Title: Yan Lianke and Chinese Literature in the Perspective of World Literature
Lecturer: ZHANG Yingjin (Professor of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, Department of Literature, University of California San Diego Campus)
Chairperson: TAN Fan (Fellow of Si-mian Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Professor of Department of Chinese Language and Literature, East China Normal University)
Date: 3 pm, October 28th, 2014 (Tuesday)
Venue: Room 5303, Building of School of Humanities, Minhang Campus, ECNU
Sponsor: Si-mian Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, ECNU
Abstract of the Lecture:
This article first delineates Yan Lianke’s literary status in line with David Damrosch’s tripartite definition of world literature, and then reexamines the bipolar assessments of modern Chinese literature in Western Sinology in terms of international cultural politics as represented by the Nobel Prize in Literature. With reference to two key words in Mo Yan’s Nobel acceptance speech -- “human” and “transcendence” -- the article further explores the contemporary transformation of realism and Yan Lianke’s “spiritual realism” in theory and practice.