Selected Stories of Lu Xun

Critical Asian Studies, 1981

Lu Xun was claimed and canonized as a Marxist by the Chinese Communist Party, while Japanese and Western critics frequently read his work as a critique of modernity. Whereas the latter approach tends to trace the continuity in his writings, the Marxist approach largely brackets his earlier work. This chapter attempts to bring Marxist theory in dialogue with Lu Xun’s work in a different way, by focusing on his early writings and reading them in relation to various theorists. Through a close reading of two of Lu Xun’s early essays, “On the Destruction of Malevolent Voices” and “Imbalanced Cultural Development,” this chapter examines debates within the Marxist tradition, especially about issues related to global capitalism and the possibilities of a socialist future in countries on the periphery of the world-system. In this way, Lu Xun and Marxist theory can illuminate one another.

2022

China no longer wonders who Lu Xun (魯迅, 1881-1936) was, or what he means to our culture. What China asks, rather, is how Lu Xun's iconicity develops in pursuit of a Chinese zeitgeist, or how he manages to inform social process or historicity. How is this literary figure so prominent throughout China's modernity? How is Lu Xun such a fundamental figure of China's intellectual paradigm? 1

2014

Lu Xun 魯迅 (1881-1936) has generated a vast body of academic research that continues unabated in China and internationally. His short story "Diary of a Madman" (1918) instantly transformed him into a celebrity and the hero of Chinese youth, credentials that were consolidated by a series of stories written in rapid succession, and later published as his collections Outcry 呐喊 (1922) and Hesitation 彷徨 (1926). Both collections were bestsellers in the burgeoning world of commercial publishing in China, as were his collected essays of social criticism. Lu Xun's powerful indictments of traditional culture coincided with a Nietzsche fever raging in the Chinese intellectual world during the May Fourth era 五四時期 (1915-1921). Nietzsche's notion of the Superman extolled heroic action by the individual, and called for the revaluation of all traditional values. When the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 left Chinese citizens feeling betrayed by the Western democracies, Nietzsche's ideology fused with passionate, widespread Chinese nationalism. The older generations' clear failure to deal with international issues empowered Chinese youth to seize the mantle of authority and to take center stage in pontificating about how to bring China into the modern world. Writers were the most articulate amongst the intellectuals, and inspired by Nietzsche, they saw themselves as the heroic voice of the people. They argued the case for cultural modernity and demanded a revolution in literature. Classical writings were indicted for promoting a culture that was inappropriate for modern times. It was decreed that China's new literature must be written in the vernacular language in order to reach a wider audience, and it should also deal with contemporary issues. Lu Xun's short stories addressed these criteria, but even more important was his towering intellect, incisive language and unique literary prowess. He was immediately joined by a cohort of younger writers such as Zhou Zuoren 周 作人 (1885-1967), Yu Dafu 郁達夫 (1896-1945), Mao Dun 茅盾 (1896-1981) and Guo Moruo 郭沫若 (1892-1978) whose writings together formed a critical mass that succeeded in laying the foundations of China's modern literature. Writers of that generation had received a rigorous training in classical literature, and like Lu Xun also read extensively in foreign literatures, either in the original language or in translation. Furthermore, like Lu Xun, they were known for their translations of foreign authors, including Nietzsche. 1 Rigorous training in classical 1 For political reasons the impact of Nietzsche on modern Chinese literature for many years was deliberately obscured. The first publication to emerge was an English-language study by Marián Gálik, "Nietzsche in China

Li Zehou is one of the most significant and influential Chinese philosophers of our time and one of the rare Chinese intellectuals whose work has acquired a wide readership abroad. He dedicated himself to the task of finding a sensible, suitable way of harmonizing past and present, tradition and modernity, China and the West. In this context, he tried to create a synthesis between early Marxist and classical Confucian discourses. Through a critical analysis of these attempts, the present article reveals some crucial theoretical problems underlying such efforts. Considering the fact that in contemporary China, the link between Confucian and Marxist philosophy is a much discussed (and rather controversial) topic, the paper also represents a contribution to the clarification of this topical problem.

The China Quarterly, 1980

Marriott Wardman Park, 2660 Woodley Rd NW, Washington, DC 20008 // Washington Room 5, Exhibit Level // Chair: Alexa Alice Joubin George Washington University, Virginia Speakers: Christopher Lupke University of Alberta, Alberta, Canada Jon von Kowallis University of New South Wales, New South Wales, Australia Ping Zhu University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma Nick Admussen Cornell University, New York Carlos Lin University of Pennsylvania, New York ///// One of the foremost writers in early twentieth-century China, Lu Xun is widely known for his literary works that delineate and reformulate the national spirit of Chinese people. However, to what extent can we read his works as an example that illuminates the study of world literature, which emphasizes the long-standing phenomenon of transcultural and translational practices? A hundred years have passed since Lu Xun published his “A Madman’s Diary” (1918), arguably the first modern Chinese fiction that inspired the entire May Fourth generation and beyond. What does it mean to study and teach Lu Xun in the English-speaking world during the twenty-first century in which we are faced with an ever increasing demand for a dialogue between disciplines and fields of studies? In particular, how can Lu Xun’s works shed light on the relation between world and national literatures, the connection between personal memory and national narrative, and the conversations between Sinophone studies and Chinese literature? These are the questions that this roundtable aims to explore. Christopher Lupke addresses the question of why teaching Lu Xun is essential to world literary studies and explores the possibility of teaching Lu Xun from an interdisciplinary perspective. Jon von Kowallis discusses the translations of Lu Xun’s classical-style poetry in both Chinese and English-speaking contexts. Ping Zhu analyzes issues related to gender and colonial modernity in Lu Xun’s works and reveals their pedagogical implications. Nick Admussen examines ways in which Lu Xun’s Wild Grass can be taught by emphasizing the work’s aesthetic, psychological, and political implications. Carlos Yu-Kai Lin highlights the role of Lu Xun as a literary historian whose works exemplify how a modern, Western literary form is built into and fascinated by local materials. Alexa Alice Joubin will chair the roundtable and make closing remarks on the inseparability of the studies of world and national literatures.

The apex of China's 1911 Republican Revolution, the election in Nanjing of native son Dr. Sun Yat-sen, heralded an historic break with autocracy. Tragically, Sun Yat-Sen's democracy did not last long. A bitter period of feudal strife followed as warlords sought to carve fiefdoms out of the young republic. Humiliating concessions to Japan under the Versailles Treaty added to the new republic's problems. Continuing violation of China's sovereignty spawned the May 4th, 1919 student movement in Peking. Reverberations from May 4th helped launch a small communist party cell in Shanghai and a larger democracy movement across the country. Trenchant feudalism, aspiring nationalism, and revolutionary communism together serve as the spectacular backdrop to progressive education reform and the journey of a public education missionary named Tao Xingzhi. Born to Christian parents, Tao Xingzhi would move from humble beginnings into the world of the Western-educated elite and would be both revered as a national hero and reviled as a dissident. At one of the pivotal turning points in his adult life, Tao Xingzhi donned the robes of a traditional peasant and, in the highly contested space between budding democracy and revolutionary communism, set out to preach to the common people the values of progressivism. Unwaveringly, with humility and pragmatism, his goal was simply to remake Chinese society through education, to develop "the union of teaching, learning and doing."

Journal of Chinese Overseas, 2018