ABSTRACT
More research and translations will be necessary to provide a more complete idea of Shen Con-gwen’s singular talent. The aim of the few researchers who studied Shen Congwen during the 1990s was primarily to challenge the clichés that have stuck to him for so long a time, exposing their contradictions and oversimplifications: cliches like pastoralism, nostalgia, idealization of the past, local flavor, and regionalism. The rediscovery of Shen Congwen through translation had begun earlier in the decade, albeit without immediate impact in Sinological circles. Wang Zengqi might have been instrumental in attracting attention to the figure of Shen Congwen. In the January 1989 issue of Litterature chinoise, he paid tribute to his former master, “a neglected and even despised writer, a victim of mistaken judgment”; Wang Zengqi claimed that it was “high time to give him his proper place in the history of contemporary literature.”.
