Chinese Fiction of the Cultural Revolution

As the first comprehensive study of Chinese fiction of the Cultural Revolution, this pioneering work explores the position of the literature of this turbulent period in the context of contemporary China.

The book covers the choice of subject matter, authorship and readership of Cultural Revolution fiction. It analyses the characterization of heroes promoted in the literary and artistic field during this period. By comparing Cultural Revolution fiction with the fiction of the preceding period, with Soviet fiction and with some traditional Chinese and Western fiction, this analysis emphasizes the ideological and cultural significance of the characteristics shown in the heroes’ personal background and their physical, temperamental and behavioural qualities etc. The book also contains a comprehensive linguistic study focusing on lexical style. This investigation presents the density and distribution of stylistic items concerning narrators and characters, the general fictional language style, and the relation between the general style and the authors’ individual language style.

This book will be of significant benefit to both students and scholars of Chinese literature, language and society.

Lan Yang is post-doctoral research fellow of Chinese language and literature at the University of Edinburgh, author of A Study of Gong’an Dialect (Gong’an fangyan yanjiu), co-author of The Dialects of Hubei Province (Hubei fangyan zhi), and The Concise Encyclopaedia of China (Zhonghua xiao baikequanshu).