Poverty in modern Chinese realism : from Russia, with squalor / Keru Cai.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cai, Keru, author.

Series:

Global Asias

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

Chinese fiction.

Poverty in literature.

Realism in literature.

Russian fiction--Influence.

Russian fiction.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2025]

Summary:

"This book shows that early twentieth-century Chinese writers drew upon Russian texts about the socially downtrodden to describe poverty, in a bid to enrich Chinese culture by creating a syncretic new realism. Modern Chinese realist writers turned to the topic of material poverty—peasants suffering from famine, exploited urban laborers, homeless orphans—to convey their sense of textual poverty and national backwardness. The combination of a radically new subject matter and experimentation with diverse literary resources, indigenous and foreign, generated major innovations in narrative technique. Depicting poverty allowed writers to revolutionize the nascent forms of modern Chinese narrative, innovating strategies of representing the nation, the social other, time, and space, while problematizing their deployment of squalor for aesthetic purposes. This book examines why Russian literature, itself long preoccupied with a problem of belatedness vis-à-vis Western Europe, occupied a privileged place for Chinese intellectuals of this era. Comparing Chinese fiction about poverty to Russian intertexts by Gogol, Andreev, Chekhov, Turgenev, and others, the book shows how Chinese writers drew and innovated upon themes (such as madness or human animality) and formal elements (such as metonymy). The book’s multi-scalar approach emphasizing close textual analysis situates modern Chinese realism in the trans-Eurasian axis of world literature"-- Provided by publisher.

'Poverty in Modern Chinese Realism' shows how early 20th-century Chinese writers drew upon Russian realist fiction to develop new types of literature in China. They used elements found in Russian fiction by Gogol, Chekhov, Gorky, and others, in order to portray and remedy the poverty and backwardness they felt were holding China back.

Contents:

Introduction : Russia in the making of a modern Chinese realism

Textual poverty and national backwardness

Manual labor and manuscript

Hard times

Spatial metonymy : poverty in country and city

Conclusion : poverty in evolving guises.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on August 07, 2025).

Other Format:

Print version: Cai, Keru. Poverty in modern Chinese realism

ISBN:

9780198947080

0198947089

9780198947066

0198947062

9780198947073

0198947070

OCLC:

1484729472

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license