Transcript File

Modern Chinese Literature in
Translation (1911- 1990)
Fiction and Critical Reading
Fiction
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What is a fiction?
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A work of fiction is a narrative, with characters, with
a setting, told by a narrator, with some claim to
represent 'the world' in some fashion.
A narrative has three elements:
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Story/Content: what happened in the story?
Discourse/Expression: How is the story told?
Narration/Narrator: Who is telling the story?
What do we look at and what should we keep
in mind? – from a critical perspective
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Plot
Character
Setting
The narrator
Figurative language
Representation of reality
The world-view
Narrator Issue
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From where is the story being told?
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How many narrators are there?
How much does the narrator know?
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Is there an omniscient, all known narrator?
How reliable is the narrator?
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External vs. internal
Knowledge? Intention? Bias? Blindness?
What is the narrator’s orientation?
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Distance; interest; sympathy; voice; orientation;
sense of audience
Figurative language, representation of
reality, and the world-view
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Language: What language does it use to characterize the
sensibility, to therefore represent reality?
Representation: it is not directly; it is various from form to form; it
is selective and exclusive; it requires various devices to put the
selected elements together;
Would view: as astute readers, we should always be aware:
 the shape of the world that the fiction projects,
 the structure of values that underlie the fiction (what the fiction
explicitly claims and what it implicitly claims through its codes and
its ideological understandings);
 the distances and similarities between the world of the fiction
and the world that the reader inhabits;
 The significances of the selections and exclusions of the
narrative in representing human experience.
Reasons for critical reading
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A richer & deeper understanding of text
Be aware the ideological aspects of a
work
To understand ideas and feelings crossculturally.
What about you, the Reader? How do
you go about measuring your own
feelings and responses to the text?
A critical reading on Wild Swans
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Background
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What kind of text is it?
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family saga,
political text,
historical text, or
a descriptive text?
What are the most striking details to you?
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What can identity of the writer, publishing time, and market
tell you about the book?
Foot binding? Concubines? Human desires?
What do they say about Chinese society and culture
at the time?
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Can you relate them to the documentary you saw last time?
Further thinking
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What is it to make the book best seller? if it
was not banned in China, would Chinese
audience like the book?
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Its cross-cultural representations: re-enforce
western self-image of independence, freedom,
and so on
Negative aspects of Chinese society
What would you predict the author would
present in our next reading?
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Think about the narrator in terms of its reliability,
its orientation and its sense of audience
A pop-up quiz
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What are names of “grand-mother” and
“mother”?
Which family member did Dr. Xia loose
before he was able to marry “grand-mother”?
And why?
Who is Cousin Hu?
Presentation after Mid-term
Chinese Propaganda Posters
from the Shanghai Poster Art Centre
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Symposium: Saturday, 12 April 2008
Exhibition: the Richard R. Nelson Art Gallery
3 April to 18 May, 2008