31191 - Chinese Literature 2

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course, the student will be familiar with the general outlines of the events and critical debate in contemporary Chinese literature (in translation) and will be able to highlight the connections between major historical events and transformations at the cultural and literary levels.

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

• 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

• The second part of the course delves into specific topics concerning more recent literary phenomena or closely related to our time, also drawing on the contributions of external experts, based on the interests of attending students. These topics will include: gender, sexuality, urban fiction, science fiction, transnational Sinophone literature, and Taiwanese literature.
  

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.

Those students who are able to demonstrate a wide and systematic understanding of the issues covered during the lessons, are able to use these critically and who master the field-specific language of the discipline will be given a mark of excellence (27-30 cum laude). Those students who demonstrate a mnemonic knowledge of the subject with a more superficial analytical ability and ability to synthesize, a correct command of the language but not always appropriate, will be given a ‘fair’ mark (23-26). A superficial knowledge and understanding of the material, a scarce analytical and expressive ability that is not always appropriate will be rewarded with a pass mark or just above a pass mark (18-22). Students who demonstrate gaps in their knowledge of the subject matter, inappropriate language use, lack of familiarity with the literature in the programme bibliography will not be given a pass mark.

Office hours

See the website of Federico Picerni