CHIN 335 - Worlding Chinese Literature

This course examines Chinese literature through a comparative lens, exploring the translingual connections and interactions between Chinese literary works and world literature. One notable example is Lu Xun’s portrayal of the Chinese national character in “The True Story of Ah Q,” which engages in dialogue with Arthur H. Smith’s Chinese Characteristics, a work by an American missionary that Lu Xun encountered during his student years in Japan. Another lesser-known example is Wu Jianren’s creation of New Story of the Stone after reading the Chinese translation of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward: 2000-1887. Whether these translated texts serve as conceptual or formal inspirations, our understanding of Chinese literary modernity is enriched when we redirect our critical attention to the dialogic nature of the modern Chinese literary enterprise, and remember that Chinese literary modernity has originated and thrived as a mode of reading, writing, and circulation that is fundamentally worldly in nature.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Prerequisite(s): Sophomore standing. For Chinese credit, CHIN 212 or equivalent.
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Cross-listing(s): LIT 312
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).