Associative and Dissociative: the 'Self' in Chinese Classical and Modem Literature Chen Maiping

Literature is often regarded as a mirror either reflecting the reality of life or reflecting the writer's 'self'. In the latter, the writer expresses his 'self' through his literary work, lets his own image, feeling and emotion be reproduced in the 'mirror'. It is a process of transforming the subjective into the objective, so that the writer can identify himself just as one identifies oneself in a mirror.