Shen Congwen was a prolific writer, achieving an outstanding reputation in two apparently separate careers: first his literary career between 1925 and 1948, and second his studies, as a curator at the History Museum in Beijing, of the material culture of Chinese artefacts. This thesis explores the relationship between the development of Shen Congwen’s writings and the development of his aesthetics principles throughout both of his careers, and offers the possibility that the second career can be seen as a continuation of the ideals of the first. There two main parts to the thesis: the first is an investigation of the underlying principles of the diverse and versatile presentation styles in Shen’s fiction; the second examines the way in which Shen Congwen developed his particular way of writing about material culture, illustrating how these fundamental principles had already existed when he was a creative writer. I start by looking at the way his self perception, for example as a ‘countryman’, evolved, and show how these changes can lead to an understanding of the changes in the presentational style and aesthetic preferences in his fiction. I take as a fixed point Shen’s claim to have realised a New Taoist, pantheistic, view of the world and argue that his realisation shaped his presentation in fiction; moreover I show how he carried this understanding forward into his appreciation of ancient artefacts. Moreover, I also offer an alternative to the view that he ceased to create literary work since he became a curator. As supporting evidence, I do not use his three attempts at writing novels during this later period, but rather the classical style poems which he began to compose in 1961. These poems shape my view that Shen Congwen’s journey as a writer was the journey of his pursuit of freedom.

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This thesis is an attempt to show the place of the popular author Zhang Henshui (1895-1967) in modern Chinese literature. Discounting his formative period up to 1924, from which almost none of his writing survives, and the period after the author suffered a debilitating stroke in 1949, nine of his major works of fiction are examined in detail. Employing the criteria Zhang claimed in non-fictional writings to have set himself, while exercising proper caution with such material, the fiction is analysed chronologially in search of ways in which the author progressively achieved 'reform' of the traditional novel and succeeded in 'catching up with the times'. With respect to the former criterion, attention is focussed on the structure, language and style of his novels, while the latter criterion chiefly concerns content and mode, although the two are interconnected. It emerges that during his early period (ca. 1924-1930) Zhang's fiction was, as has been generally assumed, strongly influenced by traditional Chinese literature. Almost its only modernity lay in anecdotal content which was superfluous and often disruptive to the plot. Even within this early period, however, in the novel <i>A Grand Old Family</i>, the author began to make attempts to improve the structure of his fiction and in his most successful novel, <i>Fate in Tears and Laughter</i>, which spans the early and second periods of his career, he successfully eliminated extraneous anecdotal material. Structured around a complex system of relationships among the major characters, and while containing elements of realism, this transitional novel remains highly traditional by virtue of its plot's heavy reliance on coincidence and on the supernatural. Most of all, it shares with the early novel a 'dreamlike' atmosphere which is seen as the major traditional feature of Zhang Henshui's fiction. During the second, 1930s, phase of his career, Zhang continued to effect modest 'reform' on the language and structure of his fiction, drawing on Western literary techniques as gleaned from early 20th century translations and presumably also at second hand from the new Chinese writers of the May Fourth era. He concentrated, however, on modernisation of the content of his fiction as a means of 'catching up with the times'. In certain areas, progress may be seen to have been made in this, particularly with regard to the portrayal of women, but frequently modern situations continued to be depicted in a highly traditional light. Indeed, examples of novels which did not have modern subject matter grafted on in the usual way are also seen during this period. An example of an extremely anachronistic novel with an urban setting is briefly discussed, while more space is devoted to an oddity for this phase, a period novel set in the countryside, which paradoxically achieves a relatively stronger realism, being less imbued with the 'dreamlike' atmosphere which is usually associated with rural values.

Around 130 novels were officially published during the Cultural Revolution (CR). Among them, 24 novels which concern agriculture under the People's Republic occupy a prominent place. The investigation presented in this dissertation concentrates on these CR agricultural novels. Chapter I is the introduction, which discusses the theoretical foundation of CR novels through surveying the Chinese Communist Party's policies on literature and the arts. The tenets of Mao's 'Yan'an Talks' and the slogan 'Combination of Revolutionary Realism and Revolutionary Romanticism', along with the newly established principles generalised from the model theatrical works receive special emphasis. Chapter II is literary analysis, which concentrates on exploring the characterisation of the main proletarian heroes in a comprehensive (ideological, cultural, literary and aesthetic) perspective. It analyses six aspects with regard to the heroes: personal background physical qualities, ideological qualities, temperamental and behavioural qualities, the nature of the temperamental and behavioural qualities, and the prominence given to them. Chapter III is linguistic analysis, which focuses on vocabulary. The analysis is based on 10 sample novels (3 pre-CR novels and 7 CR novels). Twelve stylistic categories have been established through statistical analysis: vulgar expressions, ideological words and expressions idioms proverbs, <I>xiehouyu</I>, classical views, 'bookish', 'colloquial', dialectal words, military items in metaphorical use, meteorological items in metaphorical use, and inflated items. The investigation presents the density and distributions of the stylistic items concerning narrators and different types of characters, the general fictional language style, the relation between the general style and the authors' individual language style, and the similarities and differences between the pre-CR novel language style and CR novel language style. Chapter IV is the conclusion, which, after highlighting some significant findings, indicates that the position of CR novels in the history of contemporary Chinese literature cannot be ignored. These novels comprehensively tested the Party's orthodox literary and artistic principles in fictional creation. They not only carried forward the radical direction of the pre-CR novels but also indirectly determined the deviation of the post-CR fiction from its predecessor. By focusing on the detailed analysis of literary and linguistic aspects of CR fiction, the thesis corrects common errors in generalisations about the literature and language in the Cultural Revolution.

Pu Songling is well known for his recurrent failure to progress up through the civil service examination system, despite repeatedly taking the provincial level exam over a time-span of forty years. Nevertheless, he was able to produce a highly acclaimed work of literature, his monumental anthology of short stories, the <i>Strange Tales of Liaozhai </i>(Liaozhai zhiyi), together with a large volume of poetry, plays and other writings. My thesis considers the dichotomy between his lack of worldly success in a scholastic career, and his evident literary genius, within the context of an idealisation of innocence and childlike purity. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw what has been described as a “cult of the child” develop in many spheres of Chinese writing. Idealisation of childlikeness and innocence is exemplified by the influential essay “On the childlike mind” <i>(tongxin shuo) </i>by Li Zhi (1527-1602). For those who subscribed to views such as Li’s, genuineness, spontaneity and idealism were venerated, and worldly wisdom, cunning and falseness were despised. This naturally appealed to the growing number of literati like Pu Songling who, trapped within the stultifying examination system, were unable to fulfil their Confucian vocation and thus were rendered socially redundant. The contradiction between Pu’s ideals and the reality in which he finds himself is reflected in his creative writing. By idealising naive innocence and purity, in keeping with contemporary trends of literati thought, Pu is able to vent his frustration. In this thesis I consider three aspects of childlikeness in Pu’s writings: fantasy, naiveté and folly.

Various narratives of China and the Chinese have been elaborated in western literature since as early as the 13th century (for example, The Travels of Marco Polo, 1289). Prior to the 18th century, as documented in earlier studies, these narratives largely depicted China from a utopian and positive perspective. From the late 18th century to the early 20th century, China and the Chinese began to be cast in a generally negative light, in both non-translated European – mainly English and French – literature (for example, Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe) and translations of Chinese novels into European languages (for example, Hau Kiou Choaan, translated by James Wilkinson). Both of these periods (pre- and post-18th century to early 20th century) are well documented. By contrast, relatively few studies have been undertaken to date to examine how China and the Chinese are narrated in translations of Chinese novels since the 1980s. Most studies undertaken so far are not based on a large body of empirical data and/or are not theoretically informed. This study set out to examine the role played by translation in negotiating and mediating public narratives of China in the UK and US, with specific reference to the English translations of Chinese novels commissioned and sold in the UK and US literary markets between 1980 and 2010. Drawing on narrative theory, it examines publishers’ choices of source texts for English translation and the marketing strategies they employ in framing and promoting these novels, as well as critical responses to the translations, as articulated in book reviews published in mainstream media outlets in the UK and US during the period under study. The analysis carried out attempted to reveal some of the patterns which the publishing industry and other powerful institutions (such as reviewers, literary prizes, and universities) have given shape to, as these patterns of selective appropriation not only condition the ways in which individual Chinese novels are interpreted and received by English readers, but also evoke and consolidate the broader public narratives of China circulating in the UK and US. The findings of this research confirm the inextricable relationship between politics and the reception of Chinese novels in the Anglophone world during the period under study. English translations of Chinese novels have played a significant role in elaborating public narratives of China as a political and cultural Other, and in perpetuating these narratives across time and space. Adopting a chronological structure to examine these novels and the reviews they received, a crosscutting pattern of novels on personal trauma emerged from the selections of Chinese novels for English translation during the past 30 years. This pattern, which is prioritised and promoted by both UK and US publishers and reviewers, enjoyed a dominant position in the Chinese literary landscape in the Anglophone world and gained increasing currency through the feature of narrative accrual since the 1980s. Novels on personal trauma mainly centred on two specific historical moments in modern Chinese history: the Cultural Revolution, and the 1989 Tiananmen Square event. Focusing especially on narratives of censorship and dissidence, publishers and reviewers further framed the translations of this type of literature as valuable social documents, rather than creative literary works. This generic change makes it increasingly difficult for Chinese literature to be appreciated for its literary merits, independently from its political significance.

In Liaozhai zhiyi, a collection of almost five hundred tales by Pu Songling (1640-1715), young scholars fall in love with beautiful fox spirits or meet ghosts in abandoned temples; corpses walk and men change into birds; hideous apparitions invade the home, bodies become unfamiliar, children are born to women long dead, and things are rarely what they first seem. Throughout the collection, the monstrous intrudes on the ordered spaces of the human world, bringing disorder but also the fulfilment of desire. The collection was written by a man who was trapped in the 'examination hell' of the Chinese civil service system, and in the years since his death has brought him the success he never achieved in his professional life, being read, critiqued, loved, and adapted by successive generations, until the work itself has become as monstrous as a hybrid as some of the creatures within its pages. The Liaozhai tales which have received the most critical and popular attention are the tales of enchantment and romance between human men and ghosts or fox spirits. Yet this focus on only certain types of tale has meant that the collection, which is made up of patchwork of different traditions and influences, is rarely considered as a whole. This thesis attempts to redress the balance by arguing that the collection is a monstrous hybrid, made out of fragments of folklore, myth, previous stories and pure invention, using different literary traditions and created by the assumed persona of an author -the Historian of the Strange -who is himself as hybrid as some of the creatures in his tales. Because of this textual hybridity, combined with the myriad anomalous figures within its pages, the thesis takes the representation of monstrosity as central to the collection, using Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's 'Monster Culture' as a starting point. His influential work, first published in 1996, argues that the monster is a 'cultural body', containing the fears, anxieties and desires of the culture in which it is born. I hope that the thematic focus on the monster will allow the collection to be approached as an entity, considering the different types of tale, and the different figures within them, and how they work together or against each other. I argue that the examination of the monster as a 'cultural body' will add to the understanding of Liaozhai within the context of early Qing society and culture, in the way it can be seen as paradoxically both subverting and supporting social norms.

<i>Sui Yangdi Yanshi</i> (The Sensational History of Sui Emperor Yang) is a historical novel published in China in 1631. It portrays, in sometimes graphic detail, the rise and decline of Emperor Yang (reigned 605 - 613) whose obsession with massive construction projects and pursuit of sensual pleasure resulted in the collapse of the dynasty. The novel sank into relative obscurity upon the accession of the more conservative Qing dynasty (1644 - 1911). The major reason for the decline of the novel may be attributed to its inclusion in a later novel, <i>Sui Tang Yanyi</i> (Romance of the Sui and Tang Dynasties) which diluted the more graphic elements of the earlier work and embraced a more conservative social vision. This thesis utilises a critical methodology based on aspects of the work of the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin - specifically the concepts of genre, polyphony and intertextuality - to argue that the emerging vernacular novel form in seventeenth-century China is an open-ended and complex form which is capable of accommodating a variety of discourses, and which provides an environment in which a multiplicity of views are revalorised. It is argued that the novel form was regarded by intellectuals of the period as the best means of conveying human truth within the context of historicity and was a superior vehicle for the expression of the human condition than more institutionalised forms such as the Standard Imperial Histories. The thesis demonstrates that vernacular fiction displays an awareness of its fictionality and analyses the relationship between the narrative body and appended critical commentary. The final chapter utilises the concept of intertextuality to argue that creative understanding of vernacular fiction allows the reader to extend the range of meaning and exploit the latent potential of the vernacular novel form.

This thesis deals with two topics: macro-structurally speaking, the evolving and dynamic new patterns of commercial publishing over the internet where agents and institutions of commercial publishing have been repositioned in the digital Chinese literary field; micro-structurally speaking, the textual analysis of internet fiction prosumed by authors and readers to realise the collective desire of Chinese prosumers (producers and consumers). Together the two topics contribute to the study of the socio-cultural phenomenon of internet fiction in the transnational Chinese on-line literary sphere, especially in China. The internet promotes prosumption behaviour because prosumers are offered more autonomy. This autonomy helps to generate desire in prosumers by incessantly prosuming highly similar texts to reflect a growing Chinese individualisation. A textual analysis of the prosumed literary commodities will be conducted in order to comprehend the collective desire of general prosumers on the internet resulting from the prosumers’ literary autonomy. The approach to analysing the texts – prosumed commodities as the consequence of literary autonomy – is through psychoanalysis, which I believe is best suited to illuminate desire dwelling in the depths of the human mind. The production rates and consumption rates of various fiction genres from long-term statistics which I have collected from Qidian, the largest internet literary portal website based in China, provide the thesis with a standard by which to determine what types of works of fiction are popularly prosumed. The psychoanalytical approach will be applied for a deeper interpretation of these works to establish the reason for their popularity. Whilst internet fiction is being popularly prosumed and prosumers communicate with each other on an individual basis to spell out their desire, they use internet fiction as a channel to reflect their socio-cultural context through various fiction genres. Hence, by analysing the prosumers’ desire, this thesis also strives by means of textual analysis to go beyond interpreting individual desire to examine a symbiosis between prosumers and their socio-cultural environment. The discussion of the new business model of prosumption and the textual analysis of prosumed fiction are like the two sides of the same coin, where the new pattern of commercial publishing provides a mode in which Chinese prosumers are offered autonomy of production and consumption of literary commodities, whilst the prosumed literary commodities sustain the new pattern. Because of this reciprocal relationship, to research one without the other is likely to miss the whole picture of the socio-cultural phenomenon.