Contemporary Chinese Literature

Contemporary Chinese Literature

$105.00

SKU: 9781403979827

Description

This book offers a case study of four of the most influential contemporary Chinese writers and “cultural bastards”–Duoduo, an underground “misty” poet; Wang Shuo, a “hooligan” writer; Zhang Chengzhi, an old “Red Guard” and new “cultural heretic;” and Wang Xiaobo, a chronicler of Rabelaisian modern history.
This book offers a fresh and nuanced perspective into contemporary Chinese literature by presenting four authors and cultural bastards–Duo Duo, an underground seer-poet; Wang Shuo, a “hooligan” writer; Zhang Chengzhi, an old Red Guard and new cultural heretic; and Wang Xiaobo, a defiant yet melancholy chronicler of a dystopian modern world. It analyzes each of these authors’ distinctive (re)visions of a double-faced Chinese modernity against a collective legacy of the Cultural Revolution, and argues for the restoration of a historical horizon of China’s transition from the Cultural Revolution to a hybrid moment of the present and future ridden with uncertainties.

Yibing Huang received his Ph.D. in Chinese literature from Beijing University and his second Ph. D. in comparative literature from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is Associate Professor of Chinese at Connecticut College.

 “Taking a close look at Chinese literature in the post Cultural Revolution period as well as the era of economic takeoff, Huang deploys a very ingenious and provocative trope, that of the orphan pairing up with the bastard. Highlighting the self-contradictory nature and crisis-ridden search in writers such as Duo Duo, Wang Shuo, Zhang Chengzhi, and Wang Xiaobo, Huang’s work is a comprehensive study of culturally orphaned and politically rebellious generations in search of their voice and identity.”–Ban Wang, Stanford University
Rethinking the Legacy of the Cultural Revolution * Duo Duo: An Impossible Farewell, or, Exile between Revolution and Modernism * Wang Shuo: Playing for Thrills in the Era of Reform, or, A Genealogy of the Present * Zhang Chengzhi: Striving for Alternative National Forms, or, Old Red Guard and New Cultural Heretic * Wang Xiaobo: From “Golden Age” to “Silver Age,” or, Writing Against the Gravity of History * Revising a Double-Faced Chinese Modernity 

Additional information

Weight 1 oz
Dimensions 1 × 6 × 9 in