Modern Tibetan literature and social change

✍ Scribed by Lauran R. Hartley and Patricia Schiaffini-Vedani (Editors); foreword by Matthew T. Kapstein.

• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 423
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

"Modern Tibetan Literature and Social Change" is the first systematic and detailed overview of modern Tibetan literature, which has burgeoned only in the last thirty years. This comprehensive collection brings together fourteen pioneering scholars in the nascent field of Tibetan literary studies, including authors who are active in the Tibetan literary world itself. These scholars examine the literary output of Tibetan authors writing in Tibetan, Chinese, and English, both in Tibet and the Tibetan diaspora. The contributors explore the circumstances that led to the development of modern Tibetan literature, its continuities and breaks with classical Tibetan literary forms, and the ways that writers use forms such as magical realism, satire, and humor to negotiate literary freedom within the PRC.They provide crucial information about Tibetan writers' lives in China and abroad, the social and political contexts in which they write, and the literary-critical merits of their oeuvres. Along with deep social, cultural, and political analysis, this wealth of information clarifies the complex circumstances under which Tibetan writers negotiate the realities they face in the PRC and in the diaspora. The contributors consider not only poetry, short stories, and novels but also other forms of cultural production - such as literary magazines, films, and Web sites - that provide a public forum in the Tibetan areas of the PRC, where censorship and restrictions on public gatherings remain the norm. "Modern Tibetan Literature and Social Change" includes a previously unavailable list of modern Tibetan works translated into Western languages and a comprehensive English-language index of names, subjects, and terms

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
Foreword
Note on Transliteration
Introduction
Part One: Engaging Traditions
1. Heterodox Views and the New Orthodox Poems: Tibetan Writers inthe Early and Mid-Twentieth Century
2. Roar of the Snow Lion: Tibetan Poetry in Chinese
3. The Development of Modern Tibetan Literature in the People’s Republic of China in the 1980s
4. Döndrup Gyel and the Remaking of the Tibetan Ramayana
5. “Heartbeat of a New Generation”: A Discussion of the New Poetry
6. “Heartbeat of a New Generation” Revisited
7. “Oracles and Demons” in Tibetan Literature Today: Representationsof Religion in Tibetan-Medium Fiction

Part Two: Negotiating Modernities
8. One Nation, Two Discourses: Tibetan New Era Literature and the Language Debate
9. The “Condor” Flies over Tibet: Zhaxi Dawa and the Significance of Tibetan Magical Realism
10. In Quest(ion) of an “I”: Identity and Idiocy in Alai’s Red Poppies
11. Development and Urban Space in Contemporary Tibetan Literature
12. Modern Tibetan Literature and the Rise of Writer Coteries
13. Tibetan Literature in the Diaspora
14. Placing Tibetan Fiction in a World of Literary Studies: Jamyang Norbu’s The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes
Appendix 1: Glossary of Tibetan Spellings
Appendix 2: Glossary of Chinese Terms
Appendix 3: Contemporary Tibetan Literary Works in Translation
Bibliography
About the Contributors
Index