Rethinking Chinese Popular Culture: Cannibalizations of the Canon

by Carlos Rojas (Editor), Eileen Chow (Editor)

Overview

Through analyses of a wide range of Chinese literary and visual texts from the beginning of the twentieth century through the contemporary period, the thirteen essays in this volume challenge the view that canonical and popular culture are self-evident and diametrically opposed categories, and instead argue that the two cultural sensibilities are inextricably bound up with one another.

An international line up of contributors present detailed analyses of literary works and other cultural products that have previously been neglected by scholars, while also examining more familiar authors and works from provocative new angles.The essays include investigations into the cultural industries and contexts that produce the canonical and popular, the position of contemporary popular works at the interstices of nostalgia and amnesia, and also the ways in which cultural texts are inflected with gendered and erotic sensibilities while at the same time also functioning as objects of desire in its own right.

As the only volume of its kind to cover the entire span of the 20th century, and also to consider the interplay of popular and canonical literature in modern China with comparable rigor, Rethinking Chinese Popular Culture is an important resource for students and scholars of Chinese literature and culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781134032235
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/08/2008
Series:	ISSN
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Carlos Rojas is Assistant Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies at Duke University. Eileen Cheng-yin Chow is Associate Professor of Chinese Literary and Cultural Studies at Harvard University.

Table of Contents

Introduction The Disease of Canonicity Carlos Rojas Part 1: Producing Popularity 1. Perverse Poems and Suspicious Salons: The Friday School in Modern Chinese Literature Michel Hockx 2. The Formation of the "Professional Author" as a Figure in Early Twentieth Century Vernacular Fiction Alexander Des Forges 3. Serial Sightings: News, Novelties, and Zhang Henshui's An Unofficial History of the Old Capital Eileen Cheng-yin Chow 4. On the Literary Consecration of Jin Yong's Fiction John Christopher Hamm Part 2: Canonical Reflections 5. An Archaeology of Repressed Popularity: Zhou Shoujuan, Mao Dun, and Their 1920s Literary Polemics Jianhua Chen 6. A Tale of Two Cities: Romance, Revenge, and Nostalgia in Two Fin-de-Siècle Novels by Ye Zhaoyan and Zhang Beihai Michael Berry 7. From Romancing the State to Romancing the Store: Further Elaborations on Some Motifs in Contemporary Taiwan Literature Ping-hui Liao Part 3: Nostalgia and Amnesia 8. Rereading the Red Classics: "Bidding Farewell to Revolution" and Red Nostalgia DAI Jinhua 9. The Reproduction of a Popular Hero: Tsui Hark’s Wong Fei-hong Weijie Song 10. Memory, Photographic Seduction and Allegorical Correspondence: Eileen Chang’s Mutual Reflections Xiaojue Wang Part 4: Gender and Desire 11. Popular Literature and National Representation: The Gender and Genre Politics of Begonia David Der-wei Wang 12. Asking Jin Yong, 'What is sentiment?' – Gifts, Love Letters, and Material Evidence Hsiao-hung Chang 13. Authorial Afterlives and Apocrypha in 1990s Chinese Fiction Carlos Rojas