Charles A. Laughlin's Books

Chinese Reportage

The Aesthetics of Historical Experience

By: Charles A. Laughlin

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Chinese Reportage

The Aesthetics of Historical Experience

By: Charles A. Laughlin

Chinese Reportage details for the first time in English the creation and evolution of a distinctive literary genre in twentieth-century China. Reportage literature, while sharing traditional journalism’s commitment to the accurate, nonfictional portrayal of experience, was largely produced by authors outside the official news media. In identifying the literary merit of this genre and establishing its significance in China’s leftist cultural legacy, Charles A. Laughlin reveals important biases that impede Western understanding of China and, at the same time, supplies an essential chapter in Chinese cultural history. Laughlin traces the roots of reportage (or baogao wenxue) to the travel literature of the Qing Dynasty but shows that its flourishing was part of the growth of Chinese communism in the twentieth century. In a modern Asian context critical of capitalism and imperialism, reportage offered the promise of radicalizing writers through a new method of literary practice and the hope that this kind of writing could in turn contribute to social revolution and China’s national self-realization. Chinese Reportage explores the wide range of social engagement depicted in this literature: witnessing historic events unfolding on city streets; experiencing brutal working conditions in 1930s Shanghai factories; struggling in the battlefields and trenches of the war of resistance against Japan, the civil war, and the Korean war; and participating in revolutionary rural, social, and economic transformation. Laughlin’s close readings emphasize the literary construction of social space over that of character and narrative structure, a method that brings out the critique of individualism and humanism underlying the genre’s aesthetics. Chinese Reportage recaptures a critical aspect of leftist culture in China with far-reaching implications for historians and sociologists as well as literary scholars.

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Page Count

349

Publisher

Duke University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0822384124

ISBN 13

9780822384120

The Literature of Leisure and Chinese Modernity

By: Charles A. Laughlin

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The Literature of Leisure and Chinese Modernity

By: Charles A. Laughlin

The Chinese essay is arguably China’s most distinctive contribution to modern world literature, and the period of its greatest influence and popularity—the mid-1930s—is the central concern of this book. What Charles Laughlin terms "the literature of leisure" is a modern literary response to the cultural past that manifests itself most conspicuously in the form of short, informal essay writing (xiaopin wen). Laughlin examines the essay both as a widely practiced and influential genre of literary expression and as an important counter-discourse to the revolutionary tradition of New Literature (especially realistic fiction), often viewed as the dominant mode of literature at the time. After articulating the relationship between the premodern traditions of leisure literature and the modern essay, Laughlin treats the various essay styles representing different groups of writers. Each is characterized according to a single defining activity: "wandering" in the case of the Yu si (Threads of Conversation) group surrounding Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren; "learning" with the White Horse Lake group of Zhejiang schoolteachers like Feng Zikai and Xia Mianzun; "enjoying" in the case of Lin Yutang’s Analects group; "dreaming" with the Beijing school. The concluding chapter outlines the impact of leisure literature on Chinese culture up to the present day. The Literature of Leisure and Chinese Modernity dramatizes the vast importance and unique nature of creative nonfiction prose writing in modern China. It will be eagerly read by those with an interest in twentieth-century Chinese literature, modern China, and East Asian or world literatures.

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Page Count

257

Publisher

University of Hawaii Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0824864824

ISBN 13

9780824864828

Chinese Reportage

The Aesthetics of Historical Experience

By: Charles A. Laughlin

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Chinese Reportage

The Aesthetics of Historical Experience

By: Charles A. Laughlin

DIVExplores the origins of Chinese reportage (journalism) in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, and develops an understanding of the aesthetics that governed the creation of this literature./div

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Page Count

358

Publisher

Duke University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0822329719

ISBN 13

9780822329718

Book's by Charles A. Laughlin

Chinese Reportage

Chinese Reportage

The Literature of Leisure and Chinese Modernity

The Literature of Leisure and Chinese Modernity

Chinese Reportage

Chinese Reportage

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