From May Fourth to June Fourth: Fiction and Film in Twentieth-Century China (Harvard Contemporary China)

✍ Scribed by Ellen Widmer, David Der-wei Wang

• Year: 1993
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 459
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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

Contents
......Page 8
Preface......Page 10
Acknowledgments......Page 18
Introduction......Page 22
I Country and City......Page 38
1. Visitation of the Past in Han Shaogong's Post-1985 Fiction......Page 40
2. Past, Present, and Future in Mo Yan's Fiction of the 1980s......Page 64
3. Shen Congwen's Legacy in Chinese Literature of the 1980s......Page 92
4. Imaginary Nostalgia: Shen Congwen, Song Zelai, Mo Yan, and Li Yongping......Page 128
5. Urban Exoticism in Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature......Page 154
II Subjectivity and Gender......Page 186
6. Text, Intertext, and the Representation of the Writing Self in Lu Xun, Yu Dafu, and Wang Meng......Page 188
7. Invention and Intervention: The Making of a Female Tradition in Modern Chinese Literature......Page 215
8. Living in Sin: From May Fourth via the Antirightist Movement to the Present......Page 242
III Narrative Voice and Cinematic Vision......Page 268
9. Lu Xun's Facetious Muse: The Creative Imperative in Modern Chinese Fiction......Page 270
10. Lives in Profile: On the Authorial Voice in Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature......Page 290
11. Melodramatic Representation and the "May Fourth" Tradition of Chinese Cinema......Page 316
12. Male Narcissism and National Culture: Subjectivity in Chen Kaige's King of the Children......Page 348
Afterword: Reflections on Change and Continuity in Modern Chinese Fiction......Page 382
Notes......Page 406
Contributors......Page 454