- Paperback: 409 pages
- Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (Oct 4 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0520238737
- ISBN-13: 978-0520238732
- Product Dimensions: 22.6 x 15 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 567 g
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#839,986 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #79 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Asian > Chinese
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
Product Description
In ancient China a monster called Taowu was known for both its vicious nature and its power to see the past and the future. Over the centuries Taowu underwent many incarnations until it became identifiable with history itself. Since the seventeenth century, fictive accounts of history have accommodated themselves to the monstrous nature of Taowu. Moving effortlessly across the entire twentieth-century literary landscape, David Der-wei Wang delineates the many meanings of Chinese violence and its literary manifestations. Taking into account the campaigns of violence and brutality that have rocked generations of Chinese--often in the name of enlightenment, rationality, and utopian plenitude--this book places its arguments along two related axes: history and representation, modernity and monstrosity. Wang considers modern Chinese history as a complex of geopolitical, ethnic, gendered, and personal articulations of bygone and ongoing events. His discussion ranges from the politics of decapitation to the poetics of suicide, and from the typology of hunger and starvation to the technology of crime and punishment.
From the Inside Flap
"This is a magnificent book--one of the most original and stunning in the field of modern Chinese literature. The eight studies that comprise the book unfold a vast canvas of twentieth-century China, one that is filled with terror, violence, phantasmagoria, and death. This is indeed the dark, ghostly side of the 'Chinese Modern.' Wang's prodigious command of primary Chinese texts from the entire literary legacy of twentieth century China is nothing short of stunning. No other study in the field in any language is remotely comparable to the richness and density of materials and insights packed into the book."--Leo Ou-fan Lee, Professor of Chinese Literature, Harvard University
"This is a revolutionary book, a series of connected essays that lay bare 20th-century China's history of violence. The range and quality of investigation into literary and historical representations of pain are stunning; the material is as fresh as the scholarly ends to which it contributes. An absolute must read."--Howard Goldblatt, co-editor of The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature
"David Wang is in his element. In this monumental work on the mutual implication of Chinese modernity and the representation of violence, Wang is at once historical, critical, and mythopoetic. The haunting metaphor of tauwu as monster and history gives this book both a theoretical backbone and a contemplative richness that goes beyond the genre of literary criticism. It is a masterpiece of the finest caliber."--Jing Wang, S.C. Fang Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"This is a revolutionary book, a series of connected essays that lay bare 20th-century China's history of violence. The range and quality of investigation into literary and historical representations of pain are stunning; the material is as fresh as the scholarly ends to which it contributes. An absolute must read."--Howard Goldblatt, co-editor of The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature
"David Wang is in his element. In this monumental work on the mutual implication of Chinese modernity and the representation of violence, Wang is at once historical, critical, and mythopoetic. The haunting metaphor of tauwu as monster and history gives this book both a theoretical backbone and a contemplative richness that goes beyond the genre of literary criticism. It is a masterpiece of the finest caliber."--Jing Wang, S.C. Fang Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
Linnuyu, or Women's Words Overheard (1902-1904), by Youhuan Yusheng (Survivor of calamities, pseudonym of Lian Mengqing, 18??-after 1914), is one of the first late Qing narratives about the atrocities of the Boxer Rebellion. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
Linnuyu, or Women's Words Overheard (1902-1904), by Youhuan Yusheng (Survivor of calamities, pseudonym of Lian Mengqing, 18??-after 1914), is one of the first late Qing narratives about the atrocities of the Boxer Rebellion. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rethinking Fiction and History, July 20 2009
By T C - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Monster That Is History: History, Violence, and Fictional Writing in Twentieth-Century China (Paperback)
Wang's masterful take on the violent modern history of China deftly combines literary studies and historical investigations to explore historical and literary meanings. How does one survive and account for atrocity and sufferings? The author is sensitive to the pitfalls of writing about such subject matter ("one person's account of 'tears and blood' may achieve nothing more than a second person's undeserved catharsis"). On modern Chinese readers' and writers' demands of literature as a radical agency of change, Wang has this to say: "modern Chinese representation of violence can be underwritten as a violence of representation." Beautifully written and enlightening throughout. Highly recommended to any one who cares about modern China and that country's unparalleled literary creativity in the face of a violent history. Chapter 8, "Second Haunting," is especially important.
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