Fin-de-Siècle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1848-1911 - Hardcover

Wang, David Der-wei

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804728453 ISBN 13: 9780804728454

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 1997

Synopsis

The reigning view of literary historians has been that the May Fourth movement of 1919 marks the division between the traditional and the modern in Chinese literature. This book argues that signs of reform and innovation can be discerned long before May Fourth, and that as China entered the arena of modern, international history in the late Qing, it was already developing its own complex matrix of incipient modernities. It demonstrates that late Qing fiction nurtured a creative, innovative poetics, one that was spurned by the reformers of the May Fourth generation in favor of Western-style realism.
The author recognizes that a full account of modern Chinese fiction needs to ask why so many genres, styles, themes, and figures found in late imperial fiction were repressed by "modern" Chinese literary discourse. He focuses on four genres of late Qing fiction that have been either rudely dismissed in pejorative terms or simply ignored: depravity romances, court-case and chivalric cycles, grotesque exposés, and scientific fantasies. The author shows that in spite of the realist orthodoxy that has dominated Chinese literature since the May Fourth movement, these unwelcome genres have continually found their way back into mainstream discourse, their influence being increasingly evident in recent decades.
This first comprehensive study of late Qing fiction discusses more than sixty works, at least half of which have rarely or never been dealt with by Western or Chinese scholars. Richly informed by contemporary literary theory, this book constitutes a polemical rethinking of the nature of Chinese literary and cultural modernity.

About this title

Review

'The outstanding merit of David Wang's Fin-de-siecle Splendor is bestcharacterized by quoting the concluding sentence of this impressive study oflate Qing fiction However preliminary, I hope this study has conveyed the sense of wonder and pleasure that any reader must feel when suddenly aware thata literature is on the verge of recovering itself, of letting all its voicesspeak as if the departing century had at least learned from its painful experiments and was ready to begin again - without the illusion of a wholly new beginning. ... Wang possesses a capacity that is sometimes deplorably rare among scholars: to demonstrate a genuine enthusiasm for his field of study and to transfer this enthusiasm to his readers.' Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society

From the Author

David Der-wei Wang is Professor of Chinese Literature at Columbia University. He is the author, most recently, of Fictional Realism in Twentieth-Century China: Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen.

Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0804728453
• ISBN 13: 9780804728454
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 444