Research notes on the chapter of Wakana in The Tale of Genji
Research notes about chapter on Wakana in The Tale of Genji
Causality and containment in seventeenth-century Chinese fiction
In this book McMahon explores late Ming vernacular fiction focusing on the exposition of sexual transgression and the ideology of the containment of desire. Related topics include the theme of causality and its role in the story's mapping of the logic of adultery; adultery as an emblem of the woman's escape from containment and the use of the narrative themes as a locus of sexual transgression.
Ivo Andrić: Život. Beograd, Jugoslovenska Revija, 1989.
image 1:Ivan Bunin. Moskva: Molodaia gvardiia. 2000. Seriia: Zhizn’ zamechatel’nykh liudei.
Gao Xingjian is the first Chinese recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born in 1940 in Jiangxi province in eastern China, and has lived in France since 1987. Gao Xingjian is that rare artist who excels as novelist, playwright, essayist, director, and painter. In addition to Soul Mountain and One Man's Bible; The Other Shore, a book of his plays; and Return to Painting, a volume of his paintings, have been published in the United States. Gao Xingjian was condemned by the authorities for his "decadent" ideas, forbidden to publish his immensely popular plays during the early 1980s, and was diagnosed with lung cancer. He readied himself for death, but a second Xray granted him a clean bill of health. In light of this miraculous reprieve and rumors of his impending arrest, Gao Xingjian left Beijing and spent five months wandering the forests of central China. His novel traces such a journey to Lingshan (Soul Mountain), which may or may not exist, as a universal quest of the I, you, he, she narrator that ponders and mourns the tragedies of a vast land--the violence, oppression, and sexism; the clear-cutting of forests, pollution of rivers, and forced extinction of animals; the destruction of temples and suppression of art. Gao Xingjian's masterpiece expresses sorrow and anger, wonder and confusion, humor and metaphysics, lust and tenderness, and a profound longing for meaning and freedom.
Edited from Booklist by Donna Seaman, American Library Association
Mo Yan, was born in 1955 in Gaomi Township in Shandong Province, a rural area that is the setting for much of his fiction. Mo Yan ("don't speak") is a pseudonym for Guan Moye on the advice of his parents as a school-age boy during the Mao era. The cultural revolution forced him to leave school at 12 and went to work in the fields, completing his education in the army. He published his first book in 1981, but found literary success in 1987 with Hong gaoliang jiazu (Red Sorghum), a novel made into an internationally successful movie by director Zhang Yimou, set against the horrific events that unfolded as Japan invaded China in the 1930s. He writes about peasantry, about life in the countryside, about people struggling to survive, struggling for their dignity, sometimes winning but most of the time losing," said permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy Peter Englund, announcing the win. "The basis for his books was laid when as a child he listened to folktales. The description magical realism has been used about him, but I think that is belittling him – this isn't something he's picked up from Gabriel García Márquez, but something which is very much his own. With the supernatural going in to the ordinary, he's an extremely original narrator.
Edited excerpt from the Guardian, Oct. 11, 2012, by Alison Flood