Controversies about Chinese writer Mo Yan have been heated since last October, when the Swedish Academy announced him to be the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work 鈥渨ith hallucinatory realism merging folk tales, history and the contemporary.鈥� The most recent debate was aroused by German Sinologist Wolfgang Kubin, who commented at a May conference in Hong Kong: 鈥淚 cannot come to a thorough understanding of post-1911 Chinese history through his fiction.鈥� In response to the criticism, this lecture investigates Mo Yan鈥檚 fictional historiography by focusing on four of his thirteen novels, namely 鈥淩ed Sorghum鈥� (1987), 鈥淏ig Breasts and Wide Hips鈥� (1996), 鈥淪andalwood Death鈥� (2001), and 鈥淟ife and Death Are Wearing Me Out鈥� (2006).
Dr. Shelley Chan and Dr. Howard Choy (Wittenberg University) will discuss how the novelist effectively challenges the official history of China in the modern and contemporary periods.
Cosponsored with:
CWRU Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, CWRU Department of English, CWRU Asian Studies Program