Michel Hockx

Ivo Smits

This book presents contributions by thirteen scholars of Chinese and Japanese literature whose work is characterised by a strong interest in literary theory. They focus in particular on the various new theories that have emerged during the past two decades, uprooting traditional forms of understanding literary texts, their function, their readership and their interpretation. Often confined to discussion of a specific country or area, these theories have been criticised for their Western bias. This collection breaks through these barriers, providing an opportunity for scholars of two closely related yet often independently studied cultures to present and compare their views on specific theories of literature, to discuss the advantages and shortcomings of those theories, and to consider specific difficulties related to the East-West dimension.

The Limits of Literary Theory

Reading East Asian Writing

At least since the late nineteenth century onwards, Chinese literature as a form of cultural production has been taking place within a specific social space, including writers, critics, journalists, editors, publishers, printers and booksellers. Focusing on people as well as on texts, and looking at what writers did as well as at what they wrote, the essays in this volume draw a vivid and variegated picture of Chinese literary life throughout the modern period. The book treats differences between periods, but also traces the continuities that have characterised modern Chinese literary practice and its discourses from the beginning to the present, including ties of allegiance, utilisation of 'the people' and appropriation of the west. The book places modern Chinese literature firmly within its socio-historical context, thereby increasing the reader's awareness of the hidden assumptions behind literary production. In doing so, it opens new perspectives on Chinese culture as a whole, and on literature as a cosmopolitan concept.

The Literary Field of Twentieth Century China

Joan Judge

Barbara Mittler

A major illustrated collection offering a fresh interdisciplinary reading of Chinese women's periodicals and history in the long twentieth century.

Women and the Periodical Press in China's Long Twentieth Century

Maghiel van Crevel

Tian Yuan Tan

Bringing together new research on Chinese literature and music by twenty-two scholars, on topics ranging from Tang poetry to women's writing and the internet, this collection pays tribute to Wilt Idema as a leading scholar in a field of tremendous scope and diversity.

Essays in Honor of Wilt Idema

Text, Performance, and Gender in Chinese Literature and Music

Since the 1990s, Chinese literary enthusiasts have explored new spaces for creative expression online, giving rise to a modern genre that has transformed Chinese culture and society. Ranging from the self-consciously avant-garde to the pornographic, web-based writing has introduced innovative forms, themes, and practices into Chinese literature and its aesthetic traditions. Conducting the first comprehensive survey in English of this phenomenon, Michel Hockx describes in detail the types of Chinese literature taking shape right now online and their novel aesthetic, political, and ideological challenges. Offering a unique portal into postsocialist Chinese culture, he presents a complex portrait of internet culture and control in China that avoids one-dimensional representations of oppression. The Chinese government still strictly regulates the publishing world, yet it is growing increasingly tolerant of internet literature and its publishing practices while still drawing a clear yet ever-shifting ideological bottom line. Hockx interviews online authors, publishers, and censors, capturing the convergence of mass media, creativity, censorship, and free speech that is upending traditional hierarchies and conventions within China—and across Asia.

Internet Literature in China

Anna Guttman

George Paizis

The Global Literary Field is a collection of twelve articles dealing with the impact of globalization on literary production. Focusing especially on the social context of literature and employing comparative methodologies, all articles comment on the literary market as it functions today, highlighting unexpected and understudied commercial and symbolic exchanges between literary communities from different parts of the globe. Featuring the work of many scholars working from non-Eurocentric perspectives and with non-European languages, this collection constitutes a timely intervention in the ongoing debate about "world literature", which is so often dominated by scholars specializing exclusively in European literatures. The global literary field, as described in this collection, ranges from Atlantic Canada to Malaysia, from the Caribbean to Japan, and especially also across cyberspace. Dealing with both "serious" and "popular" literature and with the important issue of translation, this collection achieves a uniquely comprehensive coverage of a highly complex global phenomenon.

The Global Literary Field

Julia Strauss

The volume examines Chinese cultural studies, from rock music to revolutionary museums.

Michel Hockx

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