Chinese Writers' Online Booklist|New Books of Literary Theory Review (Issue 7)
"The 1980s: Six Novels" is a new book that has attracted a lot of attention recently, and every time a new book event is held, the live link will be swiped on WeChat. The cover of Cai Xiang's new book is simple and highly symbolic, with two distorted "80" numbers that resemble traffic signs, separated from the left and right, and the colors complement each other, except that the arrows are pointing up and down. If we regard this as one of the expressions that penetrated from the 1980s to the present, it is not difficult to find that the rupture and creativity in the "transitional era" have constituted the meta-problem of "contemporaneity", suggesting that we should re-examine the so-called literary reality. In this sense, Liu Yan's The North of the Same Times can be read at the same time as Cai Xiang's new book, and the prudent attention to the "debt" side of historical experience is a common quality of good literary research. Liu Yanshu explores the characteristics and values of modernity in the literary formation of the "Northeast" since modern times, and also outlines the cultural topographic map of the Northeast as the "North" with the vigilance of "still in the mirror".
With the establishment of the sub-discipline of "Chinese Creative Writing", the discussion on creative writing practice has become increasingly hot. Zhang Qinghua's "The Road to Narrative: Ten Lectures on Fictional Writing" is a compilation of lectures for the "Theory and Practice of Literary Creation" course in the past ten years, and it is also a textbook for Chinese creative writing that deserves wide popularity. If writing can provide possibilities and liberate imagination through "creativity", it must also face the limitations of imagination itself. Therefore, it is worth mentioning that in the book "Unlocking the Future", Luo Xiaoming critically analyzes the problems of urban imagination in contemporary science fiction, and condenses the questions with wonderful textual interpretation: how does imagination wrestle with ideology and sensory structures?
Including the above new works, a total of 17 recommended works are recommended in the seventh issue of "Liejin". At the same time, from this issue onwards, a section entitled "References" has also been added to the "Columns", which lists other new works that have inspired the study of modern and contemporary literature in the pan-humanities disciplines for a period of time.
——Column host: Chen Zeyu
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Bibliography of this issue:
Cai Xiang, The 1980s: Six Novels
Zhang Qinghua, "The Road to Narrative: Ten Lectures on Fictional Writing"
Wang Benchao, Literary Order and Value Identity: A Study of Contemporary Chinese Literature 1949-1976
Liu Yan, "The North in the Same Era: Historical Experience and Contemporary Cultural Production of the Old Industrial Base in Northeast China"
Song Jianhua, Deconstruction and Reconstruction: A Study of Ethical Narratives in New Literature
Luo Xiaoming, Unlocking the Future: Urban Imagination in Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction
Li Yi, "The Genealogy and Tradition of Modern Chinese New Poetry"
Zhang Taozhou, History and Landscape in Words: Basic Issues of New Chinese Poetry
Wang Yao, "Suddenly there are thoughts in the rivers and lakes: between the lines of literature"
Lu Yang, "Construction and Reconstruction: Discourse and Form of New Literature"
Zhou Baoxin, "Local Chronicles and the Construction of the Poetics of Contemporary Chinese Novels"
Zeng Pan, Writing in the New South: Geography, Experience and Imagination
Song Yuwen, "Snails on Thorns: A Study of Lu Ling and His Works"
Tu Jianing, "Mao Dun's "Stay" and "Farewell"
Rong Guangqi, Seeing Yourself Into the Wilderness: The Meaning of Literary Writing
Yu Xiangwu, The Narrator's Vision
He Jiayu, Waiting for the Light: Three Treatises on Yizhou
The 1980s: Six Novels
Cai Xiang, Life, · Reading· Xinzhi Joint Bookstore, June 2024
Following "Revolution/Narrative", scholar Cai Xiang once again published a new research book. "Six Notes of Novels" is an ideological text produced by Cai Xiang's combination of literary history with social history and intellectual history research, redrawing the social transition and ideological picture of the 1980s when "new insights are frequently emerging and dregs are rising" through literature. "Six Notes of the Novel" involves the interpretation of works such as "Fluctuations", "When the Sunset Disappears", "Life", "Ordinary World", "Furong Town", "The Children and Grandchildren of Luban", "The Appointment of Director Qiao" and other works. In Cai Xiang's view, one of the characteristics of the 1980s was that it was precisely the "step back" from radical political experiments, which gradually established the specific connotation of "reform" and provided a variety of historical possibilities, and how to choose constituted the internal anxiety of the 1980s.
The Road to Narrative: Ten Lectures on Fictional Writing
Zhang Qinghua, Guangxi Normal University Press, June 2024
Since 2015, Beijing Normal University has offered a course on "Theory and Practice of Literary Creation" for graduate students in the direction of literary creation, and scholar Zhang Qinghua has been the main teacher of this course for a long time. Over the years, Zhang Qinghua has established eight teaching directions for this course, which guide students to learn from the perspectives of cultural identity in writing, how to effectively refine meaning, how to sublimate realistic experience, the ethical spillover of literature to reality, how to pay homage to literary archetypes, the drama and lyricism of novel narration, the sense of form of work structure, and the depth of history and unconscious. "The Road to Narrative" is a compilation of Zhang Qinghua's lectures at Beijing Normal University in the past ten years, which constructs the dimension of "creative poetics" of fictional writing from a humanistic standpoint, opens up the creative landscape for beginners who are interested in writing, and can also be regarded as a theoretical foundation for the discipline of Chinese creative writing.
Literary Order and Value Identity: A Study of Contemporary Chinese Literature 1949-1976
Wang Benchao, Kyushu Publishing House, September 2023
Literary Order and Value Identity is a new book by scholar Wang Benchao, focusing on contemporary literary research from 1949 to 1976. Starting from the criteria of literary evaluation, Wang Benchao discussed the literary system, ideological reconstruction, writer training, creative methods, national forms, literary styles and other issues, distinguishing the concepts of "order", "system" and "system" that overlap or separate, examining the generation mechanism and value connotation of socialist literature, and explaining the structure of "system and value" formed by "social politics, literary criticism, and literary production" and its role in promoting and restricting contemporary literature. Wang Benchao believes that contemporary Chinese literature has the characteristics of convergence of current trends, self-containedness, restriction and adaptation, and mutual restraint, and that the evaluation of contemporary literature should adhere to the principles of historicity, classicization, and contemporaneity, and pay attention to the characteristics of a high degree of integration, while not ignoring its heterogeneity and practical value.
The North in the Contemporary Times: Historical Experience and Contemporary Cultural Production of the Old Industrial Base in Northeast China
Liu Yan, Shanghai People's Publishing House, April 2024
In the actual process of the formation of modern China, Northeast China has arrived from the "edge of China" to the "north", and has taken on the history of the frontier of alternative modernity, in which the principle of transformation and generation may unleash the potential of socialist poetics. In addition to literary texts, Liu Yan has mobilized a wide range of contemporary cultural media to explore the contemporaneity of the historical experience of the "North" with many contents, including storytelling, two-person turns, film and television dramas, shouting microphones, Spring Festival Gala sketches, avant-garde art, and urban reconstruction. In Liu Yan's writing, Northeast China is not only the object of regional dialectic, but also a method to try to overcome the landscape with experience and liberate imagination from memory. The author attempts to reflect on the popular discourse of the "Northeast Renaissance" in recent years and the real experience of the obscured community, and tries to explore the historical legacy of socialist cultural production for the future.
Deconstruction and Reconstruction: A Study of Ethical Narratives in New Literature
Song Jianhua, People's Publishing House, February 2024
Scholar Song Jianhua's new book "Deconstruction and Reconstruction" takes the history of modern Chinese literature, modern writers, and works as the research objects, trying to break the binary way of thinking of "enlightenment" and "revolution", and starting from the perspective of social ethics, it studies and analyzes the conceptual changes and literary expressions of the ethical relationship between "individual and family", "individual and society", "individual and nation", and "man and nature", aiming to reveal the ideological flow of China's traditional cultural moral system from "destruction" to "reconstruction" since the May Fourth New Culture Movement. and the difficult course of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. From the dynamic historical process, Song Jianhua re-understands the dialectical relationship between "human discovery" and "national rise", and then re-observes and interprets the internal regularity of the development of modern Chinese literature from a socio-cultural perspective in the historical changes of Chinese society.
Unlocking the Future: Urban Imagination in Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction
Luo Xiaoming, Shanghai Bookstore Publishing House, November 2023
As Chinese science fiction has transformed from a "lonely ambush" into an extremely important contemporary literary and cultural phenomenon, the meaning of "future" as a key word in contemporary culture has gradually become prominent. "Future", with its unique direction and normativity, constitutes an important foundation for China's entire social production mechanism. Unlocking the Future regards the urban imagination in contemporary Chinese science fiction as an important specimen of the future imagination formed by Chinese society after the reform and opening up, and examines and evaluates seven parts: the distinction of urban space, the reconstruction of time, the conception of urban infrastructure, the deduction of the concept of work/play, the evolution of urban-rural relations, the transformation of the concept of "civilization", and the exploration of the imaginary path of the future. On this basis, Luo Xiaoming also analyzes the relationship between "future imagination" and the existing sensory structure, and tries to discuss the limitations and possibilities of "future imagination" in contemporary society.
Genealogy and Tradition of Modern Chinese New Poetry
Li Yi, Culture and Art Publishing House, October 2023
"The Genealogy and Tradition of Modern Chinese New Poetry" is a rearrangement and summary of scholar Li Yi's research on new poetry over the years, and some of its chapters have been included in "Modern Chinese New Poetry and Classical Poetry Tradition" and "Lectures on Chinese New Poetry". In this work, Li Yi uses time as an axis to describe the tradition, birth, development, integration, and maturity of new poetry, and continues the brushstrokes to the era of new poetry differentiation after the founding of New China, so as to put forward an understanding of the evaluation criteria and scale of modern Chinese new poetry. The author believes that modern Chinese new poetry constitutes an important part of the literary heritage and spiritual needs of contemporary Chinese, and it is necessary to pay special attention to the particularity and epochality of the development of modern Chinese new poetry, and adjust our reading mentality and reading style on the basis of being familiar with and understanding these special forms.
History and Landscape in Words: The Basic Issues of New Chinese Poetry
Zhang Taozhou, China Youth Publishing House, August 2024
Based on the research perspective of the discourse of new poetry, this book comprehensively examines the context of the generation and development of new poetry, and believes that the complex operation between various fields as the context of new poetry has profoundly affected the textual composition and historical process of new poetry. "I think, therefore I am a butterfly", quotes Dai Wangshu's poem on the title page, which subtly expresses the author's new poetic concept: between language and thought. As Zhang Taozhou said, the historical context, as a supplement to the study of the linguistic level of new poetry, gradually shows a useful topicality, so the different chapters of the book correspond to the multiple topics of the new poetry, such as translation, politics, body, technology, theory, reading and education, forming a three-dimensional and complete problem domain, and incorporating the latest thinking on self-perception and the actual situation in the revision process of the article.
"Suddenly there are rivers and lakes: between the lines of literature"
Written by Wang Yao, Yilin Publishing House, April 2024
In recent years, scholar Wang Yao has gradually moved from "academy" to "academy", and it is clear that Xiaochang's Chinese grammar has begun to gain the upper hand in the tip of his pen. It is also a discussion of historical consciousness, literary trends, and writers' works, "Suddenly there Are Jianghu Thoughts" mostly presents literary thoughts in prose penmanship, "academic theory" is placed on "sensibility", but does not give way to vulgarity, and "articles" return to stylistic expression on the basis of ideology. The book includes Wang Yao's ontological reflections on creation and criticism in recent years, such as "The Necessity and Possibility of the New "Novel Revolution"", "Research on Contemporary Chinese Literature and Historical Materials as a Method", as well as "What is a Critic and What a Critic Is", "Notes on Mo Yan and Mo Yan Studies", "I Dream of Becoming a Son of the Chinese Language" and other essays, which are closer to the academic commentary of the essay style.
Constructing and Reconstructing: Discourse and Form of New Literature
Lu Yang, Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, June 2024
"Construction and Reconstruction" is the first book of the young scholar Lu Yang, which is divided into four chapters, "Accumulation of Habits and New Roads", "Lyricism and Epic", "City and Its Landscape", and "Tradition and Its Deformation". Lu Yang's "construction" and "reconstruction" aim to activate new historical energy. As the afterword says, "For literary studies and criticism, a more active sense of history may mean that we can identify literary traditions in literary phenomena, discover the recurrence of similar mental symptoms or historical constructs, and then seek to absorb and reconstruct them in terms of experience and methods." "Construction and Reconstruction" has a poetic pursuit of bridging history and form, and is committed to re-examining literature and politics that have been internalized in the historical process of the twentieth century, showing a sense of integration, comprehensiveness, and a historical conception that points to the future—"after all, we care about history because we care about the future."
Local Chronicles and the Construction of the Poetics of Contemporary Chinese Fiction
Zhou Baoxin, Zhejiang University Press, July 2023
In the context of the dive of contemporary fiction to the "local" and "folk", the rich content contained in local chronicles is increasingly becoming an important way for contemporary writers to construct the image of "local" and thus construct a diversified "China". In "Local Chronicles and the Construction of Poetics in Contemporary Chinese Novels", scholar Zhou Baoxin focuses on three aspects: local chronicles and contemporary novel genres and poetic traditions, geographical and spatial poetics, grammar and formal creation. Contemporary writers use local history as a resource for the creation of novels, and analyze the local small history, which interacts with the national history and the ups and downs and changes of the fate of the characters in the intersperse, giving birth to infinite history, times, and life conditions.
Writing in the New South: Geography, Experience, and Imagination
Zeng Pan, Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, June 2024
"New Southern Writing" has been a hot keyword in the field of contemporary literary criticism in the past few years, and the name of this term is also derived from the vigorous advocacy of journals and institutions such as Southern Literary Circle. The young critic Zeng Pan's New Southern Writing: Geography, Experience and Imagination is a collection of his thoughts on this issue, combining the vision and perspective of his dual identity as an editor and critic. Zeng Pan believes that the current "new" "south" is related to the spirit of change in the modern south, and the current social innovation trend of the "new south" is surging again, reflecting the continuity and continuation of the spirit of reality and cultural texture. "New Southern Writing" reintegrates and provides a diverse spiritual mirror, reinvigorates and shapes the "South", and will continue to stimulate new changes, new meanings and new life of the "South" in the derivation full of future possibilities.
Snails on Thorns: A Study of Lu Ling and His Works
Song Yuwen, Peking University Press, March 2024
Lu Ling is a talented and controversial writer in the history of modern and contemporary Chinese literature, who is committed to depicting "pain", "joy", "pursuit" and "dream". In the book "Snails on Thorns", we can see that scholar Song Yuwen comprehensively and meticulously combed Lu Ling's creative process, and carried out research on the basis of understanding Lu Ling's research results in various periods, explored the complex relationship between the writer's life and works, and explored the relationship between the context of the times and the time and space of the writer's activities. Comparing mainland studies with Taiwan's experience, the author tries to clarify the left-wing literary writing politics related to Lu Ling from the position of cross-referenced discourse, and reactivates the "slash zone" in which Lu Ling lives with sympathetic understanding. The "snail" on the thorns is a character created by Lu Ling, and it is also a portrayal of Lu Ling himself.
Mao Dun's "Stay" and "Don't"
Written by Tu Jianing, China Social Sciences Press, April 2024
"Mao Dun's "Stay" and "Farewell" is a new work of Mao Dun research by young scholar Tu Jianing, and it is also a representative work of the new generation of Mao Dun research. From the perspectives of political history, military history, economic history, cultural history, and social history, this book begins a close reading of Mao Dun's novels, and uses a "two-way mutual ploughing" method to allow historical materials and text details outside the text to penetrate each other, so as to study Mao Dun's novel creation in the decade from 1927 to 1936. Focusing on the axis of Midnight, Tu Jianing comprehensively examines Mao Dun's early revolutionary literature and the creation of the "Left Alliance" period, and focuses on presenting the intertextual relationship between these works, and then explores the potential connection between Mao Dun's novel creation and the National Revolution, presenting Mao Dun's trade-offs between various complex forces such as the Kuomintang Left and the "Trotskyists", as well as his complex spiritual journey as a left-wing intellectual.
Seeing Yourself Into the Wilderness: The Meaning of Literary Writing
Rong Guangqi, The Commercial Press, November 2023
The poet and scholar Rong Guangqi's new book "Seeing Myself into the Wilderness" is a collection of his poetry criticism articles over the years, and the subtitle of the book is "The Meaning of Literary Writing". Rong Guangqi believes that the meaning of literature is to truly reflect the life, survival and destiny of oneself and human beings. In this work, Rong Guangqi discusses the problems and trends of poetry, the meaning and limits of literary writing, among which the readers and authors of contemporary new poetry, the true meaning of "local poetry", and the problems of modernity in the discourse of "nature" are quite enlightening. The book consists of four chapters, the last of which is the author's reading notes on the novel, which is independent of the subject of the poem, and at the same time completes Rong Guangqi's critical style.
The Narrator's Vision
Yu Xiangwu, Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House, January 2024
The Narrator's Vision is a new collection of 25 articles by critic Yu Xiangwu, which is also a testimony to his editorial work. In the preface, Li Yunlei uses the pragmatic and transitive definition of "low-altitude flight" to describe Xiang Wu's critical essays, which is the inherent attribute of criticism from the editor, away from the theoretical deduction of volleying in the air, and speaking with a strong sense of presence, from the text to the text. The first volume of the book is "Tide Change", focusing on the issues of speculation, inheritance, and consciousness in the literary scene, showing the writer's strong sensitivity to literary trends. At the same time, "The Narrator's Vision" also includes dialogue articles between Yu Xiangwu and Hu Xuewen, Yin Xueyun, Zhong Qiushi, Hu Xian, and Fan Yiping, which shows the author's "vision". These are not only interviews, but also have a unique critical tone hidden in them.
Waiting for the Light: Three Treatises on Yizhou
Written by He Jiayu, Shaanxi Normal University Publishing House, August 2023
Waiting for the Light: Three Treatises on Yi Zhou is a collection of Yi Zhou commentaries by young critic He Jiayu, which consists of three essays: "The Departure and Return of the "Disorderly Person", "The Hidden Bridge and the Fog", "The Measurement and Roaming of Six Words", and a long dialogue. As a small but clever collection of reviews, "Waiting for the Light" dissects the story world created by the writer Yi Zhou one by one, showing the subtleties and twists behind his stories, as well as the tenacity and tenacious vitality of human life in the world. He Jiayu's style is light and beautiful, and there is a flow of "light" in his concise and restrained commentary. As the writer Li Er wrote on the title page of the book, "Here, Yi Zhou and He Jiayu, their creations and criticisms, mirror each other, send each other. Here they become a whole by bidirectional isomorphism, and they complete themselves by inventing each other".
In addition to the above excellent works, the recent books that can be used as a "reference" for modern and contemporary literary studies include Between Poetry and Philosophy: Literary Theory from the Perspective of Intellectual History (Feng Qing), Three Articles of Literature: A Political Philosophy Perspective (Hong Tao), The Emergence of Modern Chinese Historical Consciousness (Wang Qingjia), Trivia and Words: Culture, Cities and Enlightenment since the Ming and Qing Dynasties (Li Xiaoyi), The Age of Great Disrespect: A New History of Laughter in Modern China ([plus] Lei Qinfeng), The Chinese Character Revolution: The Origin of Chinese Chinese Modernity (1916— 1958) (Zhong Yurou), Books, Children and Adults (Paul · Hazard), Geocriticism: Truth, Fiction, Space (Beltang ·Westphal), Critical Consciousness (Georges · Plet), The Winter of Literature (Uvi · Witstock), After Auschwitz (Theodor· W. Adorno), "Wang Yao's Biography" (edited by Chen Pingyuan and Yuan Yidan) and other books, which are preserved here.
Since 2022, the column "New Writings of Literary Theory Criticism" has been set up to summarize new works in the field of modern and contemporary Chinese literature over a period of time. We would like to collect good books, but due to space limitations, we will only select exemplary scholars' masterpieces, new research works that are beneficial to the construction of the discipline, anthologies that reflect the compilation intention, theoretical works that represent the frontier of scholarship, and literary criticism with unique styles. In addition, except for special commemorative significance, "Column" does not recommend reprinting old works in principle. I hope that through this work, I will be able to save a picture of literary research for a period of time. In view of the limited energy and shyness of the editors, publishers and authors who are interested in joining the "Column" are also welcome to send new books or relevant materials to the following address: [email protected].
Typesetting: Xiao Yao
Editor: Liu Ya
Second trial: Zhang Junping
Third trial: Wang Yang