Shu-ning Sciban

Ihor Pidhainy

The first book-length study of Wang Wenxing in English offering biographic, cultural, textual, literary, and linguistic readings of his work. The essays cover topics such as Wang's writing principles, typology of characters, analysis of lexicon, employment of stream-of-consciousness, musicality, relationship to Modernist writers of the West, relationship to Lu Xun, and issues of translating Wang's works into Western languages. Original contributions by Wang Wenxing illuminates his own writing through a discussion of his way of reading, and a biographical essay by Ch'en Chu-yun, his wife, who shares with the reader moments in their private life and the writing habits of her husband. In addition, this manuscript appends outlines of Wang's novels and bibliographies that are valuable to both students and scholars in their studies of Wang Wenxing's writing in particular as well as to the understanding of Taiwanese and Chinese literatures in general.

Critical Essays

Reading Wang Wenxing

Fred Edwards

Dragonflies is an anthology containing twelve selections ranging from short stories to novellas, and spans the century from the May Fourth Movement to the 1990s. The eleven authors represented are Ling Shuhua, Bing Xin, Zhang Ailing, Wei Junyi, Kang Yunwei, Ping Lu, Liao Huiying, Chi Li, Jiang Zidan, Wang Anyi, and Xi Xi. Rather than focusing on revolutionary or heroic role-models, the selected works portray women struggling to deal with the conflicting demands of tradition and modernity in a rapidly changing society. The most recent story in the collection, Wang Anyi's coolly analytical but heartbreaking Sisters (1996), illustrates the persistence of traditional social norms, while Jiang Zidan's Waiting for Dusk (1990) depicts a woman oppressed by nature itself. The introductory essay by Shu-ning Sciban traces the evolution of fiction by women writers in mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong during the twentieth century. Dragonflies will appeal to readers with an interest in modern China, Chinese literature and gender studies.

Shu-ning Sciban

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