Rethinking modern Chinese fiction in a global context

Abstract

Modern Chinese literature is most open in the history of Chinese literature, with various Western literary currents and cultural trends flooding into China. As the most important and popular genre in Chinese literature, modern Chinese novel has been developing under the Western influence, and it has played a vital role in flourishing modern Chinese literature and enlightening modern Chinese intellectuals and the broad reading public. To the author, toward the end of the nineteenth century, Chinese literature was almost “marginalized”. In order to resume its lost grandeur it moved from periphery to centre by identifying itself with Western cultural modernity or modern Western literature. To realize this grand and ambitious aim, translating novel became an important task. In dealing with the Western influence, the author also reperiodizes twentieth-century Chinese literature: modern literature started with the May 4th Movement in 1919 and ended in 1976; since 1976, Chinese literature has been in the contemporary era, which is characterized by more postmodern than modern. In this global context, Chinese fiction writing has become part of world literature and been developing in a pluralistic direction.