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Sangvinolent berättande : En studie av Yu Huas roman En handelsman i blod / Sangvinolent Narration : A Study of Yu Hua's Novel Chronicle of a Blood Merchant

The present MA thesis analyzes how body and blood functions as historical and narrative elements in Yu Hua's novel Chronicle of a Blood Merchant (1995). In the novel, the story and the plot can not be regarded as disparate items; the two levels of the text are tightly interwoven by what the thesis introduces as a sangvinolent narration. The term conceptualizes the use of blood as a structural element and the thrust of the text, in this case how the ability to sell blood is a prerequisite for the story and the plot. Close readings reveal the structural correlations between the blood-selling main-character Xu Sanguan in the plot on the one hand, and in the story on the other, which can be detected to have, inter alia, an effect on the temporality of the narrative. Themes linked to identity, belonging and survival (performativity, mimicry, reification and alienation) permeate the text. In the novel the body and bodily fluids are sacrificed in order to form and enforce perceptions of identity and societal roles. The rhetorical use of ‘blood and tears’ (Ch. xue yu lei) indicates thematic connections to the Chinese revolutionary literature, and furthermore, the use of flesh and blood can be read in relation to the cannibalistic discourses crucial to Chinese modernity since Lu Xun.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:sh-8658
Date January 2011
CreatorsEngdahl, Lin
PublisherSödertörns högskola, Institutionen för genus, kultur och historia
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageSwedish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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