The Disillusionment with the Rural Utopia in Chinese Literature

• Wu Xiaodong 吴晓东 - Peking University, China - email

Introduction

• Introduction
• Tiziana Lippiello, Maddalena Barenghi, Chen Yuehong 陈跃红

Part 1 Pre-Modern and Modern Literature

• Measuring Human Relations
  Continuities and Discontinuities in the Reading of the Lunyu 
• Tiziana Lippiello

• Bai Shouyi on Sima Qian and Ban Gu
• Hans van Ess

• '中国'之义：文中子的立身与存心
  The Notion of ‘Zhongguo’: The Life and Thought of Wenzhongzi
• Zhang Pei 张沛

• On the Literary Self-Consciousness of the Han, Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties
• Fu Gang 傅刚

• Traditional Chinese Jestbooks and Ming Revival
• Giulia Baccini

• 《水浒传》评论中对立思维的三次递进
  On the Three Stages of Contradictory Comments of The Water Margin
• Liu Yongqiang 刘永强

• Becoming a Couple
  Conversations and Couple Narrative in the Novella Jiao Hong ji
• Barbara Bisetto

• The Chapter Titles in Xiyou ji and Honglou meng
  Continuity and Discontinuity
• Nicholas Koss

Part 2 Contemporary Literature

• Comparative Literature and World Literature in an Age of Trans-cultural Dialogue
• Chen Yuehong 陈跃红

• The Tradition of Telling and the Desire of Showing in Ge Fei’s ‘Fictional Minds’
• Nicoletta Pesaro

• ‘晚郁时期’的中国当代文学
  'The Belated Mellow Period' of Chinese Contemporary Literature
• Chen Xiaoming 陈晓明

• The Pragmatic Tradition of Chinese Literature and the Current ‘Spirit of the Times’
• Marco Fumian

• Honma Hisao’s model of Literary Theory and its Influence in China
• Jin Yongbing 金永兵

• The Disillusionment with the Rural Utopia in Chinese Literature
• Wu Xiaodong 吴晓东

Part 3 Poetry and Theatre

• Traditions and Transitions in Eighteenth-Century Qu Poetry
  The Case of Jiang Shiquan (1725-1785)
• Tian Yuan Tan

• Feng Zhi and Goethe of Later Years
• Zhang Hui 张辉

• Liu Xie’s Wenxin diaolong, Ernest Fenollosa’s The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry and 20th Century Avant-garde
• Sean Golden

• What’s the Link between the Lyrical and Modernity in China?
  A Discussion on Chinese lyrical Modernity
• Li Yang 李杨

• Poetic Taste and Tasting Poetry
• Yang Zhu 杨铸

• Voices of the Dead
  Tao Yuanming and Emily Dickinson’s Poems on Their Own Death
• Qin Liyan 秦立彦

Part 4 Language and Political Discourse

• Modernity and Subjectivity from the Past to the Present
• Yang Xiaobin 杨小滨

• The Evolution of Metaphorical Language in Contemporary Chinese Political Discourse
  Preliminary Evidence from the 12th and 18th CPC Congresses
• Paolo Magagnin

• 论“底”来源于“者”
  On the Derivation of ‘di’ 底 from ‘zhě’ 者
• Yang Rongxiang 杨荣祥

Biographies

• Biographies

DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_chapter_447
dc.contributor.author	吴晓东 Wu Xiaodong
dc.title	The Disillusionment with the Rural Utopia in Chinese Literature
dc.type	Chapter
dc.language.iso	it
dc.description.abstract	The narrative of utopia in Chinese literature has been unable to break free from the literary tradition of the land of peach blossoms by Tao Yuanming. From Fei Ming’s Qiao (1932) to Yan Lianke’s Shouhuo (2003), there is a retrospective attribute, constructing a rural utopia with the land of peach blossoms as the basis. This paper begins by accounting for the images of the Oriental utopia with which Fei Ming’s novels are imbued, then, upon close examination of Yan Lianke’s Shouhuo, discusses the tradition of rural utopia in Chinese literature and its process towards final disillusion in the 21st century. Shouhuo is unique in both its narrative form and concept of utopia, especially in its description of the paradise created by the disabled; ‘disability’ is hence an important aspect of this utopia. Yet Shouhuo presents attributes of dystopia at the very end: it reveals the disillusion with various forms of utopia – Chinese tradition, communism, and consumerism – presenting the deep-seated historical crisis of Chinese rural society and the emptiness of contemporary cultural ideology, societal ideals and historical perspective. The discourse and historical practice of utopia forms an important thread in the cultural history of mankind, with utopia becoming an important motif in world literature. Chinese writers have unavoidably touched on this subject matter in various forms. This paper attempts to briefly trace the narrative of utopia in the history of Chinese literature, and then, focusing on Yan Lianke’s novel, Shouhuo, discusses the issue of rural utopia and its eventual disillusion in Chinese literature.
dc.relation.ispartof	Sinica venetiana
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing
dc.issued	2016-09-29
dc.dateSubmitted	2016-07-16
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/libri/978-88-6969-098-3/the-disillusionment-with-the-rural-utopia-in-chine/
dc.identifier.doi	10.14277/6969-095-2/SV-3-14
dc.identifier.issn	2610-9654
dc.identifier.eissn	2610-9042
dc.identifier.isbn	978-88-6969-098-3
dc.identifier.eisbn	978-88-6969-095-2
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
item.fulltext	with fulltext
item.grantfulltext	open
dc.peer-review	no
dc.subject	Dystopia
dc.subject	Dystopia
dc.subject	Shouhuo
dc.subject	Shouhuo
dc.subject	Utopia
dc.subject	Utopia
dc.subject	Yan Lianke
dc.subject	Yan Lianke
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