some literary phenomena in Chinese literature at the end of the 20th century was the last hit to the collapse of the literature order that had been established since several centuries ago after the founding of new China (1949). This emergence is considered equivalent to the establishment of an innovative literary concept, bringing literary composition and delivery closer to the nature of the literature. Nowadays, upon discussing the Chinese literary phenomenon at the end of the 20th century, it is inevitable to connect it with the life-long career of an aging generation of writers. To unearth the contribution of this generation is somehow similar to an archeologist’s work and also comparable to the critical observation of a turning point in the literary history. Elements that those literary phenomena used to strive to overthrow in order to replace them with new concepts have been eradicated or outdated, which seems to be the “fate” of any “pioneering” movement. However, that fate is inevitable during the course of literary history. Therefore, it is deemed vital to conduct an objective research on the contributions of the outstanding literary phenomena at the end of the 20th century to the development of modern Chinese literature.

scholarly journals “Misty Poetry” as a reflection of the nature of Chinese literature of the “New Period” (second half of the 20th century)

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 145-150
Author(s):  
Ivan Semenist
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Critical Distance ◽  
Modern Chinese Literature ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Study Results ◽  
New Period ◽  
The New Period ◽  
Post Cultural Revolution

The subject of the study is the formation of “Misty Poetry” trend in Chinese literature of the late 20th century. The study aims at the disclosure of the dynamics of “Misty Poetry” within modernist paradigm against the backdrop of Chinese literature of the “New Period”. The method is grounded in identification of key modernist poetics categories, perceived and transformed in the versification practice of Misty Poetry. Sociocultural contextualization method is employed to locate Misty Poetry in the post Cultural Revolution aesthetic and ideological context of China. The study results cover the lyrical attempt at a modernistic search for identity in Chinese literature of the “New Period”. The pursuit of self and vaster category of identity is considered and comprehensively analyzed through the array of representative poetic texts (Zhang Ming, Meng Lang, Bei Dao, Duo Duo). “Misty Poetry” marked the beginning of the “New Period” in the history of modern Chinese literature. The trend demonstrated qualitative changes in the ideological foundations and artistic practice of the new poetry of China in the 20th century. “Misty Poetry” became a kind of aesthetic protest against the ideological and artistic clichés of the preceding cultural-historical era. The concept of “self” within the paradigm of Misty Poetry is corroborated to be perceived as an independent consciousness, not dictated by any ideology or doctrine, disclosed through the means of a poet’s internal thoughts depictions, both conscious and subconscious. The paper results demonstrate the transformative potential of the Misty Poetry trend poetics on prosodic level, level of stylistic imagery and genre specificity. The paper interpretative results explore the significance of the “Misty Poetry” in the way that it revived and gave a new impetus to the further development to the humanistic orientation of Chinese poetry. The novelty is connected with the aesthetic means of territorializing the marginal space that provides the poet and the poetic protagonist with a critical distance from the dominant discourse of the political-cultural establishment of post Cultural Revolution China are disclosed. The paper concludes the Misty Poetry trend drew attention to the subjective beginning in art and opened the discourse for an active search for a new artistic reality in which the legacy of classical poetry of China, the best humanistic traditions of the new poetry of the early 20th century and the modernist features of Western poetry were combined.

Early Modern Comparative Approaches to Literary Early Modernity

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Porter
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Henry Fielding ◽  
Modern Chinese Literature ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Early Modernity ◽  
National Tradition ◽  
Analogical Comparison

Modern Chinese literature is often understood as marking a self-consciously cosmopolitan departure from a long and largely autochthonous literary tradition. The binary between “modern” and “traditional” implicit in this view forecloses the possibility of reading individual works and broader literary developments in the late Ming and early Qing alongside European counterparts as part of a shared early modernity. After reviewing the emergence of and lively scholarly debates around the notion of “early modern China,” this chapter proposes a model of analogical comparison as a means of avoiding some of the methodological pitfalls that are increasingly seen to imperil scholarship that places works from China and Europe in an explicitly comparative framework. Eighteenth-century satirical fictions by Wu Jingzi and Henry Fielding are juxtaposed to demonstrate the usefulness of such a model in rethinking individual works of a national tradition in relation to a more global conception of modern literary history.

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