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This seminar investigates writings in a variety of genres by Lu Xun (1881-1936), generally recognized as the greatest of early modern Chinese writers. The seminar is organized around genre. We will read samples of Lu Xun's classical essays, random thoughts, short stories, prose poems, historical tales, zawen, classical poetry, autobiography, etc, and examine Lu Xun's play with form, language, and generic expectations. We will throughout the course also pursue the question of modernity in Lu Xun? What constitutes literary modernity? How is Lu Xun's writing modern? What traditional forces were at play in his reception of Western discourse of the modern? The student will also be introduced to important scholarship in the vast field of Lu Xun studies.
Lecture, discussion, and student presentations. Students will be expected to perform on a daily basis, through class discussion, oral presentations, etc.
1. discussion based on readings
-keep notes of your readings to refer to for discussion
2. oral presentations of secondary materials
-in the second week of class, each student will do an oral critique of a book-length study on Lu Xun
-each student will also do, at some point in the course, a10-15 minute critique of a secondary article
-these critiques should include brief description of the content of the essay as well as evaluation of the essay's strengths and weaknesses in the context of modern Chinese literary studies; you should also give some sense of the critical and theoretical perspective taken by the author
3. oral readings of primary texts
-students will be asked on a fairly regular basis to do short oral "readings" of Lu Xun's works
4. paper
-minimum 20 pages, typed, double-spaced
-should show original research
-should show knowledge of secondary sources in Chinese and English and should speak to the scholarship, respond to it, be in dialogue with it
-should involve close reading of Lu Xun texts
Lee, Leo Ou-fan, ed. Lu Xun and His Legacy. Berkeley: UC Press, 1985.
Lee, Leo Ou-fan. Voices from the Iron House: A Study of Lu Xun. Bloomington:
IU Press, 1987.
Photocopied packet of Lu Xun's writings (available at COPEX on Neil Avenue)
Reference
Lu Xun yanjiu xueshu lunzhu ziliao huibian, 1913-1981 (A corpus of scholarship and essays on Lu Xun). 6 vols. Beijing: Zhongguo wenlian, 1985.
Collections
Diary of a Madman and Other Stories. trs. William Lyell. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990.
Enyuan lu: Lu Xun he tade lunzhan wenxuan (A record of enmity: selected writings in the debates with Lu Xun). Eds. Li Fugen and Liu Hong. Beijing: Jinri Zhongguo, 1996.
Lu Xun quanji (Complete works of Lu Xun). 16 vols. Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 1981.
Lu Xun Selected Works. 4 vols. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1980.
Secondary
Alber, Charles. “Wild Grass, Symmetry and Parallelism in Lu Hsun's Prose Poems.” In William Nienhauser, ed. Critical Essays on Chinese Literature. HK: CUHKP, 1976. pp. 1-20.
Anderson, Marston. The Limits of Realism: Chinese Fiction in the Revolutionary Period. Berkeley: UCP, 1990.
-----. “Lu Xun, Ye Shaojun, and the Moral Impediments to Realism.” In Anderson, The Limits of Realism: Chinese Fiction in the Revolutionary Period. Berkeley: UCP, 1990, 76-118.
-----. “Lu Xun's Facetious Muse: The Creative Imperative in Modern Chinese Fiction.” In E. Widmer and D. Wang, eds., From May Fourth to June Fourth: Fiction and Film in Twentieth-Century China. Cambridge: HUP, 1993, 249-68.
Brown, Carolyn. “The Paradigm of the Iron House: Shouting and Silence in Lu Xun's Stories.” Chinese Literature: Essays Articles Reviews 6.1-2 (1984):101-20.
----- “Woman as Trope: Gender and Power in Lu Xun's 'Soap.'“ Modern Chinese Literature 4, 1-2 (1988):55-70.
-----. “Lu Xun's Interpretation of Dreams.” In Carolyn Brown, ed. Psycho-Sinology: The Universe of Dreams in Chinese Culture. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1988. pp. 67-79.
Chan, Stephen. “The Language of Despair: Ideological Representations of the 'New Woman' by May Fourth Writers.” In Barlow, ed. Gender Politics in Modern China: Writing and Feminism. Durham: Duke UP, 1993, 13-32. [discussion of Lu Xun's representation of Zijun in “Regret for the Past”]
Cheung, C[hiu].Y[ee]. Lu Xun: The Chinese 'Gentle' Nietzsche. Frankfurt, et al.: Peter Lang, 2001.
Chinnery, J.D.. “The Influence of Western Literature on Lu Xun's 'Diary of a Madman.'“ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies vol 23, part 2 (1960): 309-322.
Davies, Gloria. “The Problematic Modernity of Ah Q.” Chinese Literature: Essays Articles Reviews 13 (1991): 57-76.
Dolezelova-Velingerova, Milena. “Lu Xun's 'Medicine.'“ In Merle Goldman, ed. Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era. Cambridge: HUP, 1977. pp. 221-32.
Findeisen, Raoul. Lu Xun. Texte, Chronik, Bilder, Dokumente. Frankfurt a.M. & Basel: Stroemfeld/Nexus, 2002.
Hanan, Patrick. “The Techniques of Lu Hsun's Fiction.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 34 (1974):53-96.
Huters, Theodore. “Blossoms in the Snow: Lu Xun and the Dilemma of Modern Chinese Literature.” Modern China 10, 1 (Jan. 1984): 49-77.
Jameson, Frederic. “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism.” Social Text: Theory/Culture/Ideology 15 (1986): 65-88.
Kaldis, Nicholas. “The Prose Poem as Aesthetic Cognition: Lu Xun's Yecao.” Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 3, 2 (Jan. 2000): 43-82.
Kelley, David. "Nietszche in China: Influence and Affinity." Papers on Far Eastern History 27 (March 1983):143-72.
Kowallis, Jon. The Lyrical Lu Xun: A Study of His Classical Style Verse. Honolulu: U. of Hawaii Press, 1996.
Krebsova, Berta. “Lu Hsun and His Old Tales Retold.” Archiv Orientalni 28 (1960): 225-81, 640-56.
Larson, Wendy. Literary Authority and the Modern Chinese Writer: Ambivalence and Autobiography. Durham: DUP, 1991. [Chap 4 discusses Lu Xun’s views of literature and his autobiographical writings in Zhaohua xishi]
Lee, Leo Ou-fan. Voices from the Iron House: A Study of Lu Xun. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
-----, ed. Lu Xun and his Legacy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
Lee, Leo Ou-fan. “Genesis of a Writer: Notes on Lu Xun's Educational Experience.” In Goldman, ed. Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era. Cambridge: HUP, 1977, 161-88.
Lin Fei and Liu Zaifu. Lu Xun zhuan (Biography of Lu Xun). Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue, 1981.
Lin, Yu-sheng. The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness: Radical Anti-Traditionalism in the May Fourth Era. Madison: UWP, 1979. [Chap 6, “The Complex Consciousness of Lu Hsun”]
Lyell, William A. Lu Hsun's Vision of Reality. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.
McDougall, Bonnie S. Love-Letters and Privacy in Modern China: The Intimate Lives of Lu Xun and Xu Guangping. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002.
Mills, Harriet. “Lu Xun: Literature and Revolution--From Mara to Marx.” In Goldman, ed. Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era. Cambridge: HUP, 1977, 189-220.
Ng, Mau-sang. “Symbols of Anxiety in Wild Grass.” Renditions 26 (1986): 155-64.
Pollard, David. “Lu Xun’s Zawen.” In Leo Ou-fan Lee, ed., Lu Xun and His Legacy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985, 54-89.
-----. The True Story of Lu Xun. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2002.
Pusey, James Reeves. Lu Xun and Evolution. Albany: SUNY Press, 1998.
Semanov, V. I. Lu Hsun and His Predecessors. Trs. Charlers Alber. White Plains: M. E. Sharpe, 1980.
Sun, Shirley. Lu Xun and the Chinese Woodcut Movement, 1929-1935. Ph.D. diss. Stanford University, 1974.
Wang, Ban. The Sublime Figure of History. Stanford UP, 1997. [contains sections on “On the Power of Mara Poetry” and Wild Grass]
Wang, Shiqing. Lu Xun, a Biography. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1984.
Wang Yao. Lu Xun yu Zhongguo wenxue (Lu Xun and Chinese literature). Shanxi renmin, 1982.
Wang Xiaoming. Wufa zhimian de rensheng: Lu Xun zhuan (A life that cannot be faced directly: a biography of Lu Xun). Taibei: Yeqiang, 1992.
Xu, Jian. “The Will to the Transaethetic: The Truth Content of Lu Xun's Fiction.” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 11, 1 (Spring 1999): 61-92.
Poetry
WEEK ONE: Introduction: Genre, Canon, and Biography
Readings: Lee, Voices, chps. 3 and 4; Anderson, The Limits of Realism (pp. 76-79); Dolezelova, "Lu Xun's Medicine"; Jameson, "Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism"
Readings: Alber "Wild Grass, Symmetry and Parallelism in Lu Hsun's Prose Poems"; Lee, Voices (ch 5); Carolyn Brown, "Lu Xun's Interpretation of Dreams"; Kaldis, "The Prose Poem as Aesthetic Cognition"
Texts:
Readings: