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UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Uncertain Satire in Modern Chinese Fiction and Drama: 1930-1949 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1g94d1hb Author Tian, Xi Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Uncertain Satire in Modern Chinese Fiction and Drama: 1930-1949 A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature by Xi Tian August 2014 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Perry Link, Chairperson Dr. Paul Pickowicz Dr. Yenna Wu Copyright by Xi Tian 2014 The Dissertation of Xi Tian is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Uncertain Satire in Modern Chinese Fiction and Drama: 1930-1949 by Xi Tian Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Comparative Literature University of California, Riverside, August 2014 Dr. Perry Link, Chairperson My dissertation rethinks satire and redefines our understanding of it through the examination of works from the 1930s and 1940s. I argue that the fluidity of satiric writing in the 1930s and 1940s undermines the certainties of the “satiric triangle” and gives rise to what I call, variously, self-satire, self-counteractive satire, empathetic satire and ambiguous satire. It has been standard in the study of satire to assume fixed and fairly stable relations among satirist, reader, and satirized object. This “satiric triangle” highlights the opposition of satirist and satirized object and has generally assumed an alignment by the reader with the satirist and the satirist’s judgments of the satirized object. Literary critics and theorists have usually shared these assumptions about the basis of satire. I argue, however, that beginning with late-Qing exposé fiction, satire in modern Chinese literature has shown an unprecedented uncertainty and fluidity in the relations among satirist, reader and satirized object. My dissertation analyzes not only satire, but several related varieties of pathos and humor, in the work of Wu Jianren, Xiao Hong, Lao She, Yang Jiang and Qian Zhongshu and makes comparative references to foreign writers such as Nikolai Gogol and Jonathan Swift, who were deeply influential in shaping the understanding of satire among Chinese writers of the era. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ……...……………………………………………………………………..…1 Chapter I A New Face of Late Qing Exposé: Self-Satire and the Blend of Tears and Laughter………….……………………………………….………15 Chapter II National Character, “Little Man” and “Laughter Trough Tears”: Empathetic Satire in Xiao Hong’s Fiction…………………….………45 Chapter III Ambivalent Love and Reserved Reproach: Little Family Man, Superfluous Intellectual and Native Soil in Lao She’s Empathetic Satire …………………………………………………………………………80 Chapter IV From Playfulness to Pessimism: Qian Zhongshu’s Pride and Prejudice in Self-Counteractive Satire ……………………...........................……..114 Chapter V Yang Jiang and Her Ambiguous Satire in a Time of Unstable Values………………………………………………………….……..149 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………..179 Works Cited .………..…………………………………………………………...……..185 v Introduction In the history of satiric writing and scholarship, fixed and stable relations among satirist, reader, and satirized object have long been practiced. This satiric triangle emphasizes both the opposition of the satirist and satirized object and the reader’s alignment with the satirist’s naturally presumed (moral) judgment of the object of satire. The stability of the satiric triangle is assumed by many critics and also considered as the most conspicuous quality of satire. Based on this presumption, scholars such as Friedrich Schiller, Roland Paulson, Alvin Kernan and Northrop Frye explore the motives, narratives, structures, history and evolution of satire. Frye, Kernan and many others also attempt to define satire as a genre, and take pains to anatomize and analyze its elements, qualities, necessary techniques and ultimate purpose. However, they are disappointed to find that satire is more a formless mode than an identifiable genre. Without an identifiable or fixed form, satire inhabits other genres, such as drama, poetry, prose and fiction. Biographical and psychoanalytic critics inspired by Freud tend to look at satire through the author’s perspective, reading it as a product of the author’s fears, hates, or grudges, or as a manifestation of personality disorder. Others view satire as persuasive rhetoric, with a moral goal to correct folly and to “lash vice” (Connery 5). Recent scholarship challenges this fixity of the satiric triangle. Fredric Bogel notices readers’ occasional “unease” with the satirist’s claimed authority. He points out that “our presumed identification with the satirist and our presumed difference from the 1 satiric object become problematic linkages in which the desire for utter clarity of relations comes to look more and more like a strategy for casting out ambiguity and establishing a gratifyingly idealized—but therefore false—coherence of both self and other” (46). Instead, Bogel suggests an intrinsic double structure of satire. According to Bogel, the second structure works against the first structure, and “produces much of the difficulty, profundity, and interest of the satiric mode” (5). This second structure emphasizes the reader’s conception of satiric rhetoric and considers satire a cultural work that connects different societies and cultures by its rhetorical effect, such as the reader’s identification with the satirist and rejection of the satirized object (Bogel 47). Different from the anatomical or anthropological studies of satire, this concept raises Bogel’s ultimate question: “By what authority, and on what grounds, does the satirist presume to identify what is central to a culture and to attack what deviates from that perceived centrality” (82)? His theorization of satire is therefore fundamentally a cultural study of the roles of the satirist and reader. Inspired and indebted to Bogel’s work, my study of satire in modern Chinese literature builds on Bogel’s double structure to redefine satire and re-examine the dynamic satiric triangle by focusing on different types that are generated by the unprecedented uncertainty and fluidity in satiric narrative and rhetoric. In this work I first propose some of the major features of satire, but without denying that there will be exceptions and incongruities, since imposing limitations on the concept of satire is not my intent. Firstly, a satirist is a self-appointed guardian of certain moral or aesthetic 2 standards. Such standards may range from ideals to desirable and widely-accepted cultural and social norms. The “right” values that satire guards are not necessarily right, because one’s frame of reference is subjective and changing, yet the existence of such a frame is the premise of satire. Secondly, satire is characterized by an indirect and often refined attack on, or censure of, vice or social evil, or a comment on the perceived deviation from a cultural center or established social norms. Since satire is a protest against the deviation from an ideal, it usually fuses its moral and ethical judgment with the use of rhetorical wit, irony, humor, caricature, burlesque, hyperbole and sarcasm, but it is not limited to them. In sum, satire generates different degrees of laughter. It is not a genre that stands alone, but rather inhabits various other genres, such as drama, fiction, prose and film. Last but not least, satire is structurally, rhetorically, literarily and culturally uncertain and ambiguous, as we can see in the selected works that I analyze in this dissertation. * * * In early twentieth-century China, Western language words for “satire” were introduced and translated as fengci, 讽刺, before there was much study of what this new term meant. This may be one reason why scholarship since then has largely overlooked the uncertainty and fluidity that fengci includes. Although fengci is a new word with only approximately a hundred-year history in modern Chinese language, satirical writing has long been practiced in Chinese literary history. The origin of feng and ci can be traced as far back as Classic of Poetry (Shi jing, ca. 840-620 BC) in which feng, 风, “wind” or 3 “airs” is written and collected to inform the rulers of the people’s grievances, and to achieve the goal of correcting the rulers’ faults. In the “Air of Wei,” the peasants’ voice in a poem pleads: “Big rat, big rat, / Do not eat my sprouts! / Three years I have served you / But you give me no comfort. / I am going to leave you / And go to those happy fields; / Happy fields, happy fields; / Who there shall long moan” (Shijizhu 66-67)? By comparing the rulers and the local tax collector to big rats that steal and eat up all the grain in every household, the poem criticizes heavy taxation and exploitation, and expresses people’s longing for a utopian society. Feng, 讽 and ci are both verbs, here meaning respectively, “admonish and advise” and “criticize and expose.” Neither feng nor ci is considered a literary genre. Any forms of literature can be used to feng or ci. The modern Chinese writer Lao She (1899- 1966) observes that “in terms of literary genre, we see satire in poetry, drama and fiction, all with unique style. […] Additionally, fairy tales, myths, fables and jokes all more or less have some satiric traits” (95). In imperial China, satirical
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