ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book deals with the field before the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. It provides new insights into the underlying continuities of Chinese literature: horizontal and vertical ties of allegiance, the utilisation of ‘the people’ and the appropriation of ‘the West’. The book discusses the roles of writers, editors and publishers as ‘positions’ within the sub-field of high literature during the 1920s. It looks at how the founding of literary societies became an established mode of behaviour within the literary field of the 1920s and the consequences of this phenomenon for developments in literary publishing. The book demonstrates that how late-Qing and early Republican reformers used translations of Western fiction to further their own political purposes. It illustrates the problems of discussing ‘Western influence’ on modern Chinese literature solely on the basis of textual contact.
