This volume presents a broad range of writings on literature from the period of the inception of literary modernity in China. Of the 55 essays included, 47 are translated here for the first time, including two essays by Lu Xun. In addition to the selections themselves, the author has provided, in an extensive General Introduction and shorter introductions to the five parts of the book, historical background, a synthesis of current scholarship on modern views of Chinese literature, and an original thesis on the complex formation of Chinese literary modernity. In the author's view, literary...

This volume presents a broad range of writings on literature from the period of the inception of literary modernity in China. Of the 55 essays included, 47 are translated here for the first time, including two essays by Lu Xun. In addition to the selections themselves, the author has provided, in an extensive General Introduction and shorter introductions to the five parts of the book, historical background, a synthesis of current scholarship on modern views of Chinese literature, and an original thesis on the complex formation of Chinese literary modernity. In the author's view, literary...

Lu Ling (1921-94) was one of modern China's most intensely psychological writers, foregrounding in his many novels and short stories the narrative representation of consciousness and the individual psyche. His mentor Hu Feng (1902-85), a leftist literary theorist, was a leading proponent of the subjective view of literature, who asserted an active and dynamic role for the self in the creative process. In the 1930's and 1940's, when they were most productive, Lu Ling and Hu Feng stood for a position in the leftist literary field that was opposed to the political, utilitarian view of literature...