This dissertation studies the writing of fiction in modern China from 1937 to 1949 in the three politically-divided areas: the Nationalist-controlled area, the Communist-dominated region, and the Japanese-occupied districts (before 1945), under the framework of “contested modernities” (the capitalist, the colonialist, and the socialist). Works of fiction here are explored as fundamentally cultural responses to the social, political, and historical experience. Therefore, it appreciates the dialectics of the content-form of these works as expressions, manifestations, and articulations of the contending modernities that competed against each other during that era. Methodologically, this project combines the application of the theory of “field of cultural production” promoted by Pierre Bourdieu, with the approach of historical/political hermeneutics as advocated by Fredric Jameson. The three areas set the stage for cultural productions of differing ideological tendencies. In this context, fiction is a testing ground for various versions and visions of “new cultures” of Chinese modernities. Here, we treat “1940s China” as a social-cultural space and “fiction” as a literary and intellectual institution in which various visions of “new cultures” expressed themselves. “Style” or “form” then becomes a socially symbolic, political action in which writers’ search for social and symbolic certainty was incarnated. Part I, “Negotiating with the Nightmarish Modern,” explores writers from the Japanese-occupied areas. The first chapter studies the relationship between the experience of exile and Xiao Hong’s war-time diasporic literature. The second chapter explores the middle-brow boudoir literature from Shanghai. In particular, it studies the works by Zhang Ailing. Part II, “Rethinking the Disjointed Modern,” investigates the Nationalist-controlled regions. The so-called “neo-romanticist” writers Wumingshi and Xu Xu, as well as the famed writer of the “July School” Lu Ling, are its objects of study. The third part, “Contending for a New Modern,” takes as its object of research writings from the Communist-controlled area. It looks into the “peasant writer” Zhao Shuli’s stories and the works by the May-Fourth-writer-turned-Communist-intellectual, Ding Ling. The study not only substantiates the argument that in modern China, the search for a new subjectivity was undertaken through conquering the identity crisis of the “new man” and “new woman,” but also testifies to the fact that this “control of the form” was simultaneously a symbolic action that articulated the anxiety of the intellectuals about becoming a new, modern Chinese. Put in other way, this search for a new identity is premised upon the establishment of a new subjectivity, which was an integral part of the project of building various “new cultures.” Through a practice of political hermeneutics of fictional texts and social-historical subtexts, this dissertation shows that social modernity and literary modernity intertwined and interacted with each other in the development of modern Chinese literature / text

The crisis of the Chinese nation in the early twentieth century compelled May Fourth intellectuals to search for a modern self in order to modernize and strengthen the nation. They did so by self-consciously experimenting with literary forms and genres, from which the first-person narratives arose. This thesis explores how particular formal or generic characteristics produce, problematize, or even impede the formation of a modern self modeled on the Western Enlightenment notions of the self as autonomous, coherent, and bounded. I argue that despite the two authors’ attempt to create an aspirational modern self, the selves constructed in the two texts are always fragile, split and fragmented. It not only reveals the limits of the Western Enlightenment epistemology of the self but also a more complicated processes of how the concepts of the self and subjectivity, as discursive constructs, are contested and negotiated in particular historical circumstance and social reality.

This study consist of a comparative analysis of the nostalgic female characters in Pai Hsien-yung's two short stories: "Wandering in a Garden, Waking from a Dream," and "A Celestial in Mundane Exile," and Tennessee Williams's two plays: The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. Beginning with a brief discussion of the socio-historical background of Pai's Republican China and Williams's American South, a general analysis of previous scholarship on Pai and Williams's works follows. The analysis of the selected works focuses on the stylistic and symbolic features in Pai and Williams's characterizations, such as Pai's use of stream-of-consciousness, reference to the k'un opera Peony Pavilion, elaboration over descriptive details of the setting, symbolic use of clothing and accessories, and Williams's symbolic use of music genres: "Blues Piano" and the "Varsouviana Polka," and his use of rhythm and other poetic elements in his characters' speech, in the style of "personal lyricism." My study is based on a close-reading analysis of the selected works by Pai and Williams. Their humanistic approach to their respective declining aristocratic cultures and their sympathy for the nostalgic female characters' tragedies will be more apparent when the study focuses mostly on the texts themselves. Their similar belief in the universal values, such as compassion, sacrifice, and courage, has made their works comparable. In the discussion of themes, the idea of the humanistic role of literature articulated by William Faulkner in his Nobel Prize Speech is also used to connect Pai and Williams's sympathetic approach to their characters.

Hu Shi began the modern Chinese New Poetry movement by calling for the liberation of poetic forms, but what constitutes "form" and how best to approach its liberation have remained difficult issues, as the apparent material, objective reality of literary form is shown to be deeply embedded both culturally and historically. This dissertation presents five movements of the dialectic between form and history, each illustrated by case studies drawn from the theory and practice of modern Chinese poetry: first, the highly political and self-contradictory demand for linguistic transparency; second, the discourse surrounding poetic obscurity and alternative approaches to the question of "meaning"; third, a theory of poetry based on its musicality and a reading practice that emphasizes sameness over difference; four, poetry's status as "untranslatable" as against Chinese poetry's reputation as "already translated"; and fifth, the implications of an "iconic" view of poetic language. By reading a selection of poets and schools through the lens of their approaches to form, I allow the radical difference within the tradition to eclipse the more familiar contrast of modern Chinese poetry with its foreign and pre-modern others. My dissertation represents a preliminary step towards a historically-informed formalism in the study of modern Chinese literature. / East Asian Languages and Civilizations

This study consist of a comparative analysis of the nostalgic female characters in Pai Hsien-yung's two short stories: "Wandering in a Garden, Waking from a Dream," and "A Celestial in Mundane Exile," and Tennessee Williams's two plays: The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. Beginning with a brief discussion of the socio-historical background of Pai's Republican China and Williams's American South, a general analysis of previous scholarship on Pai and Williams's works follows. The analysis of the selected works focuses on the stylistic and symbolic features in Pai and Williams's characterizations, such as Pai's use of stream-of-consciousness, reference to the k'un opera Peony Pavilion, elaboration over descriptive details of the setting, symbolic use of clothing and accessories, and Williams's symbolic use of music genres: "Blues Piano" and the "Varsouviana Polka," and his use of rhythm and other poetic elements in his characters' speech, in the style of "personal lyricism." My study is based on a close-reading analysis of the selected works by Pai and Williams. Their humanistic approach to their respective declining aristocratic cultures and their sympathy for the nostalgic female characters' tragedies will be more apparent when the study focuses mostly on the texts themselves. Their similar belief in the universal values, such as compassion, sacrifice, and courage, has made their works comparable. In the discussion of themes, the idea of the humanistic role of literature articulated by William Faulkner in his Nobel Prize Speech is also used to connect Pai and Williams's sympathetic approach to their characters.

This study consist of a comparative analysis of the nostalgic female characters in Pai Hsien-yung's two short stories: "Wandering in a Garden, Waking from a Dream," and "A Celestial in Mundane Exile," and Tennessee Williams's two plays: The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. Beginning with a brief discussion of the socio-historical background of Pai's Republican China and Williams's American South, a general analysis of previous scholarship on Pai and Williams's works follows. The analysis of the selected works focuses on the stylistic and symbolic features in Pai and Williams's characterizations, such as Pai's use of stream-of-consciousness, reference to the k'un opera Peony Pavilion, elaboration over descriptive details of the setting, symbolic use of clothing and accessories, and Williams's symbolic use of music genres: "Blues Piano" and the "Varsouviana Polka," and his use of rhythm and other poetic elements in his characters' speech, in the style of "personal lyricism." My study is based on a close-reading analysis of the selected works by Pai and Williams. Their humanistic approach to their respective declining aristocratic cultures and their sympathy for the nostalgic female characters' tragedies will be more apparent when the study focuses mostly on the texts themselves. Their similar belief in the universal values, such as compassion, sacrifice, and courage, has made their works comparable. In the discussion of themes, the idea of the humanistic role of literature articulated by William Faulkner in his Nobel Prize Speech is also used to connect Pai and Williams's sympathetic approach to their characters. / Arts, Faculty of / Asian Studies, Department of / Graduate

This thesis makes an inquiry into the literary translation and creation in the early twentieth-century China, particularly between the years 1900 and 1925. I combine the theoretical approaches of both translation studies and intertextuality studies to form the overall methodological framework that informs the discussions in the thesis. Although the modern transformation of Chinese literature has long been discussed and debated in various scholarly works, which often attribute the transformation to foreign influences and reconstruction of indigenous literary tradition, a theoretical language is urgently required to articulate the exact process of literary adaptation and appropriation. Rather than taking the concept of “influence” at face value, I probe the intricate process of influence by examining the way Chinese writers and translators creatively translated and intertextualized foreign literary works to construct new literary texts. The two modalities of literary production – translation and intertextuality – call for the approaches of translation studies and intertextuality studies, and only when both approaches are taken into account can a fuller understanding of the literary scene in the early years of twentieth-century China be obtained. I apply my methodology to the study of the transformation of emotional expressions which are most frequently found in love fiction. By combining translation and intertextuality, some Chinese writer-translators such as Bao Tianxiao and Zhou Shoujuan creatively translated foreign fiction, conveying emotions different from those intended by the original texts while at the same time introducing new modes of emotional expression to Chinese literature. Others, such as Su Manshu and Yu Dafu, borrowed foreign literary texts to construct their own literary creations, appropriating the emotions conveyed by the foreign texts. As a result of the vigorous adaptation and appropriation of Chinese writer-translators, new modes of emotional expression emerged in modern Chinese literature.

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This thesis aims to shed new light on the Chinese character xia 侠 and the literature and history of the Republican Era (1912-1949) that revolves around it. Xia refers to either a concept (identifiable with kindness, altruism, righteousness, etc.) or to a person who practices this concept. Ever since its arrival in Chinese texts in the sixth century BC, it has created controversy for some and sympathy for others. In Modern China, xia became the central aspect of a literary genre that reached its zenith in production and consumption in the Republican Era, i.e. wuxia fiction 武侠小说, which can be translated as “using martial arts (wu 武) to obtain xia”. The concept of xia was an integral part of presumably the most widespread literary genre of the time, but why were Republican-era readers so interested in it? Why did they relate to xia and what do the themes of these novels say about the chaotic Republican Era? To answer these questions, this thesis presents a case study of a wuxia pentalogy written by Wang Dulu at the end of the Republican Era and attempts to identify the topics and aspects most reflective of that historical period, showing that, despite the heavy criticism of intellectuals of that time, these “easy” popular novels contain innovative and modern aspects and can become today of great historical importance. The thesis starts with two literature reviews. The first determines that the term xia has not received enough scholarly attention, calling for a reassessment. The second literature review focuses on Republican Era wuxia fiction, showing how there is a gap in scholarship on this period. This is followed by a discussion of the methodology used for the analysis of the case study on Wang Dulu’s Crane-Iron Series written in Qingdao (1938-1944), presented in the final three chapters of the thesis. Chapter one analyses the origins of the term xia in texts from the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) and Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), presenting new interpretations for a more comprehensive understanding of the term. Chapter two gives a historical overview of xia¬-related literature and addresses the historical reasons for the changes that xia underwent throughout Chinese history. Chapter three includes a historiography of the Republican Era in combination with the life of the author Wang Dulu and identifies the aspects of the author’s life that will become important in the textual analysis in the chapters to follow. Chapter four focuses on xia in the Crane-Iron Series. After having collected the terms and identified the semantic spheres that include the Chinese character xia, the chapter demonstrates how the story of one of the series’ protagonist can be seen as an personification of Republican-era China, proving the historical dimension and value of these novels. Chapter five analyses yi 义 (righteousness) and represents the virtuous aspect of xia, concluding that, according to Wang Dulu, for the concept of xia, virtue is more important than being trained in martial arts (wu). Chapter six focuses on the literary figure of the baobiao 保镖 (protector) and is seen as the commercialisation of martial arts not necessarily linked to xia, showing how entrepreneurship and violence were characteristics of the time.

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