In the studies of Chinese literature, it is an usual practice to translate the Chinese term xiaoshuo with the English terms "fiction" or "the novel", and few, if any, ever feel the need to ask for an justification of it, as if it is crystal clear that these terms are exact synonyms. While there are indeed few problems in understanding the meaning of xiaoshuo through "fiction" or "the novel" as it appears in modem Chinese literature, it was not the case when the term xiaoshuo was put in pre-modem Chinese context, where it bore very different meanings. It literally meant "small talks" and was regarded as equivalent to "alley hearsay". Besides, its emotional connotation in pre-modem China was also very different from that of "fiction" or "the novel". For traditional scholars-gentry, xiaoshuo always carried a negative and pejorative sense that it was considered to be unworthy to be read seriously of his status. The situation started to change only in the last decade of the 19th Century. Following the repeated military defeats of the last Chinese Empire to the western powers, there was an influx of Western ideas into China. With the collision and interaction between the traditional Chinese ideas and the new Western ones, many traditional Chinese terms, which had been used for over 2000 years without substantial modification, were subject to radical transformations in meaning. Xiaoshuo was one of these terms. The present thesis attempts to offer an analysis of the transformation of the meaning of "xiaoshuo" in the period 1898-1920 by applying the method of analysis suggested by the history of ideas. Three representative literary figures in this period, Liang Qichao (1873-1929), Lu Simian(1884-1957) and Lu Xun (1881-1936), are chosen to be the foci of investigation, and their most representative theories on xiaoshuo are sorted out to be the objects of detailed study, in order to trace the process of how xiaoshuo acquired the present meaning of imaginative prose narrative and became one of the four major genres of literature together with drama, poetry and prose.

This thesis examines the reception of five contemporary Chinese glam-writers and their works in mainland China. It explores three different types of reception by three reading constituencies: literary critics, actual women readers, and participants on the glam-writers’ personal blogs. Drawing in part on western reception theory and reader-response criticism, this thesis focuses on the role of the reader in reading and interpreting the glam-writers’ works and makes an original empirical contribution to audience research in mainland China where such research is as yet not developed. By adopting a range of qualitative research methods, I investigate the ways in which contemporary Chinese readers understand and respond to a particular type of women’s literature at the turn of the twenty-first century. I demonstrate that Chinese readers are not merely passive recipients of the literary works, or ‘cultural dupes’ (Hall 1981), but both savage – in the sense of severe – and savant readers of popular culture. This also means that the negative influences of these works, as predicted by Chinese mainstream literary critics, are not evident in actual readers’ responses to these texts.

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During the interactions between the Chinese and the English from the 1750s to the 1840s, writers from both countries have created many distinctive images to represent "the Other" in their own discourses. Imagologists like Jean-Marc Moura (1992) and Daniel-Henri Pageaux (1994) indicated that every image of an "Other" de facto corresponds to an image of "Self." Consequently, the reciprocal images of the British and the Chinese may not only reflect individual writer's attitude towards "the Other" but also refract the self-images of each writer's own people and society. As writers are more or less conditioned by their immediate society, their images of "the Other" tend to reflect the collective ideology of a society. A study of reciprocal images in their own historical milieus will enable one to see why both parties were conditioned to produce certain images to represent "the Other" and why certain images may last longer than the others or even become stereotypes in different discourses. This thesis argues that neither the British nor the Chinese had unanimous images for each other from the 1750s to the 1840s, a century prior to the first Opium War. Instead, writers of both countries had created various negative and positive images of "the Other" to meet their own intentions during this period. By discussing the political, psychological and sociological meanings of the reciprocal images of the British and the Chinese diachronically and synchronically, this thesis suggests that writers might follow certain principles and rules to formulate their own images of other people as "the Other."

In this thesis, I discuss a group of compositionally related 'core' chapters within the Yi Zhou shu, a collection of 59 texts from ancient China that has received very limited attention in scholarship. The texts in this collection are difficult to read and interpret because of their poor preservation and the lack of concise commentaries. I develop a methodological strategy for the identification of philologically related texts within the collection, which allows me to single out a group of texts related by compositional structures, rhetorical patterns and characteristic formulaic expressions. I call such chapters 'kingly consultations', considering that most of such texts are presented as speeches involving sage rulers of the Western Zhou (mid. 11th century - 771 BC), in which they share the fundamental wisdoms of kingship. I argue that these texts are remnants of an important ritualised textual practice, which has left traces not only in the Yi Zhou shu, but also in other collections, such as the Liu tao (Six Bow Cases), which is commonly classified among 'military' texts. I reconstruct elements of the socio-political context of the kingly consultations using comparative insight. I examine the numerical lists used for systematisation of knowledge against similar lists in the Pali canon. I also explain the significance of the expressions that emphasise the secretive transmission of texts against better known esoteric textual communities in China and Japan. Such comparison allows me to preliminarily identify the communities behind the kingly consultations as based on strict knowledge-based hierarchy, but prone to segmentation. Finally, I position the kingly consultations within the broader context of the practice of treasure texts. This practice is an important development in ancient China that led to the emergence of a new type of textual authority by 'detaching' earlier epigraphic texts from their precious material carriers and introducing them into novel environment of manuscript culture.

The late Ming artist and poet Xu Wei (1521-1593) is most well known for his self-representation as a cultured "mountain hermit" and "eccentric", pursuing the literary ideals of originality, simple language and direct emotional expression. His wild ink-brush paintings, mental instability, numerous suicide attempts and the murder of his third wife all helped to consolidate Xu's image as China's Van Gogh. However, later hagiographies of Xu as the "patron saint of eccentrics" have led to a one dimensional view of Xu. This thesis presents Xu as someone who explored and wrestled with different and sometimes contradictory self-representations against a thorny political and social backdrop. It moves away from Xu's "eccentric" persona, instead examining his writings within the political context of the 16th century. Against the backdrop of Mongol and pirate invasions, Xu's close friend Shen Lian was executed by the Chief Grand Secretary Yan Song and his clique. Yet only a month after his friend's execution, Xu switched sides and worked as a ghost-writer for Hu Zongxian, a protégé of Yan Song. Yet with the fall of Yan Song in 1562 and the arrest of Hu Zongxian, this became an embarrassment for Xu. Fearing that he would be implicated with the Yan Song clique, Xu distanced himself from his flattering ghost-written poems. Overwhelmed by feelings of guilt, he explored the complexities of loyalty and identity in his poetry. Xu's career is representative of many Ming scholars who were frustrated by examination failure and the inability to find an official post. His literary ideals contradicted with lived reality. Xu is unique among Ming literati in voicing these contradictions.

L’échange sino-occidental constitue un phénomène majeur de notre ère. Il s’étend des parties importantes de l’économie et de la politique à l’art, la philosophie et la littérature. Depuis l’ouverture de la Chine dans les années 1980, c’est d’abord la France qui est devenue pays d’accueil pour des intellectuels et des étudiants d’origine chinoise dits ‘dissidents‘, facilitant un nouvel échange d’idées plus direct. La thèse aborde le sujet de l’interculturalité d’intellectuels chinois de la sorte dans le contexte littéraire du roman franco-chinois, ainsi traitant une partie importante des relations interculturelles : par la publication de leurs œuvres, les romanciers initient un vaste échange culturel avec leurs lecteurs en liant leur monde d’idées chinois à la civilisation française. L’approche méthodologique est basée sur la notion de culture comme un système ouvert et dynamique qui est développé et élargi de manière continue par les êtres humains : en considérant le système culturel comme un grand ‘texte’ général, Clifford Geertz attribue un statut textuel à tous les cadres culturels et souligne le caractère interprétatif du système culturel comme un réseau de pratiques et de discours auquel les acteurs font référence et qu’ils développent et modifient en tant que participants actifs. De cette façon, un texte littéraire est d’un côté lui-même élément d’un système textuel. D’un autre côté, il fait partie de la création du grand ‘texte de la culture’ en interprétant et en exposant le système culturel en question. La thèse prend en compte ces qualités d’un texte littéraire de la manière suivante: elle comprend d’abord les textes en tant que résultats d’une évolution socio-culturelle. Ensuite, elle les conçoit comme des modes de représentation et d’interprétation d’un système interculturel.Les romans de cinq écrivains exemplaires, dont les œuvres sont considérées comme particulièrement pertinentes quant à une thématique de l’interculturel, constituent la base textuelle du projet. Il s’agit de François Cheng, Gao Xingjian, Dai Sijie, Ya Ding et Shan Sa, qui ont rédigé leurs romans sous l’influence de trois phénomènes contextuels majeurs : le souvenir commun de la Chine, l’expérience de l’exil et la confrontation avec le monde littéraire français. / Intercultural relations between China and the Occident have become a vital phenomenon of our age. They range from dealings in major areas of economy and politics to interactions in the visual arts, literature and philosophy. Since the Opening of China during the 1980s, France, in particular, has become the primary destination for dissident intellectuals and students of Chinese origin, a fact which has facilitated a new direct exchange of ideas. This thesis deals with the interculturalism of those very intellectuals in the literary context of the Franco-Chinese novel, hence addressing a key area of this new interculturalism: the authors generate a substantial cultural contact by publishing their works in France, thus linking their Chinese world of thoughts to French culture.The methodological approach is based on the notion of culture as an entity undergoing permanent development caused by human beings who are perceived as participants in the process. Defining culture as ‘text’, Clifford Geertz assigns textual status to all cultural phenomena, thereby emphasizing the interpretative nature of culture as a network of practices and discourses being permanently changed and refined. Literary texts are on the one hand partial elements of this network themselves; on the other hand, they also participate in the productive process by representing and interpreting the bigger text of culture. The thesis accounts for those properties of literary texts by first investigating them as results of a cultural development and subsequently comprehending them as a form of intercultural representation and interpretation.The text corpus of the analysis has been built on the basis of the works of five exemplary writers: François Cheng, Gao Xingjian, Dai Sijie, Ya Ding and Shan Sa. Showing particular pertinence with respect to the subject matter, their intercultural dimension is shaped by three major contextual phenomena: the shared memory of China, the exile experience and the confrontation with the French world of publishing.