Modern Chinese Literature and Culture最新文献

Other Worlds: A Genealogy from Lu Yao’s Capitalist Realism to Maoni’s Internet Literature 其他世界:从路遥的资本主义现实主义到毛尼的网络文学谱系

IF 0.2 4区文学

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Pub Date : 2023-06-01 DOI: 10.3366/mclc.2023.0028

D. Suher

{"title":"Other Worlds: A Genealogy from Lu Yao’s Capitalist Realism to Maoni’s Internet Literature","authors":"D. Suher","doi":"10.3366/mclc.2023.0028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mclc.2023.0028","url":null,"abstract":"This article elaborates on a genealogy linking the internet literature writer Maoni’s work to the Reform-era writer Lu Yao’s realist epic Ordinary World ( Pingfan de shijie). Most of the works on the popular Qidian platform on which Maoni publishes are shaped by fan-culture-derived (“fannish”) technologies aimed at maximizing reader engagement, which results in a textual community that blurs the lines between writer and reader. The aesthetic that emerges from this community, as illustrated by Maoni’s novel Joy of Life ( Qing yu nian), is one that emphasizes characters over narrative, stresses the delineation of an expansive fictional universe (“world-building”), and frequently cites tropes and intertexts familiar to the novel’s readers. Maoni’s textual community borrows not only from Western fantasy, Japanese ACGN (Anime, Comics, Games, Novels) culture, and pre-modern Chinese literature but also from Lu Yao and the socialist literature that shaped Lu Yao — an influence on Maoni’s internet fiction that remains understudied. Following Maoni’s lead, this article revisits Ordinary World and the institutions that produced it to identify the elements that could be reinscribed as fannish. This genealogy illustrates how configurations of writer, reader, and text with roots in the socialist and early Reform eras are reappropriated by internet literature for radically different ends. It suggests that scholars of internet literature, rather than placing undue stress on a technology-powered rupture with the past, should consider the points of congruence between socialist and postsocialist media ecologies.","PeriodicalId":43027,"journal":{"name":"Modern Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44488055","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Note from the Editors 编者注

4区文学

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Pub Date : 2023-06-01 DOI: 10.3366/mclc.2023.0024

Natascha Gentz, Christopher Rosenmeier

引用次数: 0

Polyphonic Poetics: Reading Yang Shaoping’s Pidgin Bamboo Branch Lyrics 复调诗学——读杨少平洋泾浜竹枝词

IF 0.2 4区文学

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Pub Date : 2023-06-01 DOI: 10.3366/mclc.2023.0025

Yuqing Liu

{"title":"Polyphonic Poetics: Reading Yang Shaoping’s Pidgin Bamboo Branch Lyrics","authors":"Yuqing Liu","doi":"10.3366/mclc.2023.0025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mclc.2023.0025","url":null,"abstract":"Pidgin English appeared in China along the Pearl River Delta as a contact language composed of a mixture of English, Cantonese, Portuguese, Hindi, and Malay as early as the eighteenth century. It spread to the Yangzi River delta in the mid-nineteenth century when an increasing number of Cantonese merchants and workers traveled to other treaty ports after the First Opium War. Focusing on a series of poems called Pidgin Bamboo Branch Lyrics (Bieqin zhuzhici) published in the newspaper Shen Bao in 1873, this paper explores how pidgin was appropriated in Chinese poetry and altered the literary soundscape in late Qing China. I argue that these pidgin English terms created a heteroglot poetic space wherein Sinographs and European words, literary language and local tongues, and classical images and contemporary anecdotes intertwine to generate diverse and contradictory meanings. Through an innovative collocation of the graphic, literal, and phonetic features of Chinese characters, the pidgin words and expressions in these poems produce a multilayered structure of meanings with various possibilities for interpretation. Moreover, unlike traditional bamboo branch lyrics in which non-Chinese words are incorporated to domesticate strangeness and consolidate the imperial order of center and periphery, these poems have an inverse effect: their use of pidgin English instead alienates the native, the conventional, and the familiar landscape/soundscape. This poetry made of language crossings depicts modernity as an uncanny sonic experience and makes foreignness appear not in a faraway land but in one’s own poetic language and everyday life.","PeriodicalId":43027,"journal":{"name":"Modern Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47446302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Minor Literature as a Vital Component of World Literature: Lu Xun’s Translation of Bulgarian Literature via German Sources 小文学是世界文学的重要组成部分:鲁迅对保加利亚文学的德语译介

IF 0.2 4区文学

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Pub Date : 2023-06-01 DOI: 10.3366/mclc.2023.0026

Xiaolu Ma

{"title":"Minor Literature as a Vital Component of World Literature: Lu Xun’s Translation of Bulgarian Literature via German Sources","authors":"Xiaolu Ma","doi":"10.3366/mclc.2023.0026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mclc.2023.0026","url":null,"abstract":"At the turn of the twentieth century, many Chinese translators departed from the mainstream approach to world literature advocated by Western powers and turned their attention to what Chinese theorists call the “literature of weak and small nations.” China’s marginalized position in the international political and economic order of the time prompted the pursuit of a discourse to address imperialism and national identity, as well as problems of social injustice and oppression. This article draws on Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s interpretation of “minor literature” to analyze Lu Xun’s interest in the literature of weak and small nations, which developed against the backdrop of the European formation of a canonical genealogy of world literature ( Weltliteratur). By introducing Chinese readers to relevant literary history and translating selected works of fiction, Lu Xun formed an imagined community of letters joining China to the weak and small nations — despite his heavy reliance on German sources that took a markedly canonical stance. This article focuses on Lu Xun’s translation and interpretation of two short stories by Ivan Vazov, Bulgaria’s pre-eminent modern writer, to explore how the literature of weak and small nations assisted Lu Xun in negotiating not only with Western cultural hegemony but also with Chinese tradition and nationalism.","PeriodicalId":43027,"journal":{"name":"Modern Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45826878","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Contributors 贡献者

4区文学

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Pub Date : 2023-06-01 DOI: 10.3366/mclc.2023.0032

引用次数: 0

The Overbearing CEO: Cinderella Fantasy and Chinese-style Neoliberal Femininity 霸道总裁：灰姑娘幻想与中国新自由主义女性气质

IF 0.2 4区文学

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Pub Date : 2023-06-01 DOI: 10.3366/mclc.2023.0031

G. Song

{"title":"The Overbearing CEO: Cinderella Fantasy and Chinese-style Neoliberal Femininity","authors":"G. Song","doi":"10.3366/mclc.2023.0031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mclc.2023.0031","url":null,"abstract":"In Chinese online romances and TV dramas, the “overbearing CEO” (badao zongcai) is a recurring motif. The stories follow a stereotypical formula, depicting the love between a wealthy and domineering young man, such as a successful businessman, and a girl of humble background. Although there are many variations, the essential constituents present a Cinderella-type fantasy that normalizes patronizing male protagonists and female protagonists who adapt their behaviors to deserve them. Even dramas featuring strong and ambitious women sometimes repeat this motif of romancing an even wealthier male partner. This article situates the “overbearing CEO” stereotype within the wider context of gender subjectivity and class in China today. By close readings of TV dramas, such as Boss and Me ( Shanshan laile), and drawing on data collected from online commentaries and focus group discussions, I examine the ongoing negotiations surrounding gender politics and subjectivity in television’s reproduction of social power relations. I argue that China’s gender hierarchy and ideals are closely associated with “positive energy” (zheng nengliang) moral values, which effectively serve as a new mode of governance in China. As a result, the socialist discourse on gender equality and women’s liberation has to coexist with the interests of a market that pragmatically promotes self-governing subjects. The stories promoting women’s agency as part and parcel of postsocialist modernity thereby paradoxically end up reinforcing the patriarchal gender order.","PeriodicalId":43027,"journal":{"name":"Modern Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42874995","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 2

The Sensual Surplus of History: Cao Hanmei’s Pictorial Adaptations of Jin Ping Mei in Wartime China 历史的感性剩余：曹汉梅对战时中国金瓶梅的画报改编

IF 0.2 4区文学

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Pub Date : 2023-06-01 DOI: 10.3366/mclc.2023.0027

Dingru Huang

{"title":"The Sensual Surplus of History: Cao Hanmei’s Pictorial Adaptations of Jin Ping Mei in Wartime China","authors":"Dingru Huang","doi":"10.3366/mclc.2023.0027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mclc.2023.0027","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the life and works of Cao Hanmei as a “misfit” in Chinese cartoon history, who, against the dominant understanding of wartime cartoons as a form of resistance and enlightenment, chose to visualize Jin Ping Mei in occupied Shanghai. I examine the stylistic transformations throughout Cao’s two-decade-long endeavors visualizing the novel and unravel the intricate dynamics between his works and his times. I argue that Cao’s pictorial adaptations of Jin Ping Mei engage with history not only by projecting contemporary struggles, chaos, and trauma onto a well-known ancient story, as other critics have suggested, but more importantly by constructing a “sensual surplus” that defies appropriation by the grand narratives of history. This sensual surplus manifests in his affective combination of the genre hybridity and stylistic anachronism of manhua, the critical re-envisioning of female characters, and the mobilization of feminine details and condensed surfaces. Through Cao’s case, this paper aims to enrich the understanding of the complexity of Shanghai’s visual culture in the 1930s and 1940s, especially the continuities and discontinuities after the Japanese occupation, and to demonstrate the porous boundary between cartoons and other forms of visual arts that approach history through images.","PeriodicalId":43027,"journal":{"name":"Modern Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49485210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The Changing Face of Mao: From Texing Actor to Star Casting in Chinese Main Melody Films 毛的变脸:从中国主旋律电影的演员到明星

IF 0.2 4区文学

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Pub Date : 2023-06-01 DOI: 10.3366/mclc.2023.0030

Li Yang

引用次数: 0

Teahouse or Not? Meng Jinghui’s Avant-garde Version of Lao She’s Classic Play 要不要茶馆?b孟景辉先锋版老舍经典戏

IF 0.2 4区文学

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Pub Date : 2023-06-01 DOI: 10.3366/mclc.2023.0029

Barbara Leonesi

{"title":"Teahouse or Not? Meng Jinghui’s Avant-garde Version of Lao She’s Classic Play","authors":"Barbara Leonesi","doi":"10.3366/mclc.2023.0029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mclc.2023.0029","url":null,"abstract":"Lao She’s Teahouse is considered a masterpiece of Chinese theatre, a classic crystallized in the Beijing People’s Art Theatre’s production by Jiao Juyin from 1958, which has been regularly staged up to the present day. In 2018 a production by the well-known “pop avant-garde” director Meng Jinghui premiered at the Wuzhen Theatre Festival, giving rise to a heated debate about the concept of “classics.” This so-called “Teahouse incident” was one of the hot topics of the Chinese theatre scene in 2019, and this article explores the production’s polarized reception and debate. Meng Jinghui’s Teahouse is not examined as a one-way influence between Lao She’s source text and the new text/performance but from the perspective of a network relationship that sets the performance in a web that includes several other texts (plays, novellas, poems, etc.) by Chinese and foreign writers. This perspective shows how Meng Jinghui’s hybridization and his selection of intertexts and stage reminders aim to erase time and space coordinates in order to amplify the main themes of the play and, ultimately, reflect on the human condition. Based on this analysis, the polarized reception of the play and the reactions of the general public, critics, and academics are investigated, illuminating the reasons behind the controversy.","PeriodicalId":43027,"journal":{"name":"Modern Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44428882","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Front matter 前页

4区文学

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Pub Date : 2023-06-01 DOI: 10.3366/mclc.2023.0023

引用次数: 0