Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T14:18:11.795Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Lu Xun's “Diary of a Madman” and a Chinese Modernism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Xiaobing Tang
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A critical rereading of Lu Xun's “Diary of a Madman,” a canonical text in modern Chinese literature, suggests a need to invoke modernism as a historicizing concept and to rethink modern Chinese literary historiography. Contrary to the conventional view of Lu Xun's story as no more than a realist fiction, the new interpretation shows how the work persistently and ingeniously articulates a modernist sensibility of time as well as a modernist politics of language. The Madman's madness not only expresses a self-consciousness that is radically modern in its break with a traditional gemeinschaft but also demarcates a new, oppositional symbolic order and practice. At the forefront of the historical New Culture movement, this archetypal text of deconstructive reading simultaneously promises a critical and a productive discursive strategy. The work's modernism, finally, requires modernity to be understood as both a concrete historical experience and a global situation.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 107 , Issue 5 , October 1992 , pp. 1222 - 1234
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Ahmad, Aijaz. “Jameson's Rhetoric of Otherness and the ‘National Allegory.‘” Social Text 17 (1987): 3–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Marston. The Limits of Realism: Chinese Fiction in the Revolutionary Period. Berkeley: U of California P, 1990.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. Writing Degree Zero. Trans. Lavers, Annette and Smith, Colin. New York: Noonday-Farrar, 1968. 29–40.Google Scholar
Berman, Marshall. All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. New York: Penguin, 1988.Google Scholar
Calinescu, Matei. Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. Durham: Duke UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Yiqun, Deng. “Some Artistic Features in the Creation of the Figure of the Madman in ‘Diary of a Madman.‘” Lu Xun yanjiu ziliao 6:258–25.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Spivak, Gayatri C. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1974.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Positions. Trans. Bass, Alan. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1981.Google Scholar
Eagleton, Terry. “Capitalism, Modernism and Postmodernism.” Against the Grain: Essays 1975–1985. London: Verso, 1986. 131–13.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Trans. Howard, Richard. New York: Vintage-Random, 1973.Google Scholar
Songnian, Gao. “About the Figure of the Madman and Its Creation.” Lu Xun yanjiu lunwen xuan 289–306.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures. Trans. Lawrence, Frederick. Cambridge: MIT P, 1987.Google Scholar
Shih, Hu. “Toward Literary Reform.” Hu Shih wencun [Selected Works of Hu Shih], Vol. 1. Taipei: Far East, 1971. 15–20.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric R. Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1971.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric R. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric R. “Reflections in Conclusion.” Aesthetics and Politics: Debates between Ernst Bloch, Georg Lukács, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno. Trans. Taylor, Ronald. London: NLB, 1977. 196–213.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric R. “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism.” Social Text 15 (1986): 65–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiely, Robert. “‘Pernicious,’ ‘Pessimistic,’ and ‘Foreign’: The Controversy over Literary Modernism in the People's Republic of China.” Notebooks in Cultural Analysis. Ed. Cantor, Norman F. et al. Durham: Duke UP, 1985. 208–20.Google Scholar
Kristeva, Julia. “Revolution in Poetic Language.” The Kristeva Reader. Ed. Toril, Moi. New York: Columbia UP, 1986. 89–135.Google Scholar
Lee, Leo Ou-fan. Voices from the Iron House: A Study of Lu Xun. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Zehou, Li. “A Brief Essay on the Development of Lu Xun's Thought.” Zhongguo jindai sixiangshi lun [Essays on Modern Chinese Intellectual History]. Taipei: Fengyun Shidai, 1990. 521–52.Google Scholar
Zongying, Li and Mengyang, Zhang, eds. Liushi nianlai Lu Xun yanjiu lunwen xuan [Selected Essays of Lu Xun Studies in the Past Sixty Years]. 2 vols. Beijing: Chinese Social Sciences, 1982.Google Scholar
Yü‐sheng, Lin. The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness: Radical Antitraditionalism in the May Fourth Era. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1979.Google Scholar
Dajie, Liu. “Lu Xun and Realism.” 1936. Li and Zhang 1:192–19.Google Scholar
Lu, Xun. Complete Works of Lu Xun. Vol. 1. Beijing: People's Lit., 1981.Google Scholar
Lu, Xun. “A Madman's Diary.” Silent China: Selected Writings of Lu Xun. Ed. and trans. Yang, Gladys. London: Oxford UP, 1973. 3–13.Google Scholar
Lu, Xun. Selected Stories of Lu Xun. Ed. and trans. Yang, Gladys and Xianyi, Yang. Beijing: Beijing Foreign Langs., 1972.Google Scholar
Lu, Xun Xuan, Yanjiu Lunwen [Essays from Lu Xun Studies]. Ed. Zhejiang Lu Xun Studies Soc. Hangzhou: Zhejiang Wenyi, 1983.Google Scholar
Lu Xun yanjiu ziliao [Materials on Lu Xun Studies]. Ed. Beijing Lu Xun Museum, Lu Xun Studies Program. Vols. 6 and 7. Tianjin: Tianjin People's, 1980.Google Scholar
Lukács, Georg. “The Ideology of Realism.” Realism in Our Time: Literature and Class Struggle. Trans. Mander, John and Mander, Necke. New York: Torchbooks-Harper, 1964. 17–46.Google Scholar
Lyell, William A., trans. “Diary of a Madman.” Lu Xun: “Diary of a Madman” and Other Stories. By Lu Xun. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P, 1990. 29–41.Google Scholar
Lyell, William A., trans. Lu Hsün 's Vision of Reality. Berkeley: U of California P, 1976.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals. Trans. Kaufman, Walter and Hollingdale, R. J. New York: Vintage-Random, 1968.Google Scholar
Qiubai, Qü. “Preface to Selections of Lu Xun's Random-Thought Essays.” 1933. Li and Zhang 1:120–12.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri C. “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography.” In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York: Methuen, 1987. 197–211.Google Scholar
Xiaobing, Tang. “From Revolutionary Style to Stylistic Revolution.” Dangdai Nov. 1989: 72–85.Google Scholar
Shiqing, Wang. Lu Xun zhuan [Biography of Lu Xun]. Beijing: Chinese Youth, 1959. Trans. as Lu Xun: A Biography. Trans. Peiji, Zhang. Beijing: Foreign Langs., 1984.Google Scholar
Wang, Yao. “An Important Feature of Lu Xun's Thinking—Observant Realism.” Commemorative Essays on the Centenary of Lu Xun from Peking University. Ed. Wang. Beijing: Peking UP, 1982. 1–18.Google Scholar
Weigelin-Schwiedrzik, Susanne. “Lu Xun und das ‘Prinzip Hoffnung’: Eine Untersuchung seiner Rezeption der Theorin von Huxley und Nietzsche.” Bochumer Jahrbuch zur Ostasienforschung. Bochum: Brochmeyer, 1980. 414–41.Google Scholar
Chi, Xü. “Modernization and Modernism.” Wenyi bao [Art and Literature Gazette] Nov. 1982: 6–9.Google Scholar
Jiayan, Yan. “The Thought and Art in ‘Diary of a Madman.‘” Li and Zhang 2:444–44.Google Scholar
Zhongzheng xingyi zonghe dazidian [Chungcheng Comprehensive Dictionary]. 5th ed. Taipei: Chung Cheng, 1984.Google Scholar
Zuoren, Zhou. “About ‘The True Story of Ah Q.‘” 1923. Li and Zhang 1:9–13.Google Scholar