MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY CHINESE LITERATURE

This course aims at helping students obtain a deeper knowledge of some themes and texts of modern and contemporary Chinese literature (from the early Twentieth century up to the present day), while training them develop critical awareness and a method of research, mainly based on the close reading of texts (including texts in Chinese). Students will be also guided in setting Chinese literature within a larger cultural, social, and historical perspective, throughout the shaping of modern China, and to present their personal reflections on the contents of the course by means of both written (final paper) and oral discussions.
The main subject of the course addresses the concepts of war and peace in Chinese modern and contemporary literature.

1. Knowledge and understanding:
• Know the historical and social context in which each writer's attitudes, ideas and works took shape, and their interplay with the society and cultural life of the time;
• Know the literary trends defining the historical context: students will be guided into a critical reflection upon the literary texts read in class weekly, in order to let them recognise their stylistic features and understand the underlying meanings, also in relation with the shaping of modern Chinese society and culture.
2. Ability to apply knowledge and understanding
• Students will be able to recognise and categorise texts in terms of genre, linguistic and lexical features specific of the author's time and social context;
• Students will be able to analyse and compare literary texts and phenomena to western literature;
3. Judgement capacity
• assess the level of one’s knowledge of texts, genres and textual analysys skill;
4. Communication skills
• argumentative skill;
• be able to communicate orally by means of class presentation and in the final exam, with clarity of exposition and accuracy in citing sources (both English and Chinese sources)
• be able to communicate in written form (final paper), demonstrating a general knowledge of the sources and of the basic rules of academic writing.
5. Learning skills
Students' ability to analyse and research autonomously Chinese literature will be tested through the final paper they are requested to write on a new topic agreed upon with the teacher. Besides, oral skills and argumentative skills will be tested during the class presentation and the final oral exam, by which they will have to demonstrate their general understanding and critical view on the course contents.

A good knowledge of Chinese language is requested, in order to be able to read modern literary texts and literary criticism in Chinese. A basic knowledge of the history of Chinese literature in the twentieth century is also recommended.

“War and Peace” in modern and contemporary Chinese literature

The twentieth century was a period of both internal and external conflicts for China and the world. Our century seems to be following similar patterns, albeit in very different scenarios and contexts. The reality of war and the desire or the utopia of peace have always been a theme and a source of inspiration for Chinese literature. The universal yet relative concepts of war and peace travel across many different literary genres, from poetry to prose, from fiction to theatre.
This course intends to analyse both diachronically and synchronically the ethical, aesthetic, social, and gender-related tensions underpinning Chinese literature that addresses or relates to war and peace. While it's relatively easy to identify a vast canon of literary works that describe, witness, criticize, or (more rarely) celebrate war, it's considerably more challenging to trace the literary contributions to peace, though such works certainly exist.
Drawing from “peace studies” applied to literature, the course will offer a comprehensive overview of reflections and representations of war and peace within modern and contemporary Chinese literature. Among the studied authors, we will analyse readings from Lu Xun, Xiao Hong, Zhang Ailing, Ding Ling, Xie Bingying, Mu Dan, Ai Qing, Ru Zhijuan, Wang Shuo, Wang Xiaobo, Mo Yan, Yu Hua, Yan Lianke, Yan Geling, Ye Zhaoyan, Hao Jingfang, Yu Xiuhua and others.

Main readings
Nicoletta Pesaro, Melinda Pirazzoli, La narrativa cinese del Novecento. Autori, opere, correnti. Roma, Carocci, 2019
陈思和 (编) 中国当代文学史教程, 复旦大学出版社，2019年 (第二版)
Hong Zicheng, A History of Contemporary Chinese Literature, translated by Michael M. Day, Brill, 2008.

Supplementary readings
Cao, Zuoya. Out of the Crucible: Literary Works about the Rusticated Youth. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2003.
Chen, Minjie. The Sino- Japanese War and Youth Literature: Friends and Foes on the Battlefield. London: Routledge, 2016.
Dooling, Women’s Literary Feminism in Twentieth-Century China. New York Palgrave MacMilian, 2005
Gunn, Edward. “Literature and Art of the War Period.” In James Hsiung et. al., eds., China’s Bitter Victory: The War with Japan, 1937-1945. Armonk: ME Sharpe, 1993, 235-74.
Guo, Li. “Women’s Wartime Life Writing in Early Twentieth-century China.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 17, 3 (2015).
Huang, Nicole. Written in the Ruins: War and Domesticity in Shanghai Literature of the 1940s. Ph.d. diss. Los Angeles: UCLA, 1998.
—–. “War, Revolution, and Urban Transformation: Chinese Literature of the Republican Era, 1920s-1940s.” In Yingjin Zhang, ed. A Companion to Modern Chinese Literature. Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2016, 54-66.
Gerd Kaminski, Barbara Kreissel, and Constantine Tung, eds., China’s Perception of Peace, War, and the World. Wien: Ludwig Bolzmann Institut fur China, 1997.
Roberts, Rosemary. “Maoist Women Warriors: Historical Continuities and Cultural Transgressions.” In Spence, Jonathan. 1981. The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution 1895-1980. New York: The Viking Press.
Tao Dongfeng, Yang Xiaobin, Rosemary Roberts, and Yang Ling, eds. Chinese Revolution and Chinese Literature. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2009, 139-62.
Tseng, Mien Thomas. “Peace and War in Chinese Culture.” Primitive Man, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Jul., 1934), pp. 45-50.
Yan, Haiping. Chinese Women Writers and the Feminist Imagination, 1905-1948. London, Routledge, 2006.FitzGerald, Carolyn. Fragmenting Modernisms: Chinese Wartime Literature, Art, and Film, 1937-49. Leiden: Brill, 2013.
—–.“War, Death, and the Art of Existence: Mobile Women in the 1940s.” In Yan, Chinese Women Writers and the Feminist Imagination, 1905-1948. London: Routledge, 2006, 135-67.
Wang, Ban, ed. Words and Their Stories: Essays on the Language of the Chinese Revolution. Leiden: Brill, 2010.


ONLINE SOURCES
Sinosfere http://sinosfere.com
Paper Republic https://paper-republic.org
Denton Bibliography https://u.osu.edu/mclc/
CNKI https://oversea.cnki.net/index/
Words without borders https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/find/languages/chinese
https://clt.oucreate.com/

The final exam is divided into two parts:

1) short paper (max. 5000 words) to be handed in at least one week before the oral exam;
2) oral discussion about the individual paper and the general contents of the course.
Please have a look at the teacher's material on the moodle platform for the guide to essay-writing.

Evaluation criteria:
1) Relevance of the paper to the course program;
2) Formal correctness and adherence to editorial standards prescribed for an academic text (cf. editorial guidelines provided on the Moodle platform);
3) Originality and depth of the topic; methodology;
4) Language proficiency and synthesis skills during the discussion.

oral

Regarding the grading scale, scores will be assigned according to the following criteria:
A. Scores in the 18-22 range will be awarded in the presence of a sufficient knowledge of the main authors and genres of modern Chinese literature from the proposed perspective;
B. Scores in the 23-26 range will be awarded in the presence of a fair knowledge of the main authors and genres of modern Chinese literature from the proposed perspective;
C. Scores in the 27-30 range will be awarded in the presence of a good or excellent knowledge of the main authors and genres of modern Chinese literature from the proposed perspective;
D. Honors will be awarded in the presence of an outstanding knowledge of the main authors and genres of modern Chinese literature from the proposed perspective.

Classes will be carried out in presence. The teaching methods include a close-reading of primary texts, through which relevant topics will be presented and analysed, and a discussion with students on assigned readings.

Further bibliographic information and Chinese texts will be provided throughout the course

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "International cooperation" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development