Literary Societies of Republican China
Editors, Michel Hockx and Kirk A. Denton
Images to the left and right taken from Scott Minich and Jiao Ping,
Chinese Graphic Design in the Twentieth Century (Watson)
Project DescriptionLiterary societies as agents in cultural transformation have conventionally received a tremendous amount of attention in the study of modern Chinese literature. In his preface to one of the volumes of Zhao Jiabi's Compendium of Modern Chinese Literature (Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi; 1935), Mao Dun supported the use of literary societies as the organizing principle for this important canonizing collection. One volume, edited by Zheng Boqi, would collect fiction by writers of the Creation Society, another that of the Literary Research Association (Mao Dun's volume), and a third, edited by Lu Xun, would include writers affiliated with other societies. Though not necessarily the starting point for this sort of representation, the Compendium is a striking example of a general inclination among Chinese literary figures to divide their field into collective entities and structure the history of their field around literary societies. Societies seemed to lend to the multiplicity and complexity of literary production in this period a simple and appealing logic and coherence. Individual writers and their texts were neatly seen as the product of a literary thought shared by the members of the society (that the canonizing Compendium placed theory and literary debates as the first two volumes gives the impression that the creative practice collected in subsequent volumes emerged logically out of theory). If the thought of the society was progressive (anti-traditional), then its literary practice was evaluated positively, with little regard to formal or literary standards. In creating a telos of literary development that culminated in the Maoist vision of literature serving the cause of revolution, later Marxist literary histories canonized those societies, and its members, who fit into that telos and vilified or excluded altogether those that did not. It did not hurt the cause of some of these societies that its members eventually went on to gain high rank within the cultural bureaucracy of the CCP, from which position they could influence how those societies were portrayed.
Scholars working outside of the Marxist paradigm (Leo Lee, Marian Galik, Bonnie McDougall, Tagore, Kirk Denton) have continued to be interested in literary and critical debates in which these societies were engaged and therefore have also not gone beyond the overarching identification of literary groups as schools of literary thought. This project is not denying the value of such approaches, merely attempting to reveal other forces at play in how and why literary thought is used. This volume of essays on literary societies in Republican China seeks to take a fresh look at these societies and their role in literary production. It wants to move away from the canonical view presented above that stresses the shared literary or political ideology among the individual members of the society, and draw attention instead to how these writers functioned within the corporate culture of the society and what and how the societies contributed to their own position within the larger literary field. The study hopes to draw attention to the following issues surrounding literary societies:
Sorting out various types of literary organizations
The literary organizations we hope to cover in this book are very different in nature. Some were formally established societies with constitutions, a schedule of organizational meetings, and official society journals (i.e. Literary Research Association). Others were loose-knit literary groups labeled as such only after the fact by literary historians or cultural campaignists out to identify its members as a faction with politically subversive intentions (Hu Feng group). Some had close ties to political parties and attempted to carry out a cultural program associated with those parties (Sun Society and the League of Left-wing Writers). Others were centered principally around the publication of a journal and eschewed explicit identification with any literary ideology (Yusi). Others were fabricated after the fact (this is the case with the Nine Leaves school, a group of writers who published in the late forties but only designated themselves as a "school" during the liberalization of the post-Mao era when their vaguely modernist literary agenda had become politically acceptable). This project seeks to flesh out, with detailed description and analysis of a wide variety of societies, the typology of literary societies undertaken by Michel Hockx in his on-going research. This project is inspired by and hopes to complement that research.
Membership/Organization
Who joined literary societies and why? How did their members feel they were benefiting from participation in a society? Was there some sort of "symbolic capital" earned through participation in a literary group? Did writers join principally for reasons of shared literary ideology? Out of a sense of personal or native place ties? Or for political reasons? What will this tell us about the nature of literary societies and how will this help us reshape the canonical view of the development of modern Chinese literature? How were the societies organized and how did the individual members function within them?
Theory and Practice
What cultural program or literary theory did the society promote publicly, if any? Did individual members adhere to or carry out in practice this program or theory? Or does literary practice always exceed any theoretical intention?
Literary Field and Modernity
What cultural position was asserted by individual societies and how did this position contribute to the formation of the literary field in twentieth century China? What is the relation between literary societies and the larger discourses of modernity and the formation of modern literature? Did literary societies function in a way that was tangibly different from literary groups in pre-modern China?
Canonicity
The essays in the volume will have to sift carefully through the later politically-motivated "representations" of literary societies in the canonical literary histories to try to get at these societies as they were historically. By drawing attention to marginalized societies and by questioning the tight relationship between literary theory and practice, this study will be participating in the rewriting of the literary history of the Republican era, not with the intention of dispensing with the literary society as structuring device, but recognizing the complex ways members related to their societies and societies functioned within the literary field.
The volume also seeks to reassert into the study of modern Chinese literature a historical and sociological orientation, not one that reads its texts as sociological documents reflecting historical realities, but one that looks at the web of social relations behind textual production. How, in other words, did patronage, literary friendships, relationships between writers and editors and publishers related to literary societies affect the production of literature. The purpose is not to deny the importance or validity of the text and a hermeneutics of texts, but to recognize behind literary production a host of social filiations, among which literary societies were an important part. Although it cannot by any means be comprehensive, this volumes seeks to introduce to both the expert and non expert readership descriptions and analyses of most of the major and some of the less well-known literary societies of the Republican era. The volume hopes to serve as (1) an important reference work on literary societies for specialists and students in the field; and (2) contribute to a general understanding of how writers functioned within social institutions and how those institutions related to literary works and the formation of a literary field in modern China.
Style and Format
It should be clear from the above description that we are not looking from our contributors to retell the old story about societies as the embodiment of an expressed literary thought. Instead, contributions should (1) attempt to describe and analyze the dynamic relationship between the individual members and the society; (2) look at how or if a position was established for the society in the larger context of the literary field; and (3) to flesh out from this larger implications for literary production and literary reception in modern China. Though PRC scholarship on literary societies (Fan Quan, Jia Zhifang, various collections of materials on literary societies, etc) can serve as an invaluable starting point, contributors should use, whenever possible, primary writings by members of the societies (letters, reminiscences, official society documents, writings published in society journals, etc.), as well as contemporary reader responses. Essays should be of a reasonable length (no more than 50 pages in size 12 font, double-spaced form). We want the essays to be readable to a non-specialist audience, so much detailed information on the society, its composition and the like, might best be placed in footnotes and/or appendices. Deadline for completion of essays is spring/summer in 1999.
List of Essays 1.Classical poetry societies [Wu Shengqing]
2. Butterfly group [Xu Xueqing*]
3. Wenxue yanjiu hui (Literary Research Association) [Michel Hockx*]
4. Chuangzao she (Creation Society) [Xiaobing Tang and Michel Hockx*]
5. Xueheng (Critical Review) [Yi-tsi Mei Feuerwerker*]
6. Yusi [Mark Miller]
7. The Analects Group [Charles Laughlin]
8. Tian Han and the Nanguo she (Southern society) [Chen Xiaomei*]
9. Xinyue she (Crescent Moon Society) [Wong Wang-chi*]
10. Zuoyi zuojia lianmeng (League of Left-Wing Writers) [Wong Wang-chi*]
11. Yuefeng pai [Susan Daruvala*]
12. Zhongguo quanguo wenyijie kangdi xiehui (National Association of Literary Resistance) [Charles A. Laughlin*]
13. Hu Feng Group (or Qiyue pai) [Kirk Denton*]
Participants EditorsKirk A. Denton
DEALL
Hagerty Hall 398
Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures
The Ohio State University
1775 College Road
Columbus, Ohio 43210
email: denton.2@osu.eduHockx, Michel
East Asia Department
SOAS
Thornhaugh St. Russell Sq.
London WC1H 0XG
(O) (0)171 637-6180
Fax: (0)171 - 323 6234
email: mh17@soas.ac.ukContributors:
Chen Xiaomei
DEALL
Cunz Hall 204
The Ohio State University
1841 Millikin Road
Columbus, Ohio 43210
email: chen.38@osu.eduDaruvala, Susan
Faculty of Oriental Studies
Sedgwick Avenue
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, CB3 9DA
England
email: sfd21@hermes.cam.ac.ukFeuerwerker, Yi-tsi Mei
Asian Languages and Cultures
3070 Frieze Building
105 S. State Street
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285
Tel: 313-764-8286
Fax: 313-747-0157
email: ymfeuer@umich.eduLaughlin, Charles A
East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
New Haven, CT
email: charles.laughlin@yale.eduMark Miller
Tang, Xiaobing
Asian Languages and Cultures
University of Michigan
email: maxtang@umich.eduWong, Wang-chi
Dept of Translation
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Shatin, N.T.
Hong Kong
email: lwcwong@cuhk.edu.hkWu, Shengqing
Asian Languages and Literatures
Weselyan University
Middletown, CT 06459
email: swu03@wesleyan.eduXu Xueqing
DLLL
York University
4700 Keele St.
Toronto, Ont M3J 1 P3
Canada
email: xueqingxu@yorku.ca