Author Description

This study explores diverse modes of self-fashioning in the discursive formation of Chinese modernity between 1919 and 1949 in modern Chinese poetry. By focusing on four representative poets of modern Chinese poetry before 1949—Guo Moruo, Li Jinfa, Dai Wangshu, and Mu Dan, the study offers fresh, insightful analysis of the dynamic trajectory of the historical complexity of fashioning a new modern self-subjectivity with relation to the nation-state. Theoretically informed by the varied perspectives of modernity, the self, the body, and memory, the author for the first time reveals how the corporeal body emerges as a site of agency, trauma, and libidinal investment for engaging with the configuration of a multi-layered self, gender, and nationhood in modern China. This work will make several significant contributions to enhancing readers’ understanding of the cultural and psychological complexity of modern China. This work will be of interest to teachers, students and scholars of modern Chinese literature and culture as well as comparative literature.