Modern Chinese Fiction and Prose
- LAST REVIEWED: 22 April 2013
- LAST MODIFIED: 22 April 2013
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199920082-0058
- LAST REVIEWED: 22 April 2013
- LAST MODIFIED: 22 April 2013
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199920082-0058
Introduction
Modern Chinese literature has conventionally been seen as erupting suddenly in conjunction with the May Fourth New Culture movement (1915–1925), which denounced the Confucian tradition and sought to replace it with Western-influenced intellectual and literary models. However, in recent years, working in what is generally called the “alternative modernities” framework, scholars have sought to debunk May Fourth “hegemony” and expand the nature of what constitutes Chinese literary modernity to include late Qing (1840–1911) fiction, popular entertainment fiction (including love stories and martial arts novels), prose literature of leisure, and private “domestic fiction” by women writers. Although a literature in the service of political and cultural causes had been an important facet of the literary field since the late Qing, after 1949 it was promoted by the state, both on the mainland and on Taiwan. The field has tended to dismiss this literature as propaganda, but scholars have very recently begun to revisit it. With the death of Mao (1976) on the mainland and the end of martial law on Taiwan (1987), the state’s stranglehold on literature lessened greatly, creating relatively liberal environments for free expression, though on the mainland writers continue to feel the effects of censorship. With the end of martial law, writers self-consciously produced “Taiwan literature,” related to but different from the Chinese-language literature on the mainland. The early development of modern literature in Hong Kong was deeply indebted to immigrants from the mainland and cultural interaction with Taiwan, but as retrocession (1997) approached, writers began to grapple with questions of Hong Kong identity and history, though Western scholarly attention to this literature has only just begun. In the “post societies” of Greater China (post-Mao/postsocialist on the mainland, post-martial law in Taiwan, and postcolonial in Hong Kong) literature has diversified, but it is constrained, as it is around the world, by market forces. Modern Chinese fiction and prose as a field of study developed in the 1930s, and the scholarly enterprise was promoted and shaped by the socialist state after 1949. In the West, the field took shape initially in the context of the Cold War during the 1960s, when fiction was often analyzed as sociological documents. Over the decades, the field has grown dramatically (especially after the 1980s influx of scholars coming from the People’s Republic of China to study and teach in the West) and has become more sophisticated in its theoretical frameworks and analytical methodologies. This bibliography focuses on major English-language studies, with less attention paid to the vast Chinese-language scholarship. Its scope comprises studies of fiction and prose in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Poetry and drama studies are not considered. With the exception of a study of Lu Xun (see Lee 1987, cited under Literary Modernity), it treats only studies of a general nature, not studies of individual writers.
General Studies
This section includes works of a general nature that do not fit neatly into the chronologically organized sections that follow.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- 1989 People's Movement
- Aesthetics
- Agricultural Technologies and Soil Sciences
- Agriculture, Origins of
- Ancestor Worship
- Anti-Japanese War
- Architecture, Chinese
- Assertive Nationalism and China's Core Interests
- Astronomy under Mongol Rule
- Book Publishing and Printing Technologies in Premodern Chi...
- Buddhism
- Buddhist Monasticism
- Buddhist Poetry of China
- Budgets and Government Revenues
- Calligraphy
- Central-Local Relations
- Ceramics
- Chiang Kai-shek
- Children’s Culture and Social Studies
- China and Africa
- China and Peacekeeping
- China and the World, 1900-1949
- China's Agricultural Regions
- China’s Soft Power
- China’s West
- Chinese Alchemy
- Chinese Communist Party Since 1949, The
- Chinese Communist Party to 1949, The
- Chinese Diaspora, The
- Chinese Nationalism
- Chinese Script, The
- Christianity in China
- Civil Society in China
- Classical Confucianism
- Collective Agriculture
- Concepts of Authentication in Premodern China
- Confucius
- Confucius Institutes
- Consumer Society
- Contemporary Chinese Art Since 1976
- Corruption
- Criticism, Traditional
- Cross-Strait Relations
- Cultural Revolution
- Daoism
- Daoist Canon
- Deng Xiaoping
- Dialect Groups of the Chinese Language
- Disability Studies
- Drama (Xiqu 戏曲) Performance Arts, Traditional Chinese
- Dream of the Red Chamber
- Early Imperial China
- Economic Reforms, 1978-Present
- Economy, 1895-1949
- Emergence of Modern Banks
- Energy Economics and Climate Change
- Environmental Issues in Contemporary China
- Environmental Issues in Pre-Modern China
- Establishment Intellectuals
- Ethnicity and Minority Nationalities Since 1949
- Ethnicity and the Han
- Examination System, The
- Fall of the Qing, 1840-1912, The
- Falun Gong, The
- Family Relations in Contemporary China
- Fiction and Prose, Modern Chinese
- Film, Chinese Language
- Film in Taiwan
- Financial Sector, The
- Five Classics
- Folk Religion in Contemporary China
- Folklore and Popular Culture
- Foreign Direct Investment in China
- Gardens
- Gender and Work in Contemporary China
- Gender Issues in Traditional China
- Great Leap Forward and the Famine, The
- Guanxi
- Guomindang (1912–1949)
- Han Expansion to the South
- Health Care System, The
- Heritage Management
- Heterodox Sects in Premodern China
- Historical Archaeology (Qin and Han)
- Hukou (Household Registration) System, The
- Human Origins in China
- Human Resource Management in China
- Human Rights in China
- Imperialism and China, c. 1800–1949
- Industrialism and Innovation in Republican China
- Innovation Policy in China
- Intellectual Trends in Late Imperial China
- Islam in China
- Jesuit Missions in China, from Matteo Ricci to the Restora...
- Journalism and the Press
- Judaism in China
- Labor and Labor Relations
- Landscape Painting
- Language, The Ancient Chinese
- Language Variation in China
- Late Imperial Economy, 960–1895
- Late Maoist Economic Policies
- Law in Late Imperial China
- Law, Traditional Chinese
- Legalism
- Li Bai and Du Fu
- Liang Qichao
- Literati Culture
- Literature Post-Mao, Chinese
- Literature, Pre-Ming Narrative
- Liu, Zongzhou
- Local Elites in Ming-Qing China
- Local Elites in Song-Yuan China
- Lu, Xun
- Macroregions
- Management Style in "Chinese Capitalism"
- Manchukuo
- Mao Zedong
- Marketing System in Pre-Modern China, The
- Marxist Thought in China
- Material Culture
- May Fourth Movement
- Media Representation of Contemporary China, International
- Medicine, Traditional Chinese
- Medieval Economic Revolution
- Mencius
- Middle-Period China
- Migration Under Economic Reform
- Ming and Qing Drama
- Ming Dynasty
- Ming Poetry 1368–1521: Era of Archaism
- Ming Poetry 1522–1644: New Literary Traditions
- Ming-Qing Fiction
- Modern Chinese Drama
- Modern Chinese Poetry
- Modernism and Postmodernism in Chinese Literature
- Mohism
- Museums
- Music in China
- Needham Question, The
- Neo-Confucianism
- Neolithic Cultures in China
- New Social Classes, 1895–1949
- One Country, Two Systems
- One-Child Policy, The
- Opium Trade
- Orientalism, China and
- Palace Architecture in Premodern China (Ming-Qing)
- Paleography
- People’s Liberation Army (PLA), The
- Philology and Science in Imperial China
- Poetics, Chinese-Western Comparative
- Poetry, Early Medieval
- Poetry, Traditional Chinese
- Political Art and Posters
- Political Dissent
- Political Thought, Modern Chinese
- Polo, Marco
- Popular Music in the Sinophone World
- Population Dynamics in Pre-Modern China
- Population Structure and Dynamics since 1949
- Porcelain Production
- Post-Collective Agriculture
- Poverty and Living Standards since 1949
- Printing and Book Culture
- Prose, Traditional
- Qi Baishi
- Qing Dynasty up to 1840
- Regional and Global Security, China and
- Religion, Ancient Chinese
- Renminbi, The
- Republican China, 1911-1949
- Revolutionary Literature under Mao
- Rural Society in Contemporary China
- School of Names
- Shanghai
- Silk Roads, The
- Sino-Hellenic Studies, Comparative Studies of Early China ...
- Sino-Japanese Relations Since 1945
- Sino-Soviet Relations, 1949–1991
- Social Welfare in China
- Sociolinguistic Aspects of the Chinese Language
- Su Shi (Su Dongpo)
- Sun Yat-sen and the 1911 Revolution
- Taiping Civil War
- Taiwanese Democracy
- Taiwan's Miracle Development: Its Economy over a Century
- Technology Transfer in China
- Television, Chinese
- Terracotta Warriors, The
- Tertiary Education in Contemporary China
- Texts in Pre-Modern East and South-East Asia, Chinese
- The Economy, 1949–1978
- The Shijing詩經 (Classic of Poetry; Book of Odes)
- Township and Village Enterprises
- Traditional Historiography
- Transnational Chinese Cinemas
- Tribute System, The
- Unequal Treaties and the Treaty Ports, The
- United States-China Relations, 1949-present
- Urban Change and Modernity
- Uyghurs
- Vernacular Language Movement
- Village Society in the Early Twentieth Century
- Warlords, The
- Water Management
- Women Poets and Authors in Late Imperial China
- Xi, Jinping
- Xunzi
- Yan'an and the Revolutionary Base Areas
- Yuan Dynasty
- Yuan Dynasty Poetry
- Zhu Xi