Chenxi Tang
Reading Europe, Writing China. European Literary Tradition and Chinese Authorship in Yu Dafu’s Sinking
A comparative reading of Goethe’s Werther
(1774) and Yu Dafu’s Sinking (1921) reveals how modern Chinese
literary discourse emerged from an at once invigorating and torturous encounter
with modern European literature in the May Fourth period. Reading European
literature, as the case of Yu Dafu indicates, is a communicative process that
involves complex negotiations on perceptual, libidinal, institutional and other
levels. Any act of writing oriented towards a European model necessarily
inscribes within itself all the tensions, conflicts, and negotiations attendant
upon the reading of European texts. Modern Chinese writing that seeks to model
itself on a European literary form is never a copy of this form, but always a
protocol of reading it.
Arcadia International Journal for Literary Studies, Walter de Gruyter
Print ISSN: 0003-7982
Volume: 40, 07/2005
Pages: 153 - 176
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