Christopher Rosenmeier
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748696369
- eISBN:
- 9781474434805
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748696369.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Xu Xu and Wumingshi were among the most widely read authors in China during and after the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). Despite being an integral part of the Chinese literary scene, their ...
More
Xu Xu and Wumingshi were among the most widely read authors in China during and after the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). Despite being an integral part of the Chinese literary scene, their bestselling fiction has, however, been given scant attention in histories of Chinese writing. This book is the first extensive study of Xu Xu and Wumingshi in English or any other Western language and it re-establishes their importance within the popular Chinese literature of the 1940s. Their romantic novels and short stories were often set abroad and featured a wide range of stereotypes, from pirates, spies and patriotic soldiers to ghosts, spirits and exotic women who confounded the mostly cosmopolitan male protagonists. Christopher Rosenmeier’s detailed analysis of these popular novels and short stories shows that such romances broke new ground by incorporating and adapting narrative techniques and themes from the Shanghai modernist writers of the 1930s, notably Shi Zhecun and Mu Shiying. The study thereby contests the view that modernism had little lasting impact on Chinese fiction, and it demonstrates that the popular literature of the 1940s was more innovative than usually imagined, with authors, such as those studied here, successfully crossing the boundaries between the popular and the elite, as well as between romanticism and modernism, in their bestselling works.Less
Xu Xu and Wumingshi were among the most widely read authors in China during and after the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). Despite being an integral part of the Chinese literary scene, their bestselling fiction has, however, been given scant attention in histories of Chinese writing. This book is the first extensive study of Xu Xu and Wumingshi in English or any other Western language and it re-establishes their importance within the popular Chinese literature of the 1940s. Their romantic novels and short stories were often set abroad and featured a wide range of stereotypes, from pirates, spies and patriotic soldiers to ghosts, spirits and exotic women who confounded the mostly cosmopolitan male protagonists. Christopher Rosenmeier’s detailed analysis of these popular novels and short stories shows that such romances broke new ground by incorporating and adapting narrative techniques and themes from the Shanghai modernist writers of the 1930s, notably Shi Zhecun and Mu Shiying. The study thereby contests the view that modernism had little lasting impact on Chinese fiction, and it demonstrates that the popular literature of the 1940s was more innovative than usually imagined, with authors, such as those studied here, successfully crossing the boundaries between the popular and the elite, as well as between romanticism and modernism, in their bestselling works.
Christopher Rosenmeier
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748696369
- eISBN:
- 9781474434805
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748696369.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Wumingshi wrote several bestselling novels in the 1940s and these are covered in this chapter, including The Woman in the Tower (Tali de nüren) and North Pole Landscape Painting (Beiji fengqinghua). ...
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Wumingshi wrote several bestselling novels in the 1940s and these are covered in this chapter, including The Woman in the Tower (Tali de nüren) and North Pole Landscape Painting (Beiji fengqinghua). Both works are principally tragic love stories between stunningly beautiful women and accomplished, patriotic, intellectual men, but they also feature distinctive narrative styles and story frameworks that cross the boundaries between the real and the imagined. Wumingshi worked for the anti-Japanese Korean resistance movement in China, and this influenced several of his works. It is shown that, much like Xu Xu, Wumingshi’s work was initially modernist and highly concerned with narrative style, but it eventually transitioned to the popular romances that became hugely popular. Wumingshi’s multivolume grand opus, The Nameless Book (Wumingshu) is also considered here. In this work, he rejected nationalism and ideology and showed a return to narrative experimentation. The early volumes of this were his last published writings before the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949.Less
Wumingshi wrote several bestselling novels in the 1940s and these are covered in this chapter, including The Woman in the Tower (Tali de nüren) and North Pole Landscape Painting (Beiji fengqinghua). Both works are principally tragic love stories between stunningly beautiful women and accomplished, patriotic, intellectual men, but they also feature distinctive narrative styles and story frameworks that cross the boundaries between the real and the imagined. Wumingshi worked for the anti-Japanese Korean resistance movement in China, and this influenced several of his works. It is shown that, much like Xu Xu, Wumingshi’s work was initially modernist and highly concerned with narrative style, but it eventually transitioned to the popular romances that became hugely popular. Wumingshi’s multivolume grand opus, The Nameless Book (Wumingshu) is also considered here. In this work, he rejected nationalism and ideology and showed a return to narrative experimentation. The early volumes of this were his last published writings before the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949.
