ABSTRACT

Providing a broad introduction to the area, A World History of Chinese Literature maps the field of Chinese literature across its various worlds, looking both within – at the world of Chinese literature, its history, linguistic, cultural, local, and regional specificities – and without – at the way Chinese literature has circulated throughout the world. The thematic focus allows for a broad number of key categories, such as authors, genres, genders, regions, as well as innovative explorations of new topics and issues such as inter-arts performativity and transmediation.

The sections cover the circulation and reception of China in world literature, as well as the worlds of:

  • Chinese literature across the globe
  • Borders, oceans, and rainforests
  • Comparative literary genres
  • Translingual writers and scholars
  • Gender configurations
  • Translation and transmediation

With a focus on the twentieth and twenty-first century, this collection intervenes in current debates on global Chinese literature, Sinophone and Sinoscript studies, and the production and reception of literary works by ethnic Chinese in non-Sinitic languages, as well as Anglophone literature inspired by Chinese literary tradition. It will be of interest to anyone working on or studying Chinese literature, language and culture, as well as world literatures in relation to China.

part I|31 pages

Overviews

chapter 1|19 pages

General Introduction

part II|52 pages

Circulation and Reception of China in World Literature

chapter 3|14 pages

Zeitgeist and Literature

The Reception of Chinese Literature in Germany Until the First Half of the Twentieth Century

chapter 5|12 pages

Line, Loop, Constellation

Classical Chinese Poetry Between Sinophone and Anglophone Worlds

chapter 6|11 pages

A Decade Apart

Bridging the US and China Literary Systems, 2010–2021

part III|35 pages

Worlding Chinese Literature Across the Globe

chapter 7|11 pages

Chinese Literature at Large

Wong Chin Foo's Border-Crossing Writing 1

chapter 9|13 pages

The Rise of Author Museums in the PRC

How Institutions Make World Literature

part IV|46 pages

Sinophone Worlds of Borderlands, Urban Jungles, and Rainforests

chapter 10|10 pages

Yi Literature

Traditional and Contemporary

chapter 11|12 pages

Queer Sinophone Literature in Hong Kong

The Politics of Worldliness

chapter 13|11 pages

Of Other (Chinese) Spaces

Sinophone Literature and the Rainforest

part V|52 pages

Comparative Worlds of Literary Genres

chapter 14|16 pages

Modern Chinese Drama Across Media and Worlds

Centered on the Case of the White Snake

chapter 17|12 pages

Ecological Critique as World Literature

Alienation of Nature and Humans in Chen Qiufan's Waste Tide

part VI|55 pages

Translingual Worlds of Writers and Scholars

chapter 18|9 pages

Su Manshu's “Broken Hairpin”

A Romantic Tragedy in the Hard Times

chapter 19|11 pages

Qian Zhongshu as a Cosmopolitan

chapter 21|11 pages

Worlding Jin Yong's Martial Arts (Wuxia) Narrative in Three Keys

Narration, Translation, Adaptation

chapter 22|10 pages

Yan Lianke's Heterotopic Imaginaries

part VII|66 pages

New Worlds of Gender Configurations

chapter 24|9 pages

Nora in China

chapter 25|33 pages

Reading Women

Rethinking a Trope in the Socialist Modern and Beyond

chapter 26|11 pages

Feminine Neorealist Fiction in the New Millennium

Voice, Trauma, and Focalization in Fang Fang's Fiction

part VIII|47 pages

Changing Worlds of Translation and Transmediation

chapter 27|12 pages

Frame Tales

Reading the 1,001 Nights in Early Twentieth-Century China

chapter 28|12 pages

Figuring Time

Lyricism in Contemporary Chinese Poetic Films