Historical Dictionary of Modern Chinese Literature

By (author) Li-hua Ying

Hardback - £127.00

Publication date:

22 December 2009

Length of book:

494 pages

Publisher

Scarecrow Press

ISBN-13: 9780810855168

Modern Chinese literature has been flourishing for over a century, with varying degrees of intensity and energy at different junctures of history and points of locale. An integral part of world literature from the moment it was born, it has been in constant dialogue with its counterparts from the rest of the world. As it has been challenged and enriched by external influences, it has contributed to the wealth of literary culture of the entire world. In terms of themes and styles, modern Chinese literature is rich and varied; from the revolutionary to the pastoral, from romanticism to feminism, from modernism to post-modernism, critical realism, psychological realism, socialist realism, and magical realism. Indeed, it encompasses a full range of ideological and aesthetic concerns.

Historical Dictionary of Modern Chinese Literature presents a broad perspective on the development and history of literature in modern China. It offers a chronology, introduction, bibliography, and over 300 cross-referenced dictionary entries on authors, literary and historical developments, trends, genres, and concepts that played a central role in the evolution of modern Chinese literature.
In 300 multiparagraph entries, Li-hua Ying offers what she declares a controversial definition of Chinese literary modernism: she begins with the May Fourth generation, focuses on literature written in vernacular rather than classical Chinese, and incorporates culturally or politically disparate areas of China. A chronology charts the modernist advance from 1891 to the present. Concise, fully cross-referenced entries profile literary figures, movements, organizations, and publications that shaped the modern literary movement throughout the nation and beyond its political boundaries. An authoritative work.