Thesis
The re-presentation of history in the works of Mo Yan, Ma Jian and Yan Lianke
- Creator
- Rights statement
- Awarding institution
- University of Strathclyde
- Date of award
- 2021
- Thesis identifier
- T15906
- Person Identifier (Local)
- 201577876
- Qualification Level
- Qualification Name
- Department, School or Faculty
- Abstract
- This thesis considers the interpretation of history in the fictional works of Mo Yan, Ma Jian and Yan Lianke – three writers with very different places in the post-1989 canon of Chinese literature who have yet to be collectively addressed in contemporary Chinese literary criticism to date. The thesis considers the significant differences between Mo Yan, Ma Jian and Yan Lianke’s as authors, and how the different modes of symbolically representing history in their respective works offer important perspectives on our understanding of how significant historic events are represented and reflected upon in contemporary Chinese fiction. The thesis engages in a discussion of contemporary Chinese fiction, which combines the disciplines of history, politics and literature in order to understand how literature functions in contemporary China. To this end, Chapters Two and Three read Mo Yan’s Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out (2006, translated by Howard Goldblatt) and Ma Jian’s Beijing Coma (2008, translated by Flora Drew) in conjunction with their historical antecedents, demonstrating how the different ways in which Mo Yan and Ma Jian write about significant historical events manage to out-manoeuvre the political constraints imposed by the censorship mechanisms of the Communist Party of China (CPC). At the heart of this thesis’ discussion is Louisa Lim’s theory of ‘national amnesia,’ which describes the censorship mechanisms of the CPC. Chapter’s Two and Three build upon Lim’s thesis by considering the contested field of cultural discourse in contemporary China and how Chinese writers, such as Mo Yan and Ma Jian, might mitigate the ‘national amnesia’ of significant events in literature of the post-1989 period. Chapter Four analyses the issues of authorship, reception and metafiction in relation to the works of Yan Lianke and argues that Yan’s writing exhibits a new direction in Chinese literature by which Chinese writers may be able to use the constructs of metafiction as a tool to circumvent the ideological guidelines and mechanisms of literary censorship which exist in China today. Collectively, the works I analyse in the thesis support an argument that the allusions to significant historic events in the novels of Mo Yan, Ma Jian and Yan Lianke are deeply embedded within historico-political discourses of twentieth- and twenty-first century China. The thesis argues that the allusions to historic events in the works of Mo Yan, Ma Jian and Yan Lianke may offer a means by which Chinese writers in the post-1989 period have been able to navigate the state-sponsored censorship of history under the authoritarian governance of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
- Advisor / supervisor
- Mahn, Churnjeet
- Fabb, Nigel
- Resource Type
- Note
- Previously held under moratorium from 14 September 2021 until 29 July 2026.
- DOI
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