Bird Talk and Other Stories by Xu Xu

Bird Talk and Other Stories by Xu Xu
Author: Xu Xu
Publisher: Stone Bridge Press, Inc.
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2020-05-19
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1611729394

Xu Xu 徐訏 (1908-1980) was one of the most widely read Chinese authors of the 1930s to 1960s. His popular urban gothic tales, his exotic spy fiction, and his quasi-existentialist love stories full of nostalgia and melancholy offer today’s readers an unusual glimpse into China’s turbulent twentieth century. These translations--spanning a period of some thirty years, from 1937 until 1965--bring to life some of Xu Xu’s most representative short fictions from prewar Shanghai and postwar Hong Kong and Taiwan. The Afterword illustrates that Xu Xu’s idealistic tendencies in defiance of the politicization of art exemplify his affinity with European romanticism and link his work to a global literary modernity.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature in Translation

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature in Translation
Author: Cosima Bruno
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 473
Release: 2023-10-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1350215317

Offering the first systematic overview of modern and contemporary Chinese literature from a translation studies perspective, this handbook provides students, researchers and teachers with a context in which to read and appreciate the effects of linguistic and cultural transfer in Chinese literary works. Translation matters. It always has, of course, but more so when we want to reap the benefits of intercultural communication. In many universities Chinese literature in English translation is taught as if it had been written in English. As a result, students submit what they read to their own cultural expectations; they do not read in translation and do not attend to the protocols of knowing, engagements and contestations that bind literature and society to each other. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature in Translation squarely addresses this pedagogical lack. Organised in a tripartite structure around considerations of textual, social, and large-scale spatial and historical circumstances, its thirty plus essays each deal with a theme of translation studies, as emerged from the translation of one or more Chinese literary works. In doing so, it offers new tools for reading and appreciating modern and contemporary Chinese literature in the global context of its translation, offering in-depth studies about eminent Chinese authors and their literary masterpieces in translation. The first of its kind, this book is essential reading for anyone studying or researching Chinese literature in translation.

Historical Dictionary of Modern Chinese Literature

Historical Dictionary of Modern Chinese Literature
Author: Li-hua Ying
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 825
Release: 2021-11-15
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1538130068

Modern Chinese literature has been flourishing for over a century, with varying degrees of intensity and energy at different junctures of history and points of locale. An integral part of world literature from the moment it was born, it has been in constant dialogue with its counterparts from the rest of the world. As it has been challenged and enriched by external influences, it has contributed to the wealth of literary culture of the entire world. In terms of themes and styles, modern Chinese literature is rich and varied; from the revolutionary to the pastoral, from romanticism to feminism, from modernism to post-modernism, critical realism, psychological realism, socialist realism, and magical realism. Indeed, it encompasses a full range of ideological and aesthetic concerns. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Modern Chinese Literature presents a broad perspective on the development and history of literature in modern China. It offers a chronology, introduction, bibliography, and over 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on authors, literary and historical developments, trends, genres, and concepts that played a central role in the evolution of modern Chinese literature.

Paris and the Art of Transposition

Paris and the Art of Transposition
Author: Angie Chau
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2023-12-11
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0472903926

A brief stay in France was, for many Chinese workers and Chinese Communist Party leaders, a vital stepping stone for their careers during the cultural and political push to modernize China after World War I. For the Chinese students who went abroad specifically to study Western art and literature, these trips meant something else entirely. Set against the backdrop of interwar Paris, Paris and the Art of Transposition uncovers previously marginalized archives to reveal the artistic strategies employed by Chinese artists and writers in the early twentieth-century transnational imaginary and to explain why Paris played such a central role in the global reception of modern Chinese literature and art. While previous studies of Chinese modernism have focused on how Western modernist aesthetics were adapted or translated to the Chinese context, Angie Chau does the opposite by turning to Paris in the Chinese imaginary and discussing the literary and visual artwork of five artists who moved between France and China: the painter Chang Yu, the poet Li Jinfa, the art critic Fu Lei, the painter Pan Yuliang, and the writer Xu Xu. Chau draws the idea of transposition from music theory where it refers to shifting music from one key or clef to another, or to adapting a song originally composed for one instrument to be played by another. Transposing transposition to the study of art and literature, Chau uses the term to describe a fluid and strategic art practice that depends on the tension between foreign and familiar, new and old, celebrating both novelty and recognition—a process that occurs when a text gets placed into a fresh context.

Teaching Literature in the Online Classroom

Teaching Literature in the Online Classroom
Author: John Miller
Publisher: Modern Language Association
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2022-10-26
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1603294198

This volume considers the challenges and opportunities of online literature classes and suggests instructional strategies that ensure students are engaged in the virtual classroom. The ideas shared here are grounded in research, practice, critical self-reflection, and collaboration. Reflecting a diverse collection of practical tips and experiences from colleagues teaching at a variety of institutions, the essays offer readers the chance to inhabit others' classrooms. Contributors discuss building an interactive and inclusive classroom and using hypertext, video lectures, and other asynchronous and synchronous tools in classes whose subjects include, among others, Shakespeare, the Chinese novel, early American literature, speculative fiction, and contemporary American poetry.

Made in Censorship

Made in Censorship
Author: Thomas Chen
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2022-05-24
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0231555326

The violent suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations is thought to be contemporary China’s most taboo subject. Yet despite sweeping censorship, Chinese culture continues to engage with the history, meaning, and memory of the Tiananmen movement. Made in Censorship examines the surprisingly rich corpus of Tiananmen literature and film produced in mainland China since 1989, both officially sanctioned and unauthorized, contending that censorship does not simply forbid—it also shapes what is created. Thomas Chen explores a wide range of works made despite and through censorship, including state propaganda, underground films, and controversial best-sellers. Moving across media, from print to the internet, TV to DVD, fiction to documentary, he shows the effects of state intervention on artistic production and consumption. Chen considers art at the edge of censorship, reading such disparate works as a queer love story shot without permission that found official release on DVD, an officially sanctioned film that was ultimately not permitted to be released, a novel built on orthographic elisions that was banned and eventually reissued, and an internet narrative set during the SARS epidemic later published with alterations. He also connects Tiananmen with the story of COVID-19 in China and considers the implications for debates about the reach and power of the Chinese state in the public realm, both domestic and abroad. A bold rethinking of contemporary Chinese literature and film, this book upends understandings of censorship, uncovering not just what it suppresses but also what it produces.

Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas, 1919-1949

Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas, 1919-1949
Author: Joseph S. M. Lau
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 634
Release: 1981
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780231042031

Brings together some of the best and most historically significant works of short fiction written in China in this century -including such important figures in the development of Chinese modernism as Lu Hsün, Mao Tun, Ting Ling, and Shen Ts' ung-wen. The companion volume to the highly acclaimed (Columbia, 1978), this new volume presents modernist short fiction from the thirty-year period leading up to the Communist revolution of 1949, after which Chinese literature entered a new phase of development. The stories range in setting from the late Ch'ing dynasty through the Sino-Japanese War and the early Communist years, and range in length from brief tales to substantial short novels. Though a large number of the writers represented are leftists, works of all political viewpoints have been included to provide the full literary panorama of one of the most fertile periods of Chinese creative activity.

No Wall Too High

No Wall Too High
Author: Xu Hongci
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2017-02-02
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1473528224

‘One of the greatest escape stories I’ve ever read’ Mail on Sunday An ordinary man’s extraordinary escape from Mao’s brutal labour camps Xu Hongci was an ordinary medical student when he was incarcerated under Mao’s regime and forced to spend years of his youth in China’s most brutal labour camps. Three times he tried to escape. And three times he failed. But, determined, he eventually broke free, travelling the length of China, across the Gobi desert, and into Mongolia. It was one of the greatest prison breaks of all time, during one of the worst totalitarian tragedies of the 20th Century. This is the extraordinary memoir of his unrelenting struggle to retain dignity, integrity and freedom; but also the untold story of what life was like for ordinary people trapped in the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.

All My Puny Sorrows

All My Puny Sorrows
Author: Miriam Toews
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2019-10-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1635574986

From the bestselling author of Women Talking, a "wrenchingly honest, darkly funny novel" (Entertainment Weekly). Elf and Yoli are sisters. While on the surface Elfrieda's life is enviable (she's a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, and happily married) and Yolandi's a mess (she's divorced and broke, with two teenagers growing up too quickly), they are fiercely close-raised in a Mennonite household and sharing the hardship of Elf's desire to end her life. After Elf's latest attempt, Yoli must quickly determine how to keep her family from falling apart while facing a profound question: what do you do for a loved one who truly wants to die? All My Puny Sorrows is a deeply personal story that is as much comedy as it is tragedy, a goodbye grin from the friend who taught you how to live.