作者简介

Eileen J. Cheng is associate professor of Chinese at Pomona College.

内容简介

Lu Xun (1881–1936), arguably twentieth-century China’s greatest writer, is commonly cast in the mold of a radical iconoclast who vehemently rejected traditional culture. The contradictions and ambivalence so central to his writings, however, are often overlooked. Challenging conventional depictions, Eileen J. Cheng’s innovative readings capture Lu Xun’s disenchantment with modernity and his transformative engagements with traditional literary conventions in his “modern” experimental works. Lurking behind the ambiguity at the heart of his writings are larger questions on the effects of cultural exchange, accommodation, and transformation that Lu Xun grappled with as a writer: How can a culture estranged from its vanishing traditions come to terms with its past? How can a culture, severed from its roots and alienated from the foreign conventions it appropriates, conceptualize its own present and future?

Literary Remains shows how Lu Xun’s own literary encounter with the modern involved a sustained engagement with the past. His creative writings—which imitate, adapt, and parody traditional literary conventions—represent and mirror the trauma of cultural disintegration, in content and in form. His contradictory, uncertain, and at times bizarrely incoherent narratives refuse to conform to conventional modes of meaning making or teleological notions of history, opening up imaginative possibilities for comprehending the past and present without necessarily reifying them.

Behind Lu Xun’s “refusal to mourn,” that is, his insistence on keeping the past and the dead alive in writing, lies an ethical claim: to recover the redemptive meaning of loss. Like a solitary wanderer keeping vigil at the site of destruction, he sifts through the debris, composing epitaphs to mark both the presence and absence of that which has gone before and will soon come to pass. For in the rubble of what remains, he recovered precious gems of illumination through which to assess, critique, and transform the moment of the present. Literary Remains shows how Lu Xun’s literary enterprise is driven by a “radical hope”—that, in spite of the destruction he witnessed and the limits of representation, his writings, like the texts that inspired his own, might somehow capture glimmers of the past and the present, and illuminate a future yet to unfold.

Literary Remains will appeal to a wide audience of students and scholars interested in Lu Xun, modern China, cultural studies, and world literature.


Eileen J. Cheng is associate professor of Chinese at Pomona College.

下载地址

豆瓣评论

  • skeeter
    有点失望,立意和问题很好,但是似乎是因为作者对前现代中国思想史不是很了解,在解释鲁迅和士人传统之间的内部联系的时候找错了方向,自然证据和分析的说服力也弱了。03-15
  • 溪山
    能够把鲁迅和司马迁对比起来,也还蛮有诗意的?09-02
  • 春雪
    作者将鲁迅和司马迁的境遇作对比联结,是很有趣的脑洞。其他对女性、爱情、故乡、刺圣的讨论则无甚新意。03-26
  • 我一直在想鲁迅这个题目,在如此多前人的研究之上,到底还能做出多少新意。读的时候,就是不断觉得失望的过程。后来查了一下学者的简历,原来21世纪初就已经博士毕业了,怪不得可以写这个题目。读的时候觉得叙述挺顺畅的,从性别视角切入鲁迅在她读博的那个年代可能是有新意的吧。06-27
  • 唧哩呼喃
    作者确实是humanize了鲁迅,但去神化后,这所谓的对传统的种种回望与影响的焦虑,又有多少是只属于鲁迅而非同时代的其他作家呢?其实是做了一个更extensive的有意思的claim,但是分析的时候却有点缺乏big image了。06-02

猜你喜欢

大家都喜欢