The monster that is history : history, violence, and fictional writing in twentieth-century China / David Der-wei Wang.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wang, Dewei.

Series:

Philip E. Lilienthal Book in Asian Studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Chinese fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

Chinese fiction.

Chinese fiction--Taiwan--History and criticism.

Violence in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (414 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, 2004.

Language Note:

English

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Summary:

In ancient China a monster called Taowu was known for both its vicious nature and its power to see the past and the future. Over the centuries Taowu underwent many incarnations until it became identifiable with history itself. Since the seventeenth century, fictive accounts of history have accommodated themselves to the monstrous nature of Taowu. Moving effortlessly across the entire twentieth-century literary landscape, David Der-wei Wang delineates the many meanings of Chinese violence and its literary manifestations. Taking into account the campaigns of violence and brutality that have rocked generations of Chinese-often in the name of enlightenment, rationality, and utopian plenitude-this book places its arguments along two related axes: history and representation, modernity and monstrosity. Wang considers modern Chinese history as a complex of geopolitical, ethnic, gendered, and personal articulations of bygone and ongoing events. His discussion ranges from the politics of decapitation to the poetics of suicide, and from the typology of hunger and starvation to the technology of crime and punishment.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Invitation to a Beheading

2. Crime or Punishment?

3. An Undesired Revolution

4. Three Hungry Women

5. Of Scars and National Memory

6. The Monster That Is History

7. The End of the Line

8. Second Haunting

Notes

Bibliography

Glossary

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 343-370) and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN:

9786612762949

9781282762947

128276294X

9780520937246

0520937244

9781597349444

1597349445

OCLC:

475933888