Author Description

A New Literary History of Modern China is a collective project that introduces the "long" modern period of Chinese literature from the late seventeenth century to the new millennium. The volume, with roughly 160 essays contributed by 145 authors on a wide spectrum of topics, is intended for readers who are interested in understanding modern China through its literary and cultural dynamics. At the same time, it takes up the challenge of rethinking the conceptual framework and pedagogical assumptions that underlie the extant paradigm of writing and reading literary history. Beyond the familiar canon of literature as representation, the volume seeks to include the tradition of literature as manifestation, on both textual and contextual levels, in a history of modern Chinese literature. In addition to familiar genres, A New Literary History features a diverse lineup of forms, from presidential speeches to pop song lyrics, from photographs to films, and from political treatises to prison house jottings--forms that not only represent the material world, but can also shape it and complete it. By combining both the pointillism of the chronicle and the comprehensiveness of grand recit, this revisionist endeavor introduces the four themes of "worlding" literary China: architectonics of temporalities; dynamics of travel and transculturation; contestation between wen and mediality; and remapping of the literary cartography of modern China.--