31563 - Chinese Culture and Literature 1

Learning outcomes

Modern Chinese Literature

Course contents

The course focuses on the history of Chinese literature from the end of the 19th century to the present day, examining major works, the most influential authors, and the most significant forms and movements. In particular, it concentrates on the changing role of the author in their relationship with political power and the most pressing social issues of the period under study. The proposed method involves investigating how the literary text is not limited to reflecting its own social reality, nor is it independent of it, but constitutes a creative and, at times, critical response.

The historical-cultural analysis is integrated with close reading of excerpts from the texts discussed in each lesson. The excerpts will be presented in translation and, partly, in the original Chinese.

The course program will be developed in two sub-modules, structured as follows:

1. A Literary Journey from the 20th to the 21st Century (approximately 45 hours)

• The advent of modernity and the new novel
• The May Fourth Movement and the New Culture: the 1910s
• The literary revolution: the tumultuous emergence of the self between realism and romanticism
• The currents of modern poetry
• Revolutionary literature: writers' political commitment in the shadow of the "Yan'an Talks"
• The "17-year literature" and the Cultural Revolution: peasant and worker poets
• Wounds, roots, and avant-garde: rediscovering the self in the literature of the 1970s and 1980s
• Obscure and Post-Obscure poetry
• Outside of history and within the micro-stories of "small-time people"
• Hooligans and ruptures: literature under market reforms
• New realism and pararealism: the problem of representing reality in present-day China

2. The Scene of Contemporary Literature (approximately 15 hours)

• The representation of the city in new urban literature
• Sex in the Chinese city: narratives of transgressive and non-conformist sexuality
• Intellectual or Popular poetry? From the late 1990s debate to "internet poets"
• Science fiction(s): critical creative spaces and government (or capitalist) cooptation
• Workers take the word (and the pen): Chinese workers' literature today

The program will be complemented by four introductory lessons on research methods for preparing an academic paper in the literary field, useful for writing the term paper.

Readings/Bibliography

Please refer to the main page for the full list of readings. Feel free to contact the instructor for readings in English or Chinese.

Teaching methods

Conventional. Students' active participation is strongly encouraged.

Assessment methods

Oral exame, structured as follows:

1. Discussion of a paper written by the student (50% of the final evaluation, 15/30 points). The paper (approximately 1,500 words) analyzes a novel, contextualizing it according to the course's contents and one or more critical essays. The topic of the paper must be discussed in advance with the instructor. The document must be sent via email at least 10 days before the exam session the student intends to take.

2. Two additional questions on the questions of literary history addressed during the course, always starting from the readings carried out independently by the student (50% of the final evaluation, 15/30 points).

Attending students may carry out a presentation of the topic of their paper in class. The presentations, whether individual or in group depending on the number of attending students, will last 20 minutes each (including Q&A) and will take place during the last classes. The presentation replaces the discussion of the paper. However, the paper must be normally submitted and regularly contributes to the evaluation of the first question.

The ability to autonomously, critically, and creatively link the themes of the course to individual readings, as well as to students' own study of the Chinese reality, is highly fostered and appreciated.

Office hours

See the website of Federico Picerni