Chinese Literary Modernism

Term Paper # 100347

Asian Studies
History > Asian
Literature > World

An overview of Chinese literary modernism with a focus on Ja Bin's novel "Cold Night".

2,551 words () | 5 sources | MLA | 2007 United States

Paper Summary:

This paper examines Shanghai's modernist literary movement popularly associated with the interval of 1917 to 1937. A second topic is introduced of how Ja Bin's novel of 1947, "Cold Night", describes the plight of the individual in relation to his or her connection to the state during the Sino-Japanese War, which inflicted such widespread and extreme suffering and destruction in China.

Outline:
Introduction
Lee, Shih and What Happened in Shanghai
"Cold Nights"
Concluding Discussion

From the Paper:

"Literary modernism in Shanghai, as a 'movement' evolving between 1917 and 1937, continues to fascinate scholars of literature as much as those of modern Chinese history. Indeed, pre-World War II Shanghai continues to intrigue a variety of Westerners in particular as shown by a strong tourism industry of the present, visitors wishing to see what survives of "old" Shanghai, meaning the world of China's westernized elite, Chiang Kai Shek, or where the Soong Sisters liked to take cocktails in the evenings on visits, there. What some Chinese have regarded as run down, pre-War hotels and other structures of the past hold a powerful romantic or nostalgia appeal to visitors that may or may not have much to do with what Shanghai's literary scene was like through the 1920s and 1930s."
Mao, Nathan. "Pa Chin's Journey in Sentiment from Hope to Despair." Journal of the Chinese
Language Teachers' Association. 11. (1976): 131-137.

Shih, Shu-meih. The Lure of the Modern - Writing Modernism in Semi-Colonial China, 1917-
1937. Berkeley Interdisciplinary Studies of China Series No. 1. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001.

Tang, Xiaobing. "The Last Tubercular in Modern Chinese Literature - on Ba Jin's Cold
Nights," in Chinese Modernism - the Heroic and the Quotidian. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000, 131-160.

& course materials, University of Toronto, 2006-2007.

Sample of Sources Used:

Ba Jin. Cold Nights. Trans. Nathan Mao and Liu Ts-un-yan. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 1978.
Lee, Leo On-fan. The Romantic Generation of Modern Chinese Writers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973.
Mao, Nathan. "Pa Chin's Journey in Sentiment from Hope to Despair." Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers' Association. 11. (1976): 131-137.
Shih, Shu-meih. The Lure of the Modern - Writing Modernism in Semi-Colonial China, 1917-1937. Berkeley Interdisciplinary Studies of China Series No. 1. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001.
Tang, Xiaobing. "The Last Tubercular in Modern Chinese Literature - on Ba Jin's Cold Nights," in Chinese Modernism - the Heroic and the Quotidian. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000, 131-160.