The essays collected in Fate and Prognostication in the Chinese Literary Imagination deal with the philosophical, psychological, gender and cultural issues in the Chinese conception of fate as represented in literary texts and films, with a focus placed on human efforts to solve the riddles of fate prediction. Viewed in this light, the collected essays unfold a meandering landscape of the popular imaginary in Chinese beliefs and customs. The chapters in this book represent concerted efforts in research originated from a project conducted at the International Consortium for Research in the...

This book is a study of the relation between theatre art and ideology in the Chinese experimentations with new selfhood as a result of Ibsen’s impact.  It also explores Ibsenian notions of self, women and gender in China and provides an illuminating study of Chinese theatre as a public sphere in the dissemination of radical ideas. Ibsen is the major source of modern Chinese selfhood which carries notions of personal and social liberation and has exerted great impacts on Chinese revolutions since the beginning of the twentieth century. Ibsen’s idea of the self as an individual has led...