Canonization and Ba Jin's (李堯棠) Work in Chinese and US-American Scholarship
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CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 Purdue University Press ©Purdue University Volume 16 (2014) Issue 6 Article 15 Canonization and Ba Jin's (???) Work in Chinese and US-American Scholarship Miaomiao Wang Sichuan University & North China Electric Power University Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Part of the Comparative Literature Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <[email protected]> Recommended Citation Wang, Miaomiao. "Canonization and Ba Jin's (???) Work in Chinese and US-American Scholarship." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 16.6 (2014): <https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2604> This text has been double-blind peer reviewed by 2+1 experts in the field. The above text, published by Purdue University Press ©Purdue University, has been downloaded 248 times as of 11/ 07/19. This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. This is an Open Access journal. This means that it uses a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. Readers may freely read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles. This journal is covered under the CC BY-NC-ND license. UNIVERSITY PRESS <http://www.thepress.purdue.edu > CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 < http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb > Purdue University Press ©Purdue University CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture , the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." In addition to the publication of articles, the journalpublishes review articles of scholarly books and publishes research material in its Library Series. Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Langua- ge Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monog- raph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: < [email protected] > Volume 16 Issue 6 (December 2014) Article 15 Miaomiao Wang, "Canonization and Ba Jin's (李堯棠) Work in Chinese and US-American Scholarship" <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol16/iss6/15> Contents of CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 16.6 (2014) Special Issue Western Canons in a Changing East Asia . Ed. Simon C. Estok <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol16/iss6/> Abstract : In her article "Canonization and Ba Jin's ( 李堯棠 1904-2005) Work in Chinese and US- American Scholarship" Miaomiao Wang discusses the reception of and scholarship on a major Chinese author. Wang explores similarities of and differences in studies on Ba's work in China and the U.S. and analyses the reasons for different viewpoints including research methods and reasons which moti- vates(d) Chinese and U.S. scholars to study Ba's work. Wang argues that her analysis will be benefi- cial for Chinese scholars in order to learn about the present situation of studies on Ba's work in US- American scholarship and thus effect a change—as limited this may be—in the scholarship about the processes of canonization. Wang's study suggests that in Chinese and US-American scholarship on processes of canonization there is no sufficient interaction and thus in the case of Ba's work Wang's analysis is about the question whether the Western canon of literary scholarship has had an impact on Chinese scholarship. Miaomiao Wang, "Canonization and Ba Jin's ( 李堯棠) Work in Chinese and the US-American Scholarship" page 2 of 7 CLCWeb: Comparatie Literature and Culture 16.6 (2014): <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol16/iss6/15> Special Issue Western Canons in a Changing East Asia . Ed. Simon C. Estok Miaomiao WANG Canonization and Ba Jin's (李堯棠) Work in Chinese and the US-American Scholarship Ba Jin (李堯棠; also referred to as Pa Chin 1904-2005) is one of the most influential writers since the May Fourth Movement, the nineteenth-century anti-imperialist, political, and cultural movement that brought Chinese nationalism to the fore (see, e.g., Feng; Furth; Schwarcz). How literary works are composed, distributed, and received varies according to political, cultural, historical, psychological, etc., factors. My study is about how canons and scholarship about Chinese literature in English can and in some instances do impact Chinese scholarship. I begin with a brief outline of the theoretical context I place my study. Shunqing Cao put forward the notion of "variation theory" to be applied in comparative literature in his 2014 The Variation Theory of Comparative Literature . Cao argues that the study of comparative literature should not be based on the analysis of similarities but should instead be based on the perspective of variation (see also Cao and Li; Wang, Miaomiao <http://dx.doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2370 >). In his ̔较ƫ学教র (A Course in Comparative Litera- ture) Cao writes that "by analyzing variation in the processes of literary communication among diverse nations and cultures, the study of variation is about the exploration of the internal laws of literary pro- cesses"(unless indicated otherwise, all translations are mine) (" ̔较ƫ学ि变异学将变异дรƫ学дࣇ为ࣀ 己ि学科ઃ, ಈ过研究ʻ同国家ʻ同ƫŒ间ƫ学交¦ि变异状态, 来究ƫ学ि内इ规¹" [97]). I take Cao's approach to discuss Ba's work in order to show the "variations" of studies of Ba's work in both Chinese and US-American scholarship and thus present selected aspects of canon formation. Further, my con- text is the question as to whether the study of canon formation from the Western perspective is prac- ticed in Chinese scholarship Since the publication of Zhenduo Zheng's 1922 " ƫ学ӝ刊:复ᕆ甘" ("A Letter for Fei Gan: Periodicals of Literature" studies on Ba's work have important for the study of Chinese literature of course, but al- so in US-American scholarship. Studies of Ba's work started in China in the 1920s and can be divided into five stages. The first stage is the 1920s to the 1940s. From this period, we have about 170 texts about Ba's work in Chinese and this constitutes relevance for the gauging of Ba's significance as a ca- nonical author. To name a few important studies on Ba's work, Lao She published in 1935 读ಚ金ि "电 "(Reading Ba's Lightning), Yingchuang Lin published in 1943 论ಚ金ि "家"" " " ொ" 及其它 (On Pa's Family, Spring, Autumn, and Others), and in 1947 Moruo Guo published an article entitled " έ起࣊樱 桃ि故̓" ("Remembering the Story of Hacking Cherry"). The second stage of the canonization of Ba's work is the period between the 1950s and the 1970s. In 1957 two landmark studies were published, namely Feng Yang's ಚ金论 (On Ba) and Yao Wang's 论ಚ金िѐ说 (On Ba's Novels). Of course, during the Cultural Revolution scholarship on Ba's work was not possible. The third stage is that of the 1980s when studies of Ba's texts received extensive attention and a large number of books and studies were published, for example ಚ金专(Monograph on Ba Jin)edited by Zhifang Jia, ಚ金研究资 (Research Materials of Ba) edited by Cunguang Li, and ಚ金评传 (A Critical Biography of Ba) by Danchen Chen and these publications in provided in particular further aspects of the canonization of Ba's works. Further, Danchen Chen's 1981 ಚ金评传 (Critical Biography of Ba) was the most comprehensive look at the au- thor followed by Cunguang Li's ಚ金ǐਨඟő时期िƫ学道k (Ba's Literary Road during the Period of Democratic Revolution), Xingguo Tan's ಚ金िχร创ࣇ (The Life and Works of Pa), and Huizhu Zhang's ಚ金创ࣇ论 (On Ba's Writings). Also in the 1980sYingguo Wang's ಚ金论 (On Ba) and Sihe Chen's and Li Hui's ಚ金论稿 (A Book on Ba), Zhensheng Yuan's ಚ金ѐ说艺术论 (On the Art of Ba's Nov- els),and Xiaoming Ai's 青年ಚ金及其ƫ学视界 (The Young Ba and His Literary Vision) suggested new ap- proaches to Ba's work. These studies offered explorations of Ba's thoughts, the characteristics and stages of his writing career, the various perspectives of his ideologies (democracy, patriotism, and humanism, and particularly that of anarchism), and Ba's relationship with world literature and tradi- tional Chinese literature and culture. The fourth stage of scholarship on Ba's work is the diversification stage of the 1990s. Compared to the scholarship of 1980s, research on Ba's work was less active, but the discourses and methods used diversified more intensely. For example, KaileiXu's ಚ金传 (Biography of Ba), Cunguang Li's ಚ金传 (Bi- ography of Ba), Sihe Chen's ࡸ格ि发ग़—ಚ金传 (The Development of Personality: A Biography of Ba), Miaomiao Wang, "Canonization and Ba Jin's ( 李堯棠) Work in Chinese and the US-American Scholarship" page 3 of 7 CLCWeb: Comparatie Literature and Culture 16.6 (2014): <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol16/iss6/15> Special Issue Western Canons in a Changing East Asia .