Windows on China: The contemporary Chinese novel
In this course, we will read contemporary Chinese novels as windows on Chinese society. Through imagination and make-believe, fiction brings us to places where political scientists, historians, and sociologists are denied access.
Primary sources
First of all, we will read in Chinese the science fiction novel Shèngshì: Zhōngguó, 2013 nián 《盛世－中国，2013年》 by the Beijing-based Hong Kong author Chan Koonchung 陳冠中. In science fiction, utopian and dystopian fantasies project contemporary fears and desires onto the future.
In addition, each student should present orally one post-1990 novel. The resulting mosaic will bring together a number of angles from which to view and imagine a panorama of possible present-day Chinas, seen through the lenses of memory and fantasy, city and countryside, youth and adulthood, conformity and dissidence, majority and minority, actual and virtual, money and culture...
Some suggestions for novels you can present are given in the Fronter room. No novel should be presented by more than one student.
Each student will write an essay on a topic for which both Shèngshì and the novel (s)he has presented orally may function as source material.
Secondary sources
Finally, we will use literary criticism to discuss how a text points beyond itself, to literary, cultural, social and other contexts.
All students should read the following three papers:
- Howard Goldblatt: "Fictional China". In Lionel M. Jensen & Timothy B. Weston (eds.): China's Transformations: The Stories Beyond the Headlines. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield 2007.
- 程永新、走走：“中国当代文学速写”
- David Der-wei Wang: "Red Legacy in Fiction"
All students should also read the following book:
- Graham Allen: Intertextuality. Second Edition. Routledge: London 2011.
Finally, all students should read (at least) one of the following articles (or any other scholarly article on post-1990 Chinese fiction, provided the course teacher accepts your choice):
- Jonathan Culler: Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Second Edition. New York: Oxford University Press. Chapter 3 ("Literature and Cultural Studies", pp. 43-54).
- Hans Bertens: Literary Theory: The Basics. Second Edition. Abingdon: Routledge. Chapter 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10.
- Douwe Fokkema: "Chinese Postmodernist Fiction". Modern Language Quarterly 69:1 (March 2008) pp. 141-165.
- Xiaobin Yang: The Chinese Postmodern: Trauma and Irony in Chinese Avant-Garde Fiction. University of Michigan Press 2002. (selection).
- Arik Dirlik & Xudong Zhang: Postmodernism & China. Durham: Duke University Press 2000. Any of the articles in part IV ("Literary Interventions").
- Xiaobing Tang: Chinese Modern: The Heroic and the Quotidian. Durham: Duke University Press 2000. Chapter 10: "Melancholy Against the Grain: Approaching Postmodernity in Wang Anyi's Tales of Sorrow" (pp. 316-340).
- One of the following articles from Lauran R. Hartley & Patricia Schiaffini-Vedani (eds.): Modern Tibetan Literature and Social Change. Durham: Duke University Press 2008: Françoise Robin: "'Oracles and Demons' in Tibetan Literature Today: Representations of Religion in Tibetan-Medium Fiction" (pp. 148-172), Lara Maconi: "One Nation, Two Discourses: Tibetan New Era Literature and the Language Debate" (pp. 173-201), Patricia Schiaffini-Vedani: "The 'Condor' Flies over Tibet: Zhaxi Dawa and the Significance of Tibetan Magical Realism" (pp. 202-224), Howard Y. F. Choy: "In Quest(ion) of an 'I': Identity and Idiocy in Alai's Red Poppies" (pp. 225-235), Riika J. Virtanen: "Development and Urban Space in Contemporary Tibetan Literature" (pp. 236-262), Sangye Gyatso (Gangzhün): Modern Tibetan Literature and the Rise of Writer Coteries (pp. 263-280).