The Experience of Modernity

Chinese Autobiography of the Early Twentieth Century

Bibliographic Data

ID19899539
AuthorsJanet Ng (0000-0002-8912-8785, corresponding author)
Year2003
Pages194
Publication date2003-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueThe experience of modernity (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherUniversity of Michigan Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.3998/mpub.11986
OpenAlexW2263413199
Open LibraryOL3577576M
ISBN9780472098217
LanguageEN
Citations received11

Autobiography of the first half of the twentieth century was used variously by different groups of writers to interrogate, negotiate, and even to program the social and political progress of China. However, despite the popularity and success of this genre, it has also been the most forgotten in literary and historical discussions. Personal stories and individual expressions seem to have had no place in 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s China, smothered instead by the grander rhetoric of nationalism. For this reason, autobiography's popularity during the era is an odd phenomenon and also an important genre for study. The May Fourth Era (1917-40) began as a movement to make the classical literary language accessible to the common people and became a broader political movement against imperialism. The writing of autobiography was influenced by the idea of literature's social and political mission, yet at the same time autobiography was a uniquely potent venue for individual expression. Janet Ng examines this notion in The Experience of Modernity within the framework of autobiographical writings by Chen Hengzhe, Lu Xun, Hu Shi, Xie Bingying, Xiao Hong, Eileen Chang, Yu Dafu, and Shen Congwen. Janet Ng is Assistant Professor of Asian Literature, the College of Staten

Art · Biography · China · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literature · Modernity · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Popularity · Rhetoric · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Philosophy · Authors · Authors, chinese · Autobiography · Chinese authors · Chinese literature · Chinese literature, history and criticism · Chinese prose literature · History and criticism

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